Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

Title screen from the PC-98 version.

Name:Wolfenstein 3D
Number:255
Year:1992
Publisher:Apogee Software (among others)
Developer:Id Software
Genre:FPS
Difficulty:3/5
Time:7 hours 20 minutes
Won:Yes (114W/83L)

A while since I first covered it and feeling considerably wiser about myself, I return to Wolfenstein knowing that this is going to be a unique take. I wasn't very positive about the game last time and this hasn't changed as I've played through this. Every time I return to Wolfenstein I get less and less happy about it. This is not a hopeful playthrough.

Part of the problem is that when you're ten and you've played maybe three FPS, the flaws of this game aren't important. It's just a genuinely cool style of gameplay and who cares if it isn't perfect? Then you return after some games under your belt, and maybe it isn't as good as you remember, but whatever, it's still basically the first FPS. A little later, okay, maybe there are like ten before it.

Now though? Now looking back there are like 50. Some of them are more far afield, but others are pretty close to what this game does and some are even very good games in their own right. This paints, in my opinion, less the picture that Wolfenstein 3D is something special and more that it came at the right place, at the right time, and with the right distribution method, the shareware model.

I'm going to be doing something a bit different, which is general observations followed by my thoughts as I play through various ports, mostly source ports. While looking this up, I realized that most of the console ports and the Macintosh port are actually different games to a certain degree. This is unfortunate, but does give me an excuse to play source ports over console/computer ports.

Wolfenstein 3D does not really change much from Catacomb 3D. You move with the arrows, strafe with the alt key, shoot with ctrl. Where it differs is how you get a weapon select rather than being able to press a button to use a weapon. Speed differs between ports, but usually you can run faster with shift. Whether this turns gives you a reasonable speed or just shoots you across the map depends on the version. Source ports tend to crank this up to Doom levels, which in this game is quite distracting.

A typical screen.

Where Wolfenstein 3D differs is in slightly odd ways. Secrets are pushwalls, walls you push to reveal secrets. There are others, but I'm pretty sure these all are games derived from this one. The other is the odd way that turning around looks. This was present in Hovertank and Catacomb, but here it's a lot more noticeable, thanks to how carefully looking over walls is more important. You can kind of cheat by looking around a wall in a way that doesn't quite make sense. Kind of cheating, since you're liable to get shot by anyone you spot.

There's also how every fight has inherit risk in it. Everyone's shots could practically kill someone, or they could just hurt them a little bit. It's about half distance and half where you aim the gun. Hit dead center and you do better than a corner shot. The AI aims perfectly, so you control how much damage they do solely by distance. In a sense, it's trying to make a weakspot without really programming in weakspots.

The focus on treasure and score, too, differs from what we now know, but for a while, this sort of thing was expected. What makes this a bit odd is that it ties into the lifes system. As you can constantly save and load, this is not much of a problem, so those glowing orbs which give you an extra life aren't much of a reward...except that they also give you health and ammo.

Enemies and weapons are very simple. Your weapons change solely based on firing rate, while the enemies all fall into easy archetypes. There's some minor changes with the later, but for the most part, this is true.
 

The knife is so rarely used that I actually had to just randomly switch to it for this screenshot.

I'm probably not the first one to mention this, but I'm annoyed at how the knife works. It alerts enemies when you use it. I realize the use case, but it's a lot more satisfying to stab an enemy in the back then to use it to aggro a bunch of guards towards you. Granted, considering this game, it's rare to ever stab someone, but still, it would be nice to have it as an options beyond desperation.

 

In retrospect, it might not be a Luger, and instead be some weird Frankenstein pistol.

The remaining weapons are a Luger pistol, a MP-40 SMG, and a gatling gun of some sorts. It's disappointing that the only real variation is in how many bullets you spray out at once, it would be nice if there was something else. That said, I dig how the Luger and MP-40 work, even if this is the era where there isn't enough animation for weapons. Lugers, as far as most pistols go, has a unique action which looks really cool in a game.

Another Frankenstein-esque gun, but at least this is because there's no real handheld mini-gun from this era.

But the gatling gun (really a weird mini-gun), that gets on my nerves a bit. I'm not opposed to having a gatling gun. There's an argument to made for having a gun which just shoots so many bullets that you turn your foe into a fine paste. In an arsenal. It's not in an arsenal, it's just a faster SMG. Here it loses that cool factor for me, since it's probably about as fast as a MP-40 should actually be.

There should be something else. A rifle, a shotgun, a rocket launcher or even some sort of weird sci-fi weapon. None of these things are arcane knowledge. There have been FPS games with these before. The only one ID themselves didn't already do something similar to at this point is the shotgun, and that's only because we think of shotguns as using buckshot, not slugs. (yeah, I know Dangerous Dave, not quite the same thing in practice here) If we expand it to everything a FPS could have at this point in time, then imagination is truly the limitation.

I know we get some of those in ports and upgrades, but this is generally supposed to be the default, plain Wolfenstein 3D, or at least with all six episodes. It's lacking, and I do not feel that any argument that can be made for this excuses it.

Enemies fall into the usual basic categories but have behavior which separates them from others in that category. And to begin with, no enemies have ambient noises. Once they've shouted their alert sound, the only sound they'll make until they're dead is a gunshot or opening a door.

I only need to take one screenshot of an enemy! Things will be fine...

Dogs despite being your typical melee enemy in theory, differ in a few behaviors. Enemies in Wolfenstein can either be standing still or patrol an area, except the dogs. They're always supposed to be patrolling. They're not really trouble, even in packs, but perhaps this is just because the game doesn't really know what to do with them compared to say, a demon from Doom. It helps that in all respects, a dog is weak.

A rare guard all on his own.

Guards, that brown-clothed standard enemy. Shoots at you and drops ammo. Weak for the most part, but capable of really hurting you if you get unlucky, thanks to how the bullet system works. Since they're noticeably slow on the draw, it is a matter of poor luck.

