3D Realms, best known as the last company able to do something good with Duke Nukem, currently has a Build engine-powered shooter called Ion Maiden on Steam Early Access. By all reports it's really good—user reviews on Steam are "overwhelmingly positive"—but what makes it interesting is the use of the Build engine, which is true retro-tech: It was used for Duke Nukem 3D and the original Shadow Warrior way back in the mid-90s, and Ion Maiden is the first game to make use of it in nearly two decades. 

3D Realms is also working on a new game based on the Quake engine in partnership with 1C Company, and yes, that would be the original Quake from 1996—a Build engine contemporary. That little factoid was revealed last fall, along with absolutely no other information: No name, no release target, no platform information, no nothing. But that will soon change. 

Is that logo ringing any bells? That's not a hint that I know what's up, by the way: I think it looks very vaguely Quake-like but I can't see Bethesda green-lighting a remake by anyone but id Software. But games like Ion Maiden and Dusk have proven that shooters don't need to be built on bleeding-edge tech to be great, and I'm excited to finally find out what 3DR has cooking. We'll let you know when we know.

This article was originally published in issue 184 of Retro Gamer. Subscribe here for more features like this every month.

Few western developers had higher profiles during the '90s than id Software cofounder John Romero, and fewer still had a rockstar image to go with their fame. But after helping id to make the FPS mainstream with instant classics such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, John parted ways with the small firm, and its remaining developers made the decision to take their next project in a new direction, as Quake II level designer Tim Willits remembers.

“Romero was let go, and we took a different approach to the next Quake game,” he tells us. “Kevin Cloud stepped up to lead the project and refocus us on something that was more story-based and set in a different universe. Kevin had this great idea where he said: ‘Guns Of Navarone.’ That was the inspiration for Quake II, and it made sense because in the movie the Allies had to knock out the big guns that the Germans had before they could assault. So in Quake II, your job would be to knock out the big guns before the big dropships could come in. That’s why you were by yourself, because the human forces had sent individual pods out since everything else was too big and would get hit by the big guns.”

Of course, since id’s latest project was taking its lead from the Guns Of Navarone it would need an army as dark as the movie’s Nazi antagonists, which Quake II artist Kevin Cloud delivered in the form of a race of macabre aliens called the Strogg. “With the Strogg, Kevin wanted to create an enemy force that was unified but terrifying,” Tim explains. “So the Strogg were part-alien, part-vampire; they weren’t like vampires, but they were vampiric. Like the Borg [in Star Trek], their plan was that they would take over planets, and then use body parts—living tissue and organs—in reconstructing themselves and keeping themselves alive. Because they attacked different planets with different creatures, each Strogg was different, but the Strogg were also very unified because they were all part of a Strogg collective.”

But as horrific as Kevin’s vision for the Strogg was, the nightmarish aliens’ sci-fi backstory was clearly at odds with the Gothic horror narrative of id’s previous Quake title, which as Tim points out makes sense since Quake’s follow-up almost became a standalone project that would likely have kickstarted an entirely new id franchise. “We wanted to do something different with the next game, and we did consider not calling it Quake II,” Tim muses. “One of the names Paul Steed came up with, which I always really liked, was ‘Wor,’ but it was hard coming up with a name that everyone liked, so we just stuck a ‘II’ on the end of Quake. But it did hold true to that Quake DNA, where it was hardcore: there were big beefy weapons, there was over-the-top action and you were the hero saving the world.”

But while id strived to instil Quake II with the key tenants of Quake’s core gameplay, rather than reworking the sequel as a dark fantasy it decided to retain the project’s decidedly sci-fi -themed narrative. “We were a bunch of sci-fi nuts!” Tim reasons. “And it was refreshing for us to do something new but kind of familiar. With a sci-fi universe there was the opportunity to have super-cool weapons and we could have new types of creatures, so it really gave a nice palette to create a wonderful game.”

As well as favouring an alternate genre, Quake II would also differ from its predecessor by having a cohesive backstory, which instructed and informed the design of the project’s full-motion video introduction and the look and animation of its biomechanical alien opponents. “Quake was kind of a mess,” Tim concedes, “although it was awesome. But the Quake II team rallied behind one art style, one art direction and story. We had better design, and we were focused. Paul Steed came up with our cinematic intro, which was really cool. He had worked on the Wing Commander series, and so he brought experience of story-based sci-fi action games. Adrian Carmack did amazing concept work on the Strogg creatures, and then Paul added personality to the animations.”

