The history of Wolfenstein

This feature was originally published in Retro Gamer issue 175 in late 2017.

Wolfenstein 3D was so good that, when id Software took an early version to Sierra in 1992, the publisher quickly tabled a $2.5 million offer to purchase the pre-Doom dev studio. It's difficult to understate how impactful a game Wolfenstein 3D was—how much it changed things, how it raised the bar, decided it still wasn't high enough and so tore it off and threw it over a mountain. There were first-person games before id's effort, there were better games with more longevity since—most from id itself—but Wolfenstein 3D was the game that kickstarted everything, and made established publishers have a ‘holy shit' moment that made them slap $2.5 million dollars down on the table.

It shouldn't surprise you to hear that, in the end, Sierra's offer wasn't followed through. id was willing to sell—even going so far as to create a cute little piece of artwork to celebrate the purchase—but wrangling over payments, with John Romero requesting $100,000 up front alongside a letter of intent, meant ultimately Sierra backed out of the deal. Wolfenstein 3D would still happen, though. Its release directly spawned Doom and Quake, and influenced an entire genre still enjoying ludicrous popularity to this day. It didn't need $2.5 million to be a global phenomenon. It just needed the team at id to sit down and make it.

"My least favourite part of Wolf3D was actually making the levels!" John Romero, co-founder of id and project specialist on Wolfenstein 3D, says. "They were so boring to make. Commander Keen levels were a ton of fun because there was so much to them. Doom levels were even more fun to create—but Wolf3D's levels were just so simple to design because there weren't that many elements to the game." This meant actually crafting levels for the game was a tough order, and towards the end of things John was having to bribe cohort Tom Hall into keeping on going with the promise that he'd be able to buy himself a Honda NSX—if only he'd finish those levels: "I would say, ‘C'mon—let's finish these levels! NSX, NSX, NSX!'"

But this all jumps forward many years in the evolution of Wolfenstein as a series—id Software did not create the series, nor has it been the sole gatekeeper of it over the years. Rewind back to 1981 and you'll find a relatively unknown, overlooked and forward-thinking 2D stealth-adventure game for the Apple II by the name of Castle Wolfenstein. Created by the late Silas Warner, the original was ported to Atari 8-bit machines, DOS and Commodore 64 before being followed by Beyond Castle Wolfenstein in 1984. "Wolfenstein is the original stealth shooter," John says, "I'm really proud of the legacy of Castle Wolfenstein—the series that Silas Warner created out of thin air. His inspiration came while watching the 1961 movie The Guns Of Navarone. That night, Silas was at a 7-Eleven and played Berzerk for the first time. He thought about taking the design of Berzerk and replacing the robots with Nazis, and voila, Castle Wolfenstein's idea was born.

"He combined his game with another of his creations, The Voice, which could play back digitized audio, which is how the talking Nazis came about. This was all very revolutionary in 1981, and unless you were playing on an Apple II back then you have no idea how awesome the game was at the time." These originals set the scene, with a castle, Nazis, violence against said Nazis, digitised sound and,