It's early yet, so one of these guys on their lonesome isn't too hard.

SS, blue guards with MP-40s. They drop it if you don't have one yet. They shoot swiftly at you so long as you're within their sight, but like the guards, they're slow on the draw. That said, they take more bullets to kill, so if there's one with other enemies and you don't have a machine gun, maybe hide a bit. Machine gun fire hurts.

A pair of mutants, one hiding behind the other.

Mutants, or zombies as I've called them in the past, are grey dudes with machine guns sticking out of their chest. These guys are nasty to fight, they have no alert sound and they're a bit stronger than the SS otherwise. Despite never showing up during the more annoying levels, they really show the spirit this game has. Gotta be careful not to get shot in the back, because if you aren't careful, they absolutely will shoot you in the back.

Officers start showing up in Episode 3, and boy howdy, do they make an impression. They have very fast reaction time. More than the player. If one is behind a door and spots you, you are getting shot if you don't get away. They aren't dealing a little damage either, you can get killed by poor luck. Their appearance amps up the difficulty of the game and not in a bad way. In any given scenario, they're the target to take on.

It's less about being quick on the draw in general and more about knowing where an enemy will be when you enter a room...for the first three episodes. There are several tricks to figuring out where an enemy could be in a room and how to avoid their opening shot...unless they're right behind a door or next to the hole you've entered in, in which case get shot.

I'll just hit the highlights of each episode as I go through them. Going in, I distinctly recall issues with level length and secrets coming off as obtuse. In theory this is supposed to have a limited scope and be fast, but in practice I found that levels were considerably longer than they should have been.

I'll be playing all versions on the third difficulty, Bring 'em On. That's the default, and after playing through the first level on both that and Don't Hurt Me, the third feels right. Even if I'm going to seriously regret it on the later episodes.

PC-98:

I was expecting something a bit different than the DOS version, but in Japanese. Which I guess it is. There are enough differences to drive me a little crazy. A sound effect here and there which is different, no menu or opening music. That said, I can have PC-98 sounds with Soundblaster music which is...different. Difficulties have slightly different names, but Death Incarnate is now "I am Unkillable!" or as I would prefer to translate it, "My Body is Unkillable." The third is now, "From Somewhere, Bring it On!". The first is now just a childish way of asking if the player can play and the second is the same.

Starting it up, on the first floor you can really see why this was at the right place at the right time. Even on a machine I've played a lot of poorly designed crap on, this runs buttery smooth and you can start shooting people within seconds. Which, when you get down to it, is something that gets you bang in with a lot of cases. Within five seconds of starting the game, you can shoot someone dead. Not a lot of games can say that.

But, that said, going for the secret floor pretty quickly brings the strengths down. Wolfenstein is best when every floor is quick and painless, with maybe a few challenges. E1L10 is a slog of a floor playing to the game's weaknesses, large, labyrinths where you never know where it is you're supposed to go. For the most part, here the game is keeping to the usual tract of not forcing the player to open secrets to progress, or making those secrets entirely random to find.

There's at least some slack here, simply because F10 is a secret floor and is tossing enough treasure at you for it to matter. Even regular floors, which quickly turn into labyrinths, aren't too bad. I feel like I'm fighting against the game, but there are some aspects which help the levels out. For instance, one set of rooms comes off as a dining room, complete with kitchen, area for the dogs, and a restroom. Like, they use the barrels as the toilet. ID Software really lost someone special when they got rid of Tom Hall.

I know this is supposed to be a prison of sorts, but it's really strange how every level has the same kind of cells with the blue stone. Oh, here's this section again, without fail. I'm also starting to wonder if me making it through more labyrinths has less to do with anything with the game being better than I remember or me now knowing how useful the "hug the right/left wall" trick from dungeon crawling RPGs.

Floor 4 put me in an interesting situation. In an unlucky encounter with a blue Nazi, I ended up low on health. As I continued onward, I opened fire into a large room, without considering the potential problems. Gotta say, more than anything else, I like sections like this in this game. Where you aren't chasing after, but are being chased. There's a tension you don't quite get in modern games, since here, the only noise enemies make is either getting alerted or shooting you. The only ambient sound is that of doors opening and closing in the distance. Hope you didn't leave too many dead guys in doors. This player hunting aspect works to the game's strengths a lot more than it does on the regular.

There are a lot of secrets which you really have no way of finding short of just hammering the walls with space. Some part of this, I imagine, would be easier if I had a map, but that was something that wasn't included until later. A few, well, you can guess, but the simple method of just looking for oddities in the walls has quickly become useless. This wouldn't be a problem, except a lot of the time there's limited supplies outside of the secrets.

Floor 7 is one of the more interesting levels here. It takes advantage of the engine ability to show great distances without slowing down. Near the start there's a big corridor, with openings on the side blocked off by pillars. First glance down, and you won't even notice it, but there's a horde of guards hiding behind the pillars. Walk by, and you'll get shot at. Further examination of the area and you can find your way onto the other side of these pillars. It's one of the few really cool levels here. Even if I did end up missing the key on my first time through.

Hans Grosse is kind of an odd boss fight. Even assuming you're doing pistol starts, there's a secret weapon cache off to the side of the main area. You're always going to be at 100% unless you ignore them for some reason. In order to fight him, you basically have to go right up to him, since he's behind a closed door. He seems to have no pain state and shreds you in a few shots, but at the very least, if you do hit him, he doesn't take that many bullets to take out. There's enough cover that this isn't a problem, but it does come off as underwhelming.

The PC-98 version is nothing special. It's Wolfenstein 3D in Japanese, you already know if you wanted that or not before I even opened my mouth.

Acorn Archimedes:
I'd just like to point out that this is an Archimedes title, at least the first release and won't work in the later RISC machines. Since the whole line of computers gets lumped together, because sometimes Archimedes titles will work on RISC machines. It was also published by Powerslave, which is a bit amusing in retrospect.