The follow-up to Quake was further differentiated from the original game thanks to enhancements that id’s lead coder John Carmack made to his Quake engine that allowed it to render brighter and far more colourful-looking levels. “We had a supercomputer that was literally the size of a refrigerator to process the lighting for the maps—it was so cool!“ Tim enthuses. “No game had had coloured lighting before Quake II. So we were like kids with new toys; we went all crazy. I know there are some levels that look a little oddly-coloured, but it did give it a more colourful look. At the time it was like: ‘This is awesome! Green and blue lights!’ We also had light bouncing—simulated radiosity—so every corner of the world had some lighting.”

Beyond aesthetics, the stages in Quake II also stood out from their Quake equivalents thanks to their more wide open and less linear nature, which Tim puts down to accumulated knowledge, a story-led approach to level design and the knowledge that PC gamers were continually upgrading their PCs with the latest tech. “We had more experience making levels, and we were trying to tell more of a story. Like there was the jail, there was the hanger and the processing facility, so we tried to give more identifiable locations to the areas. Plus computers were running faster. It was just a combination of all that, really.”

Additionally, Quake II’s levels would be mission-based, and unlike Quake its sequel would require players to make use of innovative ‘hub’ areas to jump from one stage to another and back again. “I can’t remember if it was something that we had consciously planned for or if it just evolved,” Tim ponders, “but you had these missions, and you would get radio alerts, because we just wanted to tell a better story and give a better experience, and the hubs were a byproduct of that. The hubs made the environments richer, so the world felt like a real place that you were infiltrating. They gave us the freedom to reuse areas and make players feel like they were in real space.”

One innovation that proved a step too far, however, was the option of rescuing traumatised marines being loaded into meat processing machines in one of Quake II’s more gruesome missions, the processing plant. “We had that one mission with the processing plant,” Tim recalls, “and you could just turn off the machines. I think it was the limits of the gameplay scripting, where what do you do with the marines when they’re out? We didn’t have AI, so they wouldn’t follow you around. Plus those poor souls, they were already damaged beyond repair from the Strogg experiments.”

Aside from making decisions on level design mechanics, new weapons were being designed for Quake II, although these were complemented by a selection of existing designs made popular by earlier id FPS. “There were some tried-and-true weapons—the lightning gun and the rocket launcher were from Quake,” Tim acknowledges, “plus we had machine guns and the BFG from Doom, but Quake II was sci-fi, so we also had hyper blasters. We tried to make the new Quake II weapons exciting and interesting, but yet remember that they always fulfilled a purpose in a situation. At id, we’ve always believed in situational weapons. So if a guy is close-up you use a shotgun, if a guy’s far away you use your machine gun. You’ve got projectiles, explosives to get that instant hit. Each of these weapons actually fits a purpose of the gameplay. So we would find a situation that we wanted to engage an additional weapon for and then come up with a weapon.”

Arguably the most memorable of the weapons to make its debut in Quake II was the now-legendary railgun, which Tim credits to company research on arguably the most memorable big-screen action hero of the '90s. “The railgun in Quake II was inspired by Eraser—the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie,” Tim reveals. “I went to see it with the guys, and the next day I went to John Cash. I told John: ‘It’s like a rocket, but it’s an instant hit—it’s called a railgun!’”

Perhaps reasonably, given the destructive power of Quake II’s railgun—not to mention its other deadly armaments—the game’s sole animator Paul Steed decided that the focus of these lethal weapons, the Strogg, should be dangerous even in their death throes. “Paul wanted to bring more personality to the creatures,” Tim recollects, “so the marines could shoot their heads off, but they could still shoot back before they died. He thought it added more meat to the gameplay, so he drove that thought and inspired us to do that. Paul was our only animator, and he did model, too, so you could see his personality in some of the characters in Quake II.”

But far from merely injecting their personalities into Quake II, those working on the title put everything they had into its development. Tim believes that youthful exuberance ultimately got the game over the finishing line, but he admits to cutting things a bit fine when it came to putting together the last remaining stage. “We put some crazy hours in, but we were all young. We made the hangar mission—which is not the greatest mission in the world—in the weeks before we shipped. It definitely came in hot!”

As well as a major shareholder in id Software, Activision was also Quake II’s publisher, and although the firm trusted id to deliver on time, it did have issues with the fact that the game required a fast PC that was preferably equipped with top-end graphics hardware. “Activision was concerned that you needed to have a graphics card,” Tim accepts, “that it was required for Quake II. But you know what? By the time Quake II came out everyone was pretty hot for the new graphics cards and CPUs. It was kind of the norm. Quake II was not the only game that you needed to buy the new cards for. The Epic guys were making great stuff, and there were lots of games companies who were making cutting-edge games, so it wasn’t really that big of a deal.”

