Posts Tagged ‘wolfenstein 3d’
Podcast: Wolfenstein
This week features a massive three hours dedicated largely to the Wolfenstein franchise. Most are probably aware of the more recent shooters and the 90s game from id, but there’s a lot more to tell about this somewhat underappreciated series. Fred and Jam start with the original title on the Apple II and move all the way to the upcoming sequel this Friday. Segment 2 is all about community questions and segment 3 wraps things up with some neo-retro gaming from both hosts.
Version: Wolfenstein 3D on 16-bit
This week we put the original SNES release of Wolfenstein 3D up against the recent homebrew port of the game on the Sega Genesis. How do you think it will work out?
Looking Back at Wolfenstein 3D
In truth the dawn of the first person shooter (FPS) and its popularity is more a case of luck as a group of intelligent designers got together and created pseudo-3D worlds. In 1991 John Carmack was accompanied by three others as the development team at id Software (that story was already told in our podcast) and funded by a company named Apogee (they also developed Rise of the Triad). Carmack had created the Catacomb 3D engine, which utilized ray casting to create 3D looking environments. In ray casting, basically lines are drawn in a grid and if they intersect a texture is placed at the intersection and over a grand enough grid, you get depth perception and a software-based flat image that looks like it’s in 3D. Combine that with the fact that Muse Software, developers of the innovative stealth-action Castle Wolfenstein title from the 80s, had let the license lapse and you have the building blocks of this innovation in game design. Apogee gave Carmack and his team $100,000 to develop a shareware title and they decided to move forward with Wolfenstein 3D.
Podcast: NADC – Not Another Doom Clone
This week Fred is flying solo and discussing the origins of the Doom clone. Named for early first person shooters, a little startup company called id Software created a reboot of Wolfenstein that eventually led to a demon slaughter in hell known as Doom. From there the flood gates opened and it seemed everyone had a game where you ran around and violently killed legions of enemies.
Review: Rise of the Triad: Dark War (1994)
Console: PC/DOS, Mac
Released: 1994
Developer: Apogee
Publisher: Apogee
Digital Release? Yes – PC/Mac (Steam/gog.com), iOS
Price: $3-$5, depending on digital distributor
Please Note: This review is based on the original 1994 PC game, for the 2013 updated version, our review can be found here.
In 1994 the first-person shooter was rampant. Like today, you just couldn’t look over a rack of games without a large number of the genre present, although at this time they were simply known as “Doom clones“. Ironically, one of the craziest of these titles, Rise of the Triad (ROTT), was played by almost no one unless you were like me and relied heavily on free shareware titles. People keep thinking they’ve played it, but once I start describing it quickly discover it’s a different game. It’s basically a Wolfenstein 3D-like title, which makes sense because it started life as the sequel, and focuses on graphic violence, crazy traps and platforming, and plenty of different explosive weapons. You play as one of five members of spec ops group H.U.N.T. (High-risk United Nations Task-force), each has a value of 1-5 in either strength and speed that balances to the same total amount for each. It’s not as diverse as it sounds in terms of character class, but it allows mild adaptation to your play style. In the game H.U.N.T finds itself trapped on an island after a rescue boat gets destroyed and your goal is simple: kill.
Podcast: The Final Countdown Pt. 1
Fred Rojas from Gaming History 101 and the B-Team podcast is joined by Josh “Colm” from the T4 show and Rob “Trees” from EZ Mode Unlocked to discuss the games in G4’s recent top 100 games of all times. We start by discussing some of our issues with the games in the list and then hit the ground running talking about our personal experiences with many of the great games on the countdown. Due to time constraints this first part covers games 100-60 with more to come in future weeks. Check it out!
Gaming History 101 