Right from the get-go, this version is very different from DOS. There's a James Bond-esque intro I've never seen before, then the opening music has very different instrumentation from the DOS version. There is also a horrendous amount of loading. The version I got running for the A3000 range, because the other rip kept failing, required three disk changes before the title screen even loaded. Talk about encouraging a HD install.

I will note that this has a few errors I still couldn't work around. For instance, the sound is really, really low. Even on the lowest volume for music it still drowns it out. There's no way to change the sound volume. The second is that BJ turns really slowly for some reason. This makes the game a lot harder than it should be.

The whole thing is subtly different. I'm sure this is all just necessary color choices for the system and some weird issues that nobody notices because why play Wolfenstein 3D on an Archimedes? It all feels like the setup to a creepypasta, but I'm just going through something that's been practically lost in the shuffle of much better ports and systems. Just gotta be careful when I'm done and turn down the volume or else hyperrealistic blood is going to pour out of my ears. Despite the errors, I think that this strangeness makes this an interesting port.

Operation: Eisenfaust doesn't change much about the overall gameplay, except now there are silent mutants. Not just the now soft-spoken characters of this game, but they only have shooting and dying sounds. This level just drops you in on them, go the wrong way at the start and you end up fighting four guarding the exit. So the second time I end up fighting two guarding a secret with the gatling gun.

The music in this version, combined with all the changes, makes this a strange experience. The music here is more of a dirge than the usual Adlib-esque stuff. Imagine wandering around a castle floor without the cheery Adlib soundtrack, but instead a funeral dirge. It's a strange change. It feels appropriate, somehow, given the slower movement.

Floor 10, which once again is reached from the first floor, come on, is one of those levels where there isn't that much "real" level and instead there's just a ton of secret stuff. Secrets within secrets. It's a cool thing, even if I would like there to be a different color wall once in a while.

Wolfenstein 3D, as only the Acorn Archimedes can depict it.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room. This version is ready to crash at the drop of a hat. Hit F1 in gameplay and you're liable to crash the game. Play more than one level a session, crash. If you saved after going through two? Save file is corrupted, but it will let you continue. At first, then I had to look up how to levelskip in this version...which still didn't work. I'm not sure where along the way this error is occurring, emulation, disk rips or the files themselves, but this is apparently a known problem with some user levelsets in this version.

Floor 2 is where the game goes a bit off the rails. Because the game's corruption recovery system is to just dump you in a level as if you just started on that level, I'm pistol starting against some mutants. Who are very difficult to take out with the pistol. I go one way, get worn down because there's no health, I go the other, likewise. On my third attempt, I find a room leading to a nice big secret area.

Except it keeps going, and going. Another big room with secrets within secrets, okay. It has regular enemies and enough supplies, so it strikes me as weird...until I eventually get a key. That can be a cool idea, but something feels off about this. Then I find the door and reach the elevator down. The game which was supposed to be beatable without finding a secret wall has already broken that room. At least said secret is obvious, but it feels dirty.

Floor 3 consistently crashes the game whenever I fire it up, and the level skip code isn't working, so I have to play the entire episode in one session. Oh, good. This has some odd enemy behavior, apparently there are four guys in a crossroad near the start, and none of them are programmed to go after you before seeing you, even as you gun down their compatriots.

Floor 4 violates another general design flaw, enemies right when you start the level, rendering a save at the start useless. This one's really bad because it's a mutant right on top of you and there are at least six around the area when you start. This version is already tense because you can't be too sure you haven't activated more enemies than you want and you do not turn around well. I died, which made this even worse. Not worse in a bad sense, but worse in a difficult sense. I am digging this, even if it seems like it wouldn't be the same.

That said, this level doesn't seem to have any MP-40s or gatling guns lying around, the only thing before the end seems to be a random SS soldier in an easily missable room. I cheated, but it takes some skill to beat this on a pistol start considering there's easily dozens of mutants on this level. Multiple mutants and a pistol is a good way to die. I did, however, miss most of the secrets and I bypassed this by just using one of the two cheats available to me...a full supplies one. Not even a reduce health cheat works, only full supplies and no clip, for some strange reason.

The slow turning combined with this episode's love of making enemies hide in niches creates an interesting play through the game. It's not quite stealth or even a more tactical approach, more like a very careful one. Slowly approach the niche from such a way that you don't get shot in the back from another on the other side, or go into open view of both, and then back up. It's not like, say, a side-scroller where an enemy on the other side would just keep firing at you while you couldn't get in without getting shot.
 

Floor 6 is much like floor 4, and once again I end up getting caught in this trap. Enemies at the start, die, then give myself full supplies. Even if I weren't afraid that a random crash would cause me to lose this playthrough, I would find this incredibly annoying. This floor is actually bad in general too, because in order to advance, you have to find a key in a maze which, is easy to skip over because it looks like some small niche. Not a secret, just a niche. This isn't just an annoying maze, no, this is the kind of maze you can easily find yourself lost in. Also, it throws two level exit doors at you at the end, one of which contains mutants.

Floor 7 starts off strangely. Small area, a locked door right away with a key in a nearby room and then the exit. On a normal level? Okay, this is obviously a trap. That's what this episode has been about, trapping the player in bullcrap they couldn't possibly avoid. Haha, well, I noticed the last level, I'm going to find the secret which allows me to go around this.

And I do...it's an actual level. No sign of the fake exit leading to a trap though. Eventually ending up in another area which looks like the last level and has quite a few Nazi corpses. Considering this version, it feels cursed. Very, very, cursed...and it's just an area with a few orbs and some mutants...the actual exit was right all along. Huh.

Floor 8 has the infamous Aardwolf maze. Without knowing that this thing is a contest, I wonder what people thought of this? Did they think there was some awesome treasure hidden in it? Did they find one of the Hans Grosses hidden inside and then give up? Or just give up a few moments in. This version keeps the Aardwolf sign in, which is amusing considering that not only is this a later version of the game, it's the second on this system. Nor does Apogee have anything to do here. You might have zero context for what's going on here.