On Quake II’s release, it became clear that Tim’s assessment of the wider gaming market had been correct and that Activision’s anxieties had been unfounded. The game sold nearly a quarter of a million copies in its first few months on sale alone and garnered unanimous praise from the press, praise that still endures to this day, although Tim’s memories of the critical and commercial response to Quake II have faded over time. “I don’t remember. Did Quake II get good reviews?” Tim asks us. “I always tried to focus on the game. I really loved working on Quake II, and I felt personally that I had grown a lot as a designer. We had such fun making that game, and there was so much talent. We were more focused, we were more design-driven and we all liked each other. So it really showed in the product, you know. Quake II was a labour of love that I was very proud of.”

In the years that followed, id licensed the engine that had powered Quake II for use in a number of popular third-party titles, each of which Tim viewed with pride. “They were all great,” Tim exclaims. “I loved all of the Quake II engine games. We were blessed to work with teams like Raven, Ritual and Activision that took the Quake II engine and did amazing things with it. And look at Half-Life, which changed the industry, I mean, it was awesome. They felt like id games. I always brag about the origins of those games and how they were based on id Software technology. We were always a small company, so we had a small foot. But we had a giant footprint, and that was the software—that was always a point of pride.”

When looking back at Quake II, Tim offers an equally enthusiastic appraisal, with his one caveat being his conviction that the much-loved id FPS should’ve had a different name and should’ve been the first chapter in a new franchise. “Well it’s still fun,” Tim notes, “there’s still a ton of people that really love it. We made the rockets slower than Quake, and some people are sad about that. Some people love Quake II’s speed, some people prefer Quake’s speed; it just depends on which Quake you played first. Quake II should have been called something different in my personal opinion—I will say that. But you know what? We did a lot of fun things, and it was a good time to be in the industry; it was a good time for id Software. And then, of course, the greatest gun ever was the railgun. Quake II was the culmination of the people that worked on it, because everyone was pretty unique and different in the team, and we really tried to be pretty flat in our design structure. So it was fun to work on the game.”

How Quake II compares on other systems

Mac3D graphics cards for Macs didn’t become common until the late-Nineties, so it’s unsurprising that the Mac Quake II arrived two years after the PC release. The wait was worth it, though, as the Mac version is all but identical to the original. So much so that Mac and PC Quake II owners can face off in online deathmatches.

N64Essentially a reworking of the PC original designed to better suit the N64’s reliance on cartridge-based storage, Quake II on Nintendo’s system features stripped-back levels coupled with simplified systems. N64 Quake II does feel like the original, however, as it shares its aesthetics and game design.

PlayStationSlightly less impressive than the N64 version in terms of speed and visuals, the PlayStation Quake II does convert levels from the Nintendo iteration nicely. Like the N64 port, the PlayStation Quake II has splitscreen multiplayer, it also adapts stages from the original game and boasts two exclusive Strogg opponents.

AmigaBy 2002, the five-year-old Quake II was looking a little long in the tooth compared to cutting-edge FPS titles, but id’s release of its source code the year prior convinced Hyperion Entertainment to release an Amiga version. The end result is close to the original, but it requires a fast CPU and accelerated graphics card.

Quake II's best stages

Processing PlantBuilt to render down captured marines into a disgusting slime that the Strogg feed on, the processing plant houses seven macabre machines sited on a circular route. Besides one tank commander, your mission to disable the machines is met with low-level opposition, although surprise attacks are common, so stealth tactics are advised.

Big GunThe big gun mission’s solid middle section pales in comparison to the epic boss fight at its start and the heart-stopping race to safety at its finale. The mission’s airborne boss—the Hornet—requires you to pepper it with heavy gunfire followed by taking cover when it returns fire, while the mission’s end-of-level escape leaves no margin for error.

Inner HangarThe objective of storming the inner hangar is to close its doors and ground the Stroggs’ spacecrafts. As the hanger is heavily guarded a slow, steady approach is recommended, particularly when negotiating its floating blocks and giant cogs. The Hornet guarding the hanger entrance is best tackled from a high vantage point.

OutlandsBar for a gun emplacement near its start, whose operator can be taken out with a ranged weapon, the outlands mission is a high-tempo test of marksmanship. Following a hill pass, you cut across bridges and through caves while avoiding barracudas. Finally, you activate the air strike marker, take cover and then make your way to the exit.

Outer CourtsDeep within the outer courts there’s a data spinner that’s required to shut down a Strogg communication system. The route to your target begins with a dangerous, stomach churning cliff-edge walk, after which the going gets tough, so have your biggest guns ready. The spinner itself is located after a disorienting underwater section.

