Wolfenstein
Alternate history WWII series featuring Nazi occult and sci-fi.
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Wolfenstein is a series of alternate history World War II video games originally developed by Muse Software. The majority of the games follow American Army captain William "B.J." Blazkowicz as he fights the Axis powers, with earlier titles focusing on Nazi occult experiments and later games set after the Nazis use science fiction technologies to win the war. The series helped popularize the first-person shooter genre beginning with id Software's Wolfenstein 3D.
History
Castle Wolfenstein was developed by programmer Silas Warner, along with Dale Gray and George Varndell, and published in 1981 by M.U.S.E. Inc., later known as Muse Software. Warner conceived the game after watching the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone and playing the arcade game Berzerk; he considered replacing Berzerk's robots with Nazis but changed the objective from killing enemies to escaping the castle. The game is often credited as one of the first stealth video games, focusing on avoiding or disarming guards rather than killing them, and was the first computer game to feature digitized speech.
Muse Software released a sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, in 1984 before the company legally disestablished on October 7, 1987. In November 1991, id Software—founded by John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack—planned their next major game after finishing a contract with Softdisk. Romero proposed a 3D remake of Castle Wolfenstein, and the team gravitated to the idea because they had all enjoyed the original; they found the trademark had lapsed by 1986.
Games
Castle Wolfenstein, the inaugural game in the franchise, was developed and published by M.U.S.E. Inc. in 1981. It is a stealth-adventure game set during World War II in which the player controls an unnamed American prisoner of war who steals German files containing secret war plans, with the main goal of escaping the Nazi stronghold while avoiding, disarming, or killing guards. Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, the second and final title from Muse Software, was released in 1984; its objective is to traverse a Berlin bunker where Hitler holds meetings, retrieve a bomb placed by operatives, and place it outside Hitler's meeting room, resembling the July 20 Plot.
After the original designer's death, his widow released a ported version and reconstructed source code in 2004. Wolfenstein 3D, developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software, marked the series' transition to the first-person shooter genre, which it helped popularize; the story follows B.J. Blazkowicz as he escapes imprisonment under Castle Wolfenstein and uncovers Operation Eisenfaust. Spear of Destiny, a stand-alone expansion pack developed by id Software and published by FormGen Corporation, is set before Wolfenstein 3D and tasks Blazkowicz with reclaiming the Spear of Destiny from the Nazis after it was stolen from Versailles; it had two expansion packs by FormGen: Return to Danger and Ultimate Challenge.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Wolfenstein (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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