That said, there's also the moderately amusing section near the end. After you've gotten the final key, it opens two doors. One leads to the exit, the other is just a room full of mutants, guarding some meals and ammo. Not really needed, just an amusing thing. 

Finally, the boss level. Two secrets, one with a lot of ammo and a gatling gun, the other with a lot of health items. The boss, Dr. Schabbs, has a few mutants before you meet him. He, himself, however, is easier than other bosses. He still has the same problem where you don't know if you're hitting him, but he's throws easy to dodge items at you. I'm only really in danger if I press ctrl+alt and left or right together.

I would recommend this for players more familiar with the game interested in playing a cursed version of the game. We really don't get subtly wrong versions of games like this. You're not coming into this expecting anything you normally would from Wolfenstein 3D. Anyone else should avoid it.

Wolf4SDL:
I was going to talk about the 30th Anniversary upgrade/levelset, but what I didn't realize going in was that it added in weapons to the base game. Not actually sure what this did going in, but after playing it, it seems to be a simple enough Windows port. It runs smoothly enough, and seems to be doing a vanilla-type deal. Against it, I couldn't alt-tab out of it or run it in a windowed mode. (I am looking up things if I can't find the way out, but that's only happened once, along with which levels lead to the secret ones) 

 

Die, Fuhrer, Die adds in officers, but for the most part I haven't got much to say about it. Nothing for a while is getting on my nerves, and secrets, while I'm not getting 100%, are reasonable. It's actually my favorite episode so far, outside of this port giving me motion sickness. Might be because I'm playing Wolfenstein 3D in relatively high resolution, compared to the past two, which I ran windowed. Something optimized for 320x200 isn't going to look that good at 1900x1080. Suffice to say, I would not recommend this version. 

There's persistent sort of trap these early levels are doing, you'll get guards and a few officers alerted as normal when you fire, but SS will just hang around. Waiting for you. Not bad, a bit good actually, if you weren't careful like I am, you'd get caught off-guard easily. But for the most part, I don't really have anything noteworthy to say up until floor 4.

Remember how Episode 2 broke the whole "no secrets required to progress" bit of information? Episode 3 breaks it too, but in a really strange way. After getting the second key, you end up at a pushwall. I don't understand the propose of either of these when just making it obvious enough that you should try it. There was no point in making either of these secrets, but this is just silly. 

Floor 5 isn't really odd, but it does highlight how difficult some sections can be if you don't find a gatling gun. Officers are regularly kicking my butt, I'm not being quick enough on the draw to get out of the way of them when they're behind a door. Out in the open, eh, I can handle those. Usually, but here they're coming in multiple numbers among groups of enemies that I'm starting to get overwhelmed.
 

Floor 6 was actually really fun. A lot of tense moments. The area around the start has three doors, so you know you aren't finding a secret there. Near there, however, is a room with pillars, always fun, but the game is just nasty enough to let you fret over it without there being a real threat...until you open fire. Then the officers become alert. There's a way behind them, of course.

Then there's the maze, a endless series of blue steel walls, which I didn't take any screenshots of. Another one of those things that feels like it would be really annoying to deal with in real life. I got damaged by a random officer, so this was a very tense experience. Constantly going through corners, hoping not to find anything tougher than a guard...and getting my wish at the end. I know at some point someone tried to push all the walls in this maze, only to be rewarded with nothing. (I looked it up afterwards, I was curious) At the end, there's a beautiful set of treasure, gatling gun, full heal and a key. Naturally, if you just rush in, you'll get shot by the two officers in niches on the entrance. I was smart...then got shot by a random officer in a later area. Also, if you go through an area full of blue walls then look at an area full of red ones, it hurts your eyes.

Floor 7 has nothing too out of the ordinary in the regular level. A nice big area with a few dudes, some of which would give you trouble if you pistol started. But this is the path to the secret level, and the secret level is at the end of a long maze. As in, so long that after a while I stopped checking corners for hostiles and kept returning to the start. I checked a map online just to make sure I wasn't supposed to be looking for a secret. There isn't one, you just have to go far enough to reach a treasure room. There is the secret exit.

Floor 10 is Pac-Man in Wolfenstein 3D. Regular dots are chalices, while power pellets are orbs. It's a clever idea, but because the ghosts here are dumb and straight-forward, they clump up together soon enough. The real threat are the regular Wolfenstein enemies you might not expect to be at a random area off to the side. I kind of wish more games would have neat little secrets like this.

Floor 8 starts off with a blank room. If you guessed there's another pushwall you have to press to get out of here, you'd be correct. It's also a bit odd in that, you can make it 90% of the way to the end without ever realizing it. It's only a second locked door that prevents you from going straight to it. Just one of those usual oddities about this game.

Then we get our boss floor against Adolf Hitler. This isn't just a straight shot and then fight against a boss, it's a series of fights against mini-bosses combined with regular enemies. Before you can fight the man himself, you have to take care of floating Hitlers who shoot fireballs. It's unnerving, really. In an era where killing Hitler is a joke, a game where you keep killing him and keeping finding another one would come off as mockery. Yet here's the game that inspired that, and it isn't even a joke. 

Hitler himself is in a mecha suit and has a few officers around so you don't get complacent. By this point, I had pretty low health, but I managed to survive after having found a bunch of medikits in a big niche. Hitler has two gatling guns, so the convenient cover is how you'll avoid getting shot. As with all bosses, it's just a matter of hoping you haven't been missing.

There's not anything wrong with Wolf4SDL, but it just feels like an awkward between point. It isn't vanilla and it doesn't add in anything fancy like ECWolf or LZWolf. It's just sort of there, making me dizzy because BJ is turning around like a top.

LZWolf:
Now we have an automap and a windowed mode. The speed of BJ is now down to manageable levels and I'm not in danger of getting dizzy from spinning around too much. There's a whole bunch of other stuff added in, but this doesn't really apply to base Wolfenstein. I was going to play the GBA port, but lacked music and looked very bad. This from a system with a decent port of Doom, considering the hardware.