Commander Keen in Keen Dreams released on Nintendo Switch today, which wouldn't be of much interest to us, if it weren't for that fact that it's prompted series co-creator Tom Hall to jump on reddit. Hall, who developed the game alongside John Carmack and John Romero, had some interesting things to say about efforts to develop new Keen games since the series' last instalment in 2001.

In comments left on this thread, Hall chimes in to say that he'd "love to do a new Keen" but that he doesn't have the rights. The rights lay in the hands of id Software and its parent company Zenimax. "Every letter to them has gotten a form letter response," Hall said, when asked whether he had any contacts.

Interestingly, when asked whether John Romero has "any pull with them," Hall replies that he and Brenda Romero had "tried one year" but that they also received a form letter response. 

Hall did attempt to fund a 2D platformer creation tool called Worlds of Wander back in 2013, which would have come bundled with a "spiritual successor" to Commander Keen, but it didn't reach its target. 

It's interesting to hear that efforts have been made to revive Commander Keen. And as an aside, Commander Keen in Keen Dreams is a bit of an anomaly for the series: it's not currently owned by id / Zenimax, and while it did appear on Steam several years ago under a different publisher, it's since been removed. It was a somewhat obscure stopgap between the original Keen and Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy. You can buy it for $10 on the Switch, or get it for free on Android.

Here's some footage:

Believe it or not, Wolfenstein 3D released for the Super Nintendo, but it did so with some pretty significant changes. First of all it was censored: there's no blood, all visual references to Nazism were removed, and Adolf Hitler is known as the Staatmeister. Enemies have fewer sprites, which means that the enemy always faces the player. Oh, and there's additions too: there's a flamethrower and rocket launcher.

Now, thanks to modder AstroCreep, this version of Wolfenstein 3D is available to play on PC. It's not a perfect double: the HUD and a few sound effects are inaccurate, but the experience is otherwise the same (it'll run much better than the SNES version, though). "All sprites and textures have been replaced with SNES counterparts, censorship and all," AstroCreep writes.

To run the mod you'll need the ECWolf source port and a copy of Wolfenstein 3D. Check out the mod here.

...and for the curious, here's footage of the original SNES port (ie, not the mod).

Porting old id Software shooters onto ridiculous devices is hardly a new phenomenon, but it's never not amusing. This time, someone has ported Wolfenstein 3D onto the Pico-8 fantasy console, and while it's just the first level, it's a pretty neat achievement when you consider the Pico-8's specs.

The console supports 128x128 pixels with up to 16 colours, and enforces a 32k memory limit. There are also limitations on sprites, sound and control schemes. Pico-8 was where the critically acclaimed platformer Celeste first debuted, and there's a nice selection of games to sample on the console's official site. Most of these games tend to be 2D sidescrollers, so it's quite impressive to see a smoothly scrolling first-person shooter. For reference: the original Wolfenstein 3D for DOS required a minimum of 528kb RAM.

The work of 'hungrybutterfly', they admit that there's "loads missing", in particular textures. But what do you expect? It works, and surprisingly well at that. You can play it here, or if you'd prefer to watch someone else do it, here's a video:

Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories. 

You never know what’s going to become A Thing. Take the Dopefish. He appears in one level during the shareware game Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy, which describes him as "the second dumbest creature in the universe. His thought patterns go, 'swim swim hungry, swim swim hungry.'" And yet somehow, this chunky green wonder became something of an industry mascot in the 90s, hidden in everything from Quake to current Early Access game Dusk. Not to mention assorted callouts, including the classic bit of digital graffiti "DOPEFISH LIVES". He even appeared on Tiny Toon Adventures, as a scientific example of zero-intelligence. Which is all the more impressive/terrifying given that the top of this specific scale was a chicken drumstick.

Over the last few years though, it has to be said there's been a distinct absence of gaming's favorite piscine. When people talk of True Gamers, it's always tiresome nonsense about 'skill' or whatever. Clearly, the real definition should be people who encounter that gap-toothed smile deep in the bowels of some secret level and take a moment to nod in recognition at one of gaming's furthest-traveled fishies. The Dopefish must live again! In every game! No exceptions! We want to see the Dopefish in Silent Hill! The Dopefish in Fifa '09 The Dopefish in Dota 2!

Maybe not the Dopefish in Just Fishing though.

That would be… most unfortunate.

Last week, I tossed a comment about my pinky into the PC Gamer Slack channel, and it was like I'd just walked into a room and mispronounced the word bagel. I'd said something so immediately, obviously wrong to everyone but me that the five dudes and one woman up in orbit right now probably felt the shockwave of wrong reverberate through the International Space Station. Somehow there were no casualties, except my innocence. 

Until 5:34 pm, I'd assumed I play PC games like a Totally Normal Person.

I do not.