A Dark Secret begins the Nocturnal Missions, which are a prelude to the whole mutant business we just dealt with. There's nothing you can really do to the Axis in a WWII game once you've killed Hitler. Nobody cares about Mussolini and there's no real central figure in Japan to point at and say he deserves a horrific fictional death for his crimes against humanity. Individual crimes, sure, but not for the whole shebang.

Also, this is a plot to stop the Nazis from unleashing chemical weapons on the Allies, which goes to show that the boys at ID probably did five minutes of research, and all of those were spent looking up a picture of Hitler. Come to think of it, it's really odd that most of the treasure looks like it was looted from a Church. I'm not saying they didn't loot from Christians, but I am saying that maybe this loot should look a bit more Jewish? Since it was probably stolen from Jews?

Floor 1 is both typical and not so. It starts off modestly and typical enough, but it also turns into a quite typical later level. In many senses, it's the best opener so far. That said, I did get quite the nasty surprise, if an officer is just hanging out in a corner in a room you're about to enter, he will be able to shoot you before you see him.

Floor 2 is this big hallway around a central area, which despite it's relatively common premise, is a cool idea. Even if you end up shooting one guard then alerting what could be dozens. Lots of little cool ideas here, I like how for once I could be the guy shooting from behind the pillars at a bunch of unsuspecting rubes. There's also this one secret which seems not to lead anywhere, but based on past experience, I strongly suspect would have screwed me out of a secret I missed anyway.

Floor 3 is annoying. Not because there's anything wrong with it, plenty of ammo and health, normal numbers of enemies. It's annoying because there are basically no secrets. As I've said, I've been looking up where the secret levels are so I don't miss them, and this level is annoying in that there are two pushwalls. One which just allows you to ambush someone, the other is in a maze at the end.

Floor 10 is a giant series of one-block walls filled with treasure and officers. The idea, in theory, is that you can avoid the officers by going by areas with blood on the walls. In theory, eventually it just sort of puts you somewhere with no way to the exit. Another idea is that there's a secret near the start, complete with ammo, that you can hole up in as you take what is likely a hundred officers. I couldn't do that, so I just booked it for the one door and tried not to get shot.

Floor 4 has this weird set of hallways with dozens of pictures of Hitler on the wall and officers who ignore you shooting. Not a special level otherwise, but it is an unusual sight, even in a game full of unusual sights.

Floor 5 is by far the most annoying yet. Mazey, full of places where you can't easily deal with any ambushers, and worst of all, the keys are annoying to find. One of the keys is in a secret, which I did try for considering that I didn't have a gatling gun yet, but still. The other is in the usual small room you can accidentally overlook. This feels like a microcosm of everything wrong with Wolfenstein 3D-style level design, even if I liked the fake exits in theory.

Floor 8 breaks that by making worse behaviors that have been going on for a while. Officers, once in a while, are clever little guys who force you to consider each room carefully. Officers, as they've been used in these past few levels, have become something the game spams to the point that every room has become a chore to clean out.

Floor 9, rather than having the health and ammo troves in a secret, has them in locked doors. The keys are next to what can be described as a trap room, enter, and a dozen SS and officers start fighting you. The General, Otto something or another, shoots rockets at you and is comparatively easy compared to everything that has come before.

LZWolf was fine, but I'm really starting to feel this game's playtime. You can tell that they're starting to run out of good ideas and are just sort of filling out a whooping sixty levels of game. What I complained about at the start, mazey levels and secrets which force you to walk along every wall, are out in force here. We'll see if the next episode does any better.

ECWolf:
From what I can tell, almost exactly the same as LZWolf. Unlike LZWolf, it's still being updated.

Trail of the Madman starts us off with a new music track. Feels like most of the last two episodes have been the same old music from the first two episodes. This level is intentionally harder than previous openers, there are no health items until near the end, and there are certainly none hiding in secrets that I missed. This, combined with a number of harder enemies caused me to have to restart a couple times.

Floor 2 however, bucks the previous trend. On one door from the starting area is a series of barrels holding bad a horde of SS. Approach, and get slaughtered. Clearly, there's a secret somewhere which will allow me to enter there and take them out safer. So I cleared out the rest of the map, searching for any secrets...and finding nothing that leads behind the area before the exit. So, despite it all, I shot my way through this pressure point and somehow managed to take it. Complete victory on this level.

After two floors of what can only be described as simple, easy to play through levels with no real annoyances, Floor 5 throws out a half dozen guards at the starting point. After this, there's a definite "just throw a bunch of guys in a room" style to the level. Oddly, the map function screwed me a bit here when I was looking for the secret exit, it's on the far west side of the map, and I incorrectly assumed that there was nothing there.

Floor 10 is almost entirely unremarkable for a secret level. It's a series of long, snaking corridors full of treasure, with your only health being at the start and at two rooms in the middle of two corridors. One of which is the level exit. Surprisingly tricky, not really that unusual.

Floor 6 highlights one of the more unusual aspects of the game. Sometimes the game is set up so that enemies behind doors can hear your shots, and you spend a significant chunk of the level wondering if you're about to fight some guy who got alerted right at the start. Nice level for it though, tons of doors, so unless you block off every door, you shouldn't get blindsided. I also dig the big "outside"-esque hallway this has at the start.

I more or less cruise through the rest of the levels until the boss level. Even that is more odd than anything else. There's seemingly no secrets here, no machine guns save for a MP-40 you can get off a SS's corpse. The boss is Greta Grosse, Hans sister. She is almost exactly the same as him, except she's a woman. This arena provides plenty of cover and she's no trouble. The surprising real threat here is a surprise group of officers and SS just past the door she's guarding.

I've run out of patience for the game at this point, and won't be going through Episode 6. I know I'm missing out on what might just be the best secret level of the bunch, but I'm tired of seeing these walls and these guys and I'm ready to call it quits. Based on past experience, it'll either be more of the same or the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Now, contrary to what I thought, I hated the worst of it less than I thought I would going in, even if this is clearly going for quantity over quality. While I dislike how badly some levels can end up, there are few games that just let you blow away a dozen enemies with a machine gun so easily. With that, to the rating.