Okay, so, look. Here's the thing. Like most kids who grew up in the '90s, I mainly learned to type on PCs and Macs in keyboarding class, and to this day I'm a home row typist. Around the same time I was learning to type,  most games still defaulted to the arrow keys for movement. I definitely played Wolfenstein 3D with the arrow keys, and rarely played other PC shooters until years later. I was too busy with Command & Conquer and Warcraft.

So whenever I got back around to games with WASD controls—it might've been Halo: Combat Evolved around 2004—I did what my brain considered natural. I kept my fingers on the home row, and moved my ring finger from S up to W to walk forward and backward. This seemed perfectly normal. But, um.

Here's how I play PC games, which was quickly coined The Wes Maneuver:

• A: Pinky
• W/S: Ring finger
• D: Middle finger
• R/F/C/etc.: Index finger

I hope this revelation hasn't caused you physical or mental pain. Honestly, I'm still reeling. Not at the thought of doing it wrong, because the great thing about PC gaming is we can customize our games however we want. If you prefer to move with ESDF, that's perfectly fine! But it did not even occur to me, until last Wednesday at 5:34 pm, that anyone else would press the WASD keys differently. Then everyone started typing at once.

My pinky goes where?

If you'd asked me to guess how most people positioned their fingers on WASD, I'd have be totally stumped. What else would even feel natural? My way is so obvious. As the rest of the team reacted to my heretical fingering, I had to Google around for what I was missing and found tons of photos like this. The pinky lives on Shift???

I tried to contort my hand into this position. At first it felt freakish. I was tenting my fingers to stand on A, W, and D, but my brain still insisted the pinky belonged on A, too. I had to shove it to the side like a dead limb. After a few tries, I realized the natural orientation was simply shifting over to the left, and resting on A/S/D. The middle finger moves up to press W when needed. That still feels like madness to my 15 years of muscle memory, but I'll admit resting my pinky on Shift does feel pretty great. It's like a vacation: my pinky gets to sprawl out on a spacious, less-used key, and isn't responsible for strafing at pivotal moments. It's a lot of pressure, moving left.

No one on staff could remember how they learned to position their fingers for WASD, but the general consensus seemed to be that the pinky is weak and unfit for the responsibility of an important movement key. Better to trust it with lower-frequency actions like sprinting and crouching, they said. Also, I finally understand why most people find Ctrl to crouch much more convenient than I do.

But this is the part that just boggles my mind: how did this position make its way into the collective unconscious of PC gaming?

Evan conjured up the best theory: the typical WASD positioning actually carries over from using the arrow keys from back in the Wolf 3D days. If you used your right hand on the arrow keys, you almost certainly had your index finger on Left, middle on Down, and ring on Right. No pinky. And if you used your left hand, the pinky could reach out and press right Ctrl. This makes a whole lot of sense. And in original Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, Ctrl was the default Fire key.

I'm going to say "I didn't play enough Doom" is as good an explanation as I'm ever going to get. It's true: I didn't play Doom back when it came out. Then again, plenty of people who did play Doom went on to play tons of Quake and other first-person games like System Shock, which often had radically varying control schemes, and they mostly still migrated to the "proper" WASD. To make myself feel better about my apparently weird way of WASDing, I turned to someone I knew would have my back: former PC Gamer managing editor Chris Comiskey.

If I'm a mere heretic, Chris is the Archangel of Chaotic  PC Control Schemes. Here's what he had to say: 

"WASD? Vanilla, boring, and conformist. Behold my ultimate control scheme, picked up in Duke Nukem 3D, the best game ever made with the word Nukem in it: right mouse button to go forward (naturally), pinky on Left Ctrl, thumb on Left Alt and Spacebar, ring finger on Shift, middle finger on A and W, index finger working W, Z, S, X, and occasionally, the almighty C. And you better believe that my mouse is inverted. This is how I rock my PC games, and I always have. Your way is wrong and stupid. Mine is the best."

Honestly? Ctrl/Shift/A/S is pretty comfortable. I don't think I could ever get used to walking forward with a mouse button, but I dig the rest of it. As Chris says, PC gaming is all about bending the platform to your preferences. "Choice in graphics, choice in mods, choice in hardware. It’s no different with controls. If I have the sudden urge to use Scroll Lock as jump and F8 as strafe left, well, that’s my business, dammit."

Embrace your strange control schemes, PC gamers. If you're young, try not to totally mangle your hand using the default keybindings for Fortnite. It's okay to rebind. And if you see someone out there using their pinky on A, ease them into the wider world of WASDing gently.

1996: the year of both classic FPS Quake and of the famous viral video of a dancing virtual baby, which spawned an equally famous GIF that was emailed across offices around the world. Joshua Skelton, lead artist on first-person rogue-like Delver, has now combined the two, as you can see above.