Weapons:
Very simple, either knife or chose how fast you shoot bullets. 2

Enemies:
Deceptively simple, surprisingly clever. 4

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
There are too many of these. Some are interesting, some are very annoying, but most of them just don't stick in the mind for very long. 4

Player Agency:
Despite the widely varying movement speeds, I think the whole package worked well, so long as you don't end up slowly turning around or moving around like the Flash. The controls are otherwise simple and functional enough that there's nothing to really complain about. 6

Interactivity:
Basic use cases, walls and secrets. 1

Atmosphere:
In development, this game was intended to be a stealth game, and even in the finished product you can see it. It doesn't quite know if it wants to be serious and creepy, wacky or vaguely realistic and I think it suffers on that front. 3

Graphics:
Everything sort of works, except the way you move tends to make it all look very weird. Also, could use some more animation. 4

Story:
End of level text walls which sort of tie the gameplay together. 1

Sound/Music:
The sound effects are fine, though I do find there's an issue when enemies are first alerted. That said, the music is...okay. After a while it got on my nerves though. 4

That's 29, 2 points less than what I originally gave it. This time around I actually gave controls and levels more points, it was less in atmosphere and the audio-visual departments that caused the change.

I know I'm crapping on something that's a nostalgic memory and formative experience for many and retroactive first FPS for many others, but I think this causes us to ignore the game's flaws way too much and hype it up far more than it deserves. Did it create a template that a significant number of games tried to imitate? Yes. But it did not invent anything and compared to many of its contemporaries, lacks in some regards.

There's an anecdote about ID Software meeting Ken Williams of Sierra to sell this game to them, so they could get out of their Softdisk contract. Ken liked it, but offered less than what they wanted. When they complained, he showed them Red Baron, and ID Software walked. In retrospect, Williams made the wrong choice, but without the importance placed upon Wolfenstein, this is not quite the easy choice it seems.

1992 is almost done, I really only have Spear of Destiny left, but I think it'll be a bit before I feel up to that. Pulling a game out of my hat, I got Electro Man, also known as Electro Body, one of the weirder side-scrollers that Epic published in olden times.

Alien Sector (1985)

Name:Alien Sector AKA Baraduke
Number:254
Year:1985
Publisher:Namco
Developer:Namco
Genre:Side-Scrolling Shooter
Difficulty:5/5
Time:50 minutes
Won:No (113W/83L)

Putting Wolfenstein 3D off for a week owing to it being at an awkward length where I can't really finish it in one but can't stretch it out to two. Here's something quick and dirty in Namco's Alien Sector, also known as Baraduke, one of Namco's lesser known franchises. I've seen a lot of comparisons to Metroid, but this seems to have less to do with the actual gameplay and more because they both star female leads who are hidden behind power armor, and echo the sort of thing that would appear in Aliens.

When you place it like that, it looks ominous.

This is all the plot you're getting. You're some gal in a spacesuit, now shoot aliens who are holding Pac-Man-like creatures hostage for some reason. From what I can gather we're supposed to be protecting the Pac-Man creatures from other aliens, but why is something of a mystery.

Controls are quite simple. Kissy moves like your typical side-scroller protagonist, except she has a jetpack. She moves left and right, slowly falls to the ground when applicable, and when you press up, she goes up. Pressing down increases your downward momentum, but not aggressively so. You move smoothly, but not too fast.

A typical sequence. The blue enemies are the ones you have to primarily take out.

Shooting is also straight-forward. You fire, you get knocked back. There is no aiming the gun beyond general left/right aiming. There are various power-ups which increase the power, but these are rare. I think, it appears so seldom and has such little effect it might do something else. For most of the game, you're going to have the same thing, which only allows two shots on-screen.

Each level is simple. There are a number of monsters with giant eyes. Your goal is to shoot them until they explode. When they're alert, they spawn smaller, weaker enemies. They also shoot at you. Some of them have a sort of chair, which means you can't shoot them from that side.

Some pods, along with an evil version of the PC.

Taking them out creates a spherical pod. Go over it, and something will pop out. Maybe it's one of those gun power-ups, but more likely, it's either going to be a gem, a strange Pac-Man-like monster, or a little friendly alien. These come in two varities, ones who run away or run towards you. You should always grab them, they're always helpful. Sometimes even absolutely necessary to progress.

As you stay in a level more and more, more things start appearing. Enemies dropping down from the ceiling or from the sides and shots just popping out of nowhere. The thing is, this tends to start way, way too quickly. To the point that you get seconds to look at a level before it starts happening. It's easy to end up in an endless loop until you run out of shields and die.

There's a wide variety of these things, ranging from the mundane to very oddball. A lot of variety is in the amount of enemies that seem to pop up as you try to get through a level. A considerable number of these fall into the category of enemies which seem like they can't be killed. Either because they don't get damage frames, or because they can only be hurt on one side.

A reasonable and balanced game of roulette from a later stage.

Whenever you finish a level, you get this roulette-like mini-game. As you pick up friendly aliens, more slots fill up with shields up. As you get more shields, more slots get filled with shields down. Hit a shields up and all the friendly aliens are taken from your inventory. Hit a shields down or nothing, and they remain. While it is possible to avoid most attacks, the game is throwing enough stuff at you that you need those extra shields. It's not that hard to get it roughly where you want, which is somewhat helpful.

One of the harder bosses, despite the seeming simpleness of it.

Every five or so stages is a boss stage. You should keep some of the friendlies for this, because they automatically pop out of your inventory and hurl themselves at the boss, stunning them for a time. For some bosses, this isn't really necessary, since hitting the weak spot (Eyes, always eyes) is simple enough. For others, it's hard to tell if you're doing it right. I've never actually lost a boss fight, so even the hardest must have something simple about them.

Normally, when I play these arcade games, I feel like even if I'm not very good at it, there's a path to where I could be good at it. Maybe I just don't want to spend the time, maybe I'm just not good at what the game wants. Not here, not at all. This is just straight-up a matter of luck. Unless you're being fed the answers ahead of time, you're going to have to guess on which direction is the right one to go, or if some enemies are even killable at all. They are, but it doesn't feel that way a lot of the time.

One of said chokepoints, sure, you can take out the guys at the top, but you'll still have to land to further aside of the blue guys, all while more enemies spawn in.

There are a lot of sections where whether or not you can get through them seems like luck. The enemies are in perfect chokepoints where you get unlucky with enemy placement, like the game spawns in a guy who jumps around and shoots like you do, there's no winning that level without a generous helping of luck. Something which is not going to be in your favor for very long.

It doesn't help that while the game is generous with your ability to move and your hitbox, there is no mercy otherwise. Enemies only hurt you once while they're touching you...technically. It's very easy for enemies to combo you, simply because of how much stuff is on-screen most of the time. Winning is all about not getting into a situation where stuff is on-screen, a losing proposition most of the time.

This is not a fun game. This is all the unfun parts of a hostage situation without any cathartic shooting of the hostage takers. Because there might be a hostage inside the taker, or there might be another enemy. I feel like I'm playing a weird game of SWAT without any of the things that make SWAT fun. Even recounting it leaves my head aching and feeling like mush. I eventually just gave up on one of these sections at about the 24th level. I strongly suspect I'm not missing much.

Weapons:
A basic gun, with power-ups that do nothing distinguishable. 1

Enemies:
A variety of creatures which appear too often, but do present interesting situations in which to deal with them. 3

Non-Enemies:
The little friendly aliens add a bit of depth to what is otherwise a mundane game. 1

Levels:
Very basic stuff. Some levels are effortless, others are slogs, and there's little in-between. 1

Player Agency:
Could have really used some aiming, but what we get works. 4

Interactivity:
None.

Atmosphere:
Actively unfun. 0

Graphics:
Nice-look sprites, but too little variation and not much animation. 3

Story:
Too sparse even for an arcade game. 0

Sound/Music:
You can tell what everything is, but there's a soft, wateriness to each sound which makes it annoying. Getting damaged is the worst, because you get hit and a harp sound plays. Like someone randomly playing strings. As you get damaged, there's a background noise. It's supposed to be a heartbeat, but it sounds more like a set of leaky pipes. 2

Taking 2 points off, we get 13.

As I said in the start, there are a lot of comparisons of this to Metroid, and I'll echo my opening statement. There's nothing beyond the lead being a woman who you don't find out is a woman until the end. It's a bit weird seeing people talk about this game, since they're trying really hard to oversell this as something interesting, when it really isn't. I'm no Metroid superfan, I just really like the Prime series, but even the original, which I can't stand, is leagues above this.

Next time really will be Wolfenstein 3D again.

TerraHawks (1984)

One of three things which could be called a title screen. None of them have anything to do with the show's logo.

Name:TerraHawks
Number:253
Year:1984
Publisher:CRL Group
Developer:Richard M. Taylor
Genre:Flight Simulation
Difficulty:4/5
Time:1 hour 30 minutes
Won:No (113W/82L)

Gerry Anderson is a figure I'm sure is known to many British people of a certain age, and many more outside of that. Responsible for Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet, series so popular once upon a time, that it was internationally popular. To the point that they likely ensured that puppetry survived as a medium much longer than it really should have. I don't think I've ever seen any of his puppetry stuff, I've seen a few episodes of UFO and Space: 1999. Very nice miniature work, but I wasn't really interested enough to continue watching.

TerraHawks is his last puppet show, albeit not the marionette-style he used before, instead a Muppet-style design. Never saw it, probably won't. It follows the usual format of his children's shows, a crack team of humanity's best face off against an extraterrestrial invasion force. In this case, the titular TerraHawks, led by Doctor Ninestein, so named because he's the ninth clone of a Doctor Stein. The invasion force are a group of robots who rebelled against their former creators and are now plotting to take over the Earth. Why is probably one of those things they couldn't mention in a children's show.

It's this sort of thing that despite not liking anything I've seen from Anderson, that I have to respect him on. He'll make a show out of some subject that rarely gets touched on outside of literature and commit to it. The robots think they're the good guys, not evil, even though they likely destroyed their old planet. C.S. Lewis once said that the worst tyrant was the one who mistook his own cruelty for the voice of Heaven. He was talking about a theocracy, but is a machine who mistakes his own conclusion for an objective good any better?

But it's 1984, and the work of licensed video games was usually given to developers with little interest in the subject matter and little ability to realize it well. None of the subtext matters. In fact, none of what I just wrote matters at all. There is nothing connecting this to the show beyond the name. This is, pure and simple, an attempt at exploiting British children for their hard-earned pounds.

I realize it's an old complaint about licensed titles. They tend to suck, but let's be honest, by having that license they have a higher standard than some random crap we haven't heard of. We have expectations. SkyRaven 2077 has no expectations. TerraHawks has some expectations. Namely, that at some point, we will be shooting at the bad guys of the show as one of the heroes from the show.

The manual, at least what World of Spectrum has as the manual, describes this as a pilot training program. This simulates a world within a revolving black hole. "The most demanding environment for a spaceship Commander known to the Universe." Fair enough, in theory. A lot of games have the veneer of being a training program, some of them are really fun and interesting. However, at no point does the manual mention anything that actually ties it into the TerraHawks universe behind just the name of the show.

The people behind this were a lot more proud than they should have been.

The game has a slick and well-designed menu system, which I normally wouldn't bring up, except that this is fairly well implemented for the era. You don't need the manual for the controls, you just need it to explain how to play the game. There's also a 2 player mode...testing the theory that all games are better with friends.

This is the game, baby.