As he says in the tweet, it's not all about getting the babies into the game: he's creating a tool to convert GIFs into in-game sprites. It's apparently quite simple to pull off. "I just renamed baby.spr to soldier.mdl! The Quake engine treats 2D sprites and 3D meshes (and 3D maps!) generically as models and they can (mostly) be used interchangeably," he says.

Another Twitter user replied with an important question: what if you shoot your grenade launcher at the babies? Thankfully nothing, Skelton says: they just keep on dancing.

My money is on a smiling Robert Redford making it into the game next.

QuakeCon is coming back in August for the 23rd time, and will be free to attend unless you want to take part in the traditional BYOC—Bring Your Own Computer—tournament. In that case you'll need to sign up for one of three entrance packages, ranging in price from $75 to $400. Also up for grabs is a QuakeCon 2018 Swag Pack, which includes the ultimate must-have accessory for the discriminating Quake fan: An inflatable rocket launcher. 

The Swag Pack is $150, which is an awful lot for an inflatable toy. But it also comes with a "premium roll-over backpack," three pins, a stainless steel water bottle, a QuakeCon air freshener (we're not sure what it smells like—my guess is a sultry blend of three-day-old socks and anger, but it could also be Spring Lavender), a mouse pad, and a luggage tag. I won't say that justifies the price, because that's really a personal decision that only you can make, but I will say that an inflatable rocket launcher would look awfully sweet on the wall above the mantle. 

The slight bit of bad news here is that tickets aren't actually on sale yet: Bethesda said it's in the process of putting together "a better, smoother process for registration," perhaps to accommodate the double-sized BYOC rumble, and it's taking a little longer than expected to pull everything together. Details on the when-and-how of the registration process will be revealed soon, and for now you can ponder the pricing below. 

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, honestly, not a huge amount other than that tying them to later releases. They were influential, of course, and John admits he and the id team had tried to incorporate elements from these games in the series' 3D debut: "We replicated a few of the features in the original game such as dragging dead bodies and opening crates. We even got it working so if a guard saw a dead body he tried finding the player."That's where the similarities began to fade, though—Wolf3D was shaping up to be a quick run-and-gun that felt great to those playing it. "The problem is that the game came to a dead stop when you did these things," John says. "We didn't want to slow it down so we actually removed the features and left it fast." The intention—the initial idea, even—was always to make a 3D version of Castle Wolfenstein, but in creating the game it soon became something similar only in setting and name than anything else. What we ended up with was a game of mazes and exploration, secrets and hidden gold stashes, Nazi soldiers shouting, 'Halt!' and SS officers crying, 'Mein Leben!' when gunned down. It was nothing short of revolutionary for the time, but the worry was still there: would a reimagining of a little-known, decade-old title be able to succeed?

The first of BJ Blazkowicz's Nazi-bashing adventures blew away all expectations—and these were already high. Players in 1992 were pumped for the release. Even with the weight of expectation on its shoulders, the game outperformed even id's expectations—a hoped-for $60,000 first royalty cheque landed with $40,000 more than that on it. "The press for Wolfenstein 3D was incredible," John says. "People were mentally devastated when they played this hyper-fast 70fps Nazi-killing blastfest. They wrote all about it in the pre-internet magazines of 1992. We followed up with Spear Of Destiny and sent it out on 18 September, 1992. So for about a year and a half after the launch of Wolf3D we had pretty much the most popular FPS around… until Doom launched."

The inevitable array of ports followed, with new weapons, missions, graphics and more added to different versions—and these ports would continue well into the mid-Nineties even while id moved further away from the game-changing game it had come up with. First Doom, then Quake—id Software had other home made projects to concentrate on, so Wolfenstein remained fallow but not forgotten for a number of years. An aborted attempt to make a sequel at Apogee under the stewardship of id alumnus Tom Hall became Rise Of The Triad, but other than that, the game that had taken around four months to develop had no follow-up for almost a decade.

The return

Nine years after Wolfenstein 3D had written a new rulebook for games, a return was on the cards—and Gray Matter stepped up to develop Return To Castle Wolfenstein. While id had moved on from the series, there was still a lot of love for it internally. "Many of us wanted to see a new Wolf game made and were searching for a development team," Todd Hollenshead, then-CEO of id explains. "We knew Gray Matter well and had been impressed by their work on Redneck Rampage (as Xatrix) and on the Quake II mission pack they developed for us. Drew Markham, the studio head of Gray Matter, came to our offices one day and pitched us on the idea of him and his team developing a new Wolfenstein game."The demo Drew showed us that day was jaw-dropping. It was a perfect demo because it captured the imagination of what the potential could be for a modern Wolfenstein." This dark, atmospheric reimagining of Wolf3D brought a more robust storyline to the fore along with a much greater emphasis on the occult—along with bringing back BJ and his proclivity for shooting Nazis in the face. "When Drew left the office, we all knew that he was going to be the guy we handed the franchise over to take forward," Todd adds.