Starting a new game, you are greeted by a space warp. This is just here for flavor, because after a half a minute, you're in the game. Flying across hordes of monoliths, as the manual describes them. What are you doing? Trying to find a series of arches to go to the next stratum. What's stopping you? Monoliths and your fuel supply. It's less ragged fight against a superior alien force and more a really odd adaptation of one of H.P. Lovecraft's stories about endless giant stone towers.

To start with, you can move up and down with 1 and Q, Q goes up, 1 goes down. Reversed Y-axis, no option to change it. 9 and 0 turn. Movement is strange, there's no speed control. You get a little icon telling you whether you're pointing up or down, in addition to to the height number going up or down. (And the monoliths slowly getting taller) But the game has a bigger variation on where you're going than it actually shows, as you can be going up or down even when you think you're level.

A set of monoliths in the distance.

Turning is also strange. Tap and you'll barely move, hold it down and you'll get a small delay, then a reasonable amount of movement, before it stops a moment. It'll continue, but it's something you have to work around when you're about to crash into a monolith. It's not the smoothest system, but I said strange, not unworkable. My problems do not lie with how you move, though this could be because you don't actually fight against anything.

You can shoot with enter. There's an ammo count in the lower right, near the time you've spent in the level and your score. All you do is shoot monoliths if they're in your way. Your beams are oddly stuck to where you are, shoot then turn and you shoot what you turned to. In a sense you can exploit it, but it's simpler to either shoot or turn, not turn then shoot. We're not exactly dealing with a complex game.

The objective is to find a series of arches to go to the next stratum. To do this, you rely on your rangefinder and when you're very close by, the radar. These tools are less helpful than they should be, because they work slightly less well than they should. The radar only works when you're within an extremely short range, and it isn't obvious right away that it doesn't turn like you do, it stays still.

But the rangefinder is weird, and didn't exactly work the way I expected. You're supposed to turn until you get a green light, then you start getting closer. Before I hit on the manual, I figured out that one way or another the rangefinder works for that, but went the wrong way. I thought that as the bar gets higher, you get closer, but it actually gets lower as you get closer. I suppose it makes sense, since it goes the same way as you lose fuel, but I expected it to be colored in.

It does look more like a tunnel, but this is your destination.

Once you get there, it's tricky to actually enter the arches. They're very low to the ground, something I underestimated. The first time I made it to one, I crashed into the ground. It's very easy to crash. The area around the arches isn't clear, either when you enter or you exit, so buildings could be around it.

And that's the game. There are nine stratums, at the ninth you can apparently fly into the black hole to go out into space. I made it as far as the fourth, there's no real change in these things as you go along. Once you've gone through one vortex, that's about it for the game's content. You just go on until you run out of fuel. I have no idea if fuel refills when you go through a vortex, I used a cheat someone made, wasn't risking that. The manual only mentions an additional shield every time you go through one, ammo is limited to the entire game.

There's no real world here, just endless monoliths. Sometimes a row of them appear, which is cool to see, but I'm pretty sure that this is all randomized. Even if it isn't, you're still looking at the same thing for hours, while a low droning sound plays in the background. What's worse is that I'm pretty sure that some monoliths are moving forward at a different rate than other monoliths. Which again brings to mind certain parts of Lovecraft's work, but I doubt this is intentional.

For some reason, there's an autopilot feature, as if what this game needed was taking more stuff away from the player. You go to the height and direction you want to be in, then press M. Whenever you have to turn around to avoid some monoliths, you press A to turn back to that direction and height. The thing is, where the light is green is not always consistent and you can always just...turn around to where it is. It's just there, it doesn't add anything, it's just another thing you can do.

Weapons:
Standard laser. 1

Enemies:
Behold, stone pillars! True terror! 0

Non-Enemies:
None.

Levels:
Endless monoliths most mundane. 1

Player Agency:
It works, but in such a way that it feels slightly off for the whole thing. 3

Interactivity:
I guess breaking stone pillars by shooting them counts. 1

Atmosphere:
There is something profoundly weird about this game that prevents me from entirely writing it off, I'll give it that. 1

Graphics:
It's kind of neat how many monoliths can be on-screen and in how many differing configurations, but sometimes you can get confused as to what is the monolith and what isn't. 1

Story:
This doesn't even have anything to do with what it's supposed to be licensed from! 0

Sound/Music:
Some occasional sound effects, then a low droning noise for background. 1

That's 9.

Normally, I wouldn't just play something like this, but it was the third game I tried to play this week and frankly, what it was doing felt offensive to me. There are a ton of licensed games which are bad, sure, but a lot are either generic action games which imitate something better or come out a bit janky in how they adapted the license. They might not be good, but they're trying on some level. This isn't trying, someone just took a completely different game and slapped another name on it. If I was a British schoolkid in the 1980s, I'd be angry.

Now, this isn't necessarily a bad idea for a game. I enjoyed it, but then, I'm coming from the position of someone who isn't paying for the name. The concept of having to chose whether to fly higher or lower for different benefits is a solid mechanic. It's an idea that could be improved upon in a game that isn't adapting a television show where I'm expecting epic space shootouts. Lovecraftian flight simulation would be a cool idea for a game.

Last week, I promised a Mobile Suit Gundam game, namely, Mobile Suit Gundam - Jet Stream Attack, a game published by Bandai themselves on the PC-88 and the FM-7. After about fifteen minutes of trying to figure out how the game works, I eventually quit. It's one of those space games where you get a big sector map where you go to where conflicts are. The problem is, I couldn't figure out how to actually fight anything, and just kept dying when a red dot touched me on the radar. I pressed every button on the keyboard and all I ever got was a strange status screen. Only enter did something there, and that was just closing it.

There was also going to be a Apple II game called Space Ark, but I also couldn't find a manual and while I figured out the controls, I couldn't really figure out how to do anything. With these two cut out, and this game out of the way, this actually puts 1984 down to 9 games, which means soon I'll be done.

Next time, it's a return to Wolfenstein 3D...in some form or another.