One of the people who worked on the pitch demo was Maxx Kaufmann, art director on Return To Castle Wolfenstein, who explains the process. "We did a snow level demo, there was a courtyard and a little interior of a castle," he says, "One of the funny things was we had an alarm—if you didn't kill the guys in the proper amount of time a guy would run off and set off the alarm, and the alarm was from Raiders Of The Lost Ark—the woman yelling, ‘Alarm!', so it was pretty funny. We just put in our take on what we thought Wolfenstein would be, and it was cool snowy outdoor castle little level, it couldn't have been more than like five rooms—but it was a combination of the five rooms, the interior and exterior and the AI having the ability to set off the alarm that I suspect was what made them go with us."

With the development team chosen, work began with Gray Matter reporting to id, which was working directly with Activision as a publisher. This was a relationship that ran relatively smoothly: "Really id just let us go. BJ Blazkowicz—what he looked like and how he was represented—was a big deal," Maxx explains. "The story they let us go with—they had a knowledge of it, but I don't remember us changing gears or anything with what we wanted to do there. My impression was that they liked what we did and they had trust in us and thought we were going to do a good job." It was elsewhere id did step up to the plate—specifically to manage the expectations of the publisher. "They told Activision, ‘The game's going to come out when it's going to come out, and it's going to be a good game.' They absolutely made sure that Activision didn't rush," Maxx remembers.

Instead of a master-servant relationship, RTCW was made with collaboration and a spirit of helpfulness in mind. While id's involvement was limited, people from the studio were involved in helping out with areas like animation, advising on art and helping to research in areas like World War 2 timelines for added authenticity. In a game featuring robotic, Tesla-coil-powered undead Nazis. "There was a ton of World War 2 research that went into the development," Todd explains. "Including uniform designs, weapons (both actual and fantasy), and even locations for parts of the games to take place. I think that helped us convey a more compelling singleplayer narrative and helped make the player feel like a war hero saving the world from Nazis."

But things were by no means po-faced—Maxx pointed out some of the best fun he had in making RTCW involved the outlandish themes featured in the game. "The idea this Nazi technology had gone beyond, so you had these Frankenstein creatures, the electrical currents going through them and stuff—it just added to the visual interest and excitement. Excitement is a term I would use on our end to do something that was different—it wasn't just straight World War 2." 

Fun doesn't immediately mean it was an easy process, of course, and Maxx recalled how being given a single day off during development was cause for celebration: "I was so excited to have a Sunday off in a month," he laughs. "I was excited about having one day off. That's how crazy we were working. It was every day of the month, and if you had a day off, you were excited. I don't know if I could do that now, I was young then—but I just remember, it seems so funny now, being excited to have a day off: ‘Thank you! Oh my god I have one day off! This is great!' Like, you couldn't do your laundry, you couldn't do anything... you weren't even in your house that much that you could get it dirty."

The dreaded crunch might be viewed differently through a modern lens, but Return To Castle Wolfenstein released to rapturous applause, greedily guzzled up by players eager to see what the homecoming king could bring to the genre it lit a fire under. Some of those players were even located inside id's office. "RTCW is my favourite of the franchise and one of my all time favourite games," Todd says. "I can't even remember how many times I played the entire singleplayer game start to finish. We would have contests at id to see how far you could get using only the knife or until the alarm was sounded and guards were called on you while the game was in development."

The game ended up with a much bigger impact on the wider sphere of things, though, thanks not to its ‘good versus evil—gone crazy' premise (copyright Maxx Kaufmann, 2017), but because of something Wolf3D didn't feature in the first place: multiplayer. With then-unique modes based around objectives rather than just killing anyone you saw, class-based systems and an early capture the flag all on offer, it delighted all but some Doom and Quake purists. And it was from the healthy multiplayer scene on Return To Castle Wolfenstein that an entire developer was spawned, Splash Damage.

"RTCW almost didn't have any multiplayer," Todd reveals to us. "Gray Matter was behind schedule and had no resources to put on multiplayer. From id, we enlisted Brandon James from Nerve to sit down with a few of us and come up with a whole new design and from that point singleplayer and multiplayer were developed almost completely independently with the exception of id being in the middle, guiding and assisting with both." Part of that process saw the enlistment of mod teams to help with things like building new maps and—in the case of Quake III map pack veterans Splash Damage, then a ragtag bunch of amateurs—help with development of patches. This relationship built up between the fledgling studio and the masters at id soon led to bigger plans, with the small team at Splash Damage putting together a single-player demo for a RTCW expansion it had been told about.

"We were asked to pitch for a Wolfenstein project—I think it was a mission pack for RTCW," explains Arnout Van Meer, co-founder of Splash Damage. "So what we did, as a multiplayer team which had only worked on multiplayer content, was pitch a single-player mission for the game. We managed to get a full level with full voice acting, NPCs, new weapons and more done in a week—we sent it to Activision on a Sunday and when they got back to us they gave us a multiplayer project. Which made a lot more sense."This project shifted from a mission pack to a multiplayer-only add-on, rebadged and renamed as Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein, and suffered through a fair bit of uncertainty and confusion until its eventual release as a free, standalone multiplayer game. Rather than being ignored and forgotten, it—like Wolfenstein 3D before it—set the standard for the genre, blew the gaming public away and, ultimately, resulted in those at Splash Damage earning the team full-time careers in development. "I don't know what Splash Damage would even be if id and Activision hadn't decided to put Enemy Territory out as a free goodwill gesture," says Ed Stern, lead writer at the studio. "It was a really good game, but it was just the most colossal stroke of good luck. There wasn't anything like it at the time."

Under the stewardship of id and Activision, Splash Damage went through a huge learning experience in development of Enemy Territory, cutting content, dealing with bottlenecks, fiddling (then unfiddling) grenade physics and so much more. But all along it was supported by the established studio and publisher, partly because the game being made was so very new. "One thing we started doing was having RPG elements, introducing XP to a first-person shooter," Arnout says. "It made it so much more accessible to players—you could die while going for that objective, but you improve over time and your character gets better. We were one of the first games to do that."

The modern age

While the impact of Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein is still being felt in the world of online gaming as a whole—so much of what it introduced, or at least popularised, is the standard these days—it was the Wolfenstein series that briefly took the RPG element to heart, with the release of Wolfenstein RPG on iOS in 2008. This was a fine distraction in the series, but not really enough to keep the committed fans happy—they wanted something new, something big, a continuation of what began with Return To Castle Wolfenstein. They got… Wolfenstein.

"I think Raven always believed they had great ideas to bring to Wolf, but were thwarted by that awesome demo that Gray Matter gave us," Todd explains. "Nearly ten years later on, they finally got their chance to pitch us on all their ideas with a cool demo of their own." With Activision keen for Raven and id to work together and Gray Matter no longer existing, the decision to pass on the Wolfenstein mantle to another studio once again was taken. Jason Mojica, level designer at Raven on Wolfenstein 2009, was just a junior on the project but saw how eager even the veterans were to make something great. "Our veterans were on point when nothing was holding them back, they were a powerhouse of raw dev. As a junior at the time, it was such a nice place to be, soaking up experience. They were very good at keeping an open mind and listening to everyone's suggestions. We had a very strong team mentality."

But even with the talent at the helm and the enthusiasm of working on an already legendary series, the reputation of Wolfenstein 2009 ended up being, it's fair to say, not stellar. The game was serviceable and had some nice ideas—it looked good and played well enough—but there was a spark missing from it that people expected from such a trailblazing series. All the same, those who worked on it still had a fondness for it. "Back in 2008 I was very much a junior, just enjoying the process around me," Jason says. "I didn't have much thought on the holistic design of the game. The flaws or issues that occurred weren't as noticeable to my eye. Now, after being in the industry for so long, those types of things are pretty glaring. I would agree with some of the criticism, but It's hard for me to think negatively about the game, since I enjoyed working on it so much." And Todd agrees, "Wolfenstein 2009 gets overlooked. I think much of that has to do with it being released in the middle of a console transition and a development philosophy shift away from just totally selling out for the PC game."

So the series remained dormant once more, this time with players not quite as eager for the next entry to the series. Of course, with the ravenous hunger not quite being there from the buying public, there was the shortest gap yet between two mainstream Wolfenstein releases. We saw another gap though this time it was only five, until Bethesda (now owners of id Software) handed the licence to MachineGames. How did they turn out? Well, we asked John, the main proponent for making Wolfenstein what it is today, for his thoughts. "I think the most recent New Order/Old Blood games were so well done. I'm a big fan of them," he says. "Awesome graphics, super violence, great story. Really, it's just so well made. We brought the series back to life with our 1992 Wolfenstein 3D, followed by Spear Of Destiny. For a while it was looking like Wolfenstein would be coming back every ten or so years.

"It's nice that it's such an active series now with Bethesda at the helm. Silas [Warner] would be proud."