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Castle Wolfenstein (1981)

The original game had many innovative features. Searching chests could give you more ammo or get you drunk on schnapps, reversing your controls and affecting your aim for a time.

The granddaddy of the series, the original game was developed by Muse Software. Much of the emphasis here involved stealth, with guards marching in set patterns, and you having only a few bullets to keep them at bay. This was not an easy game.

One of its more novel aspects was that it featured voice, a particularly rare thing at the time. Hearing the chilling yell of "SS!" as an SS guard entered the room was horrific enough -- even more so considering they were also wearing bulletproof vests. This was state-of-the-art stuff at the time. The manual even came with a translation table for the German in the game.

But it was innovative in several other ways as well. For example, if you had your gun drawn as you came up on a guard -- or even a dreaded SS officer -- they'd raise their arms and you could search them for goodies before shooting them. It was a tactic that would, nearly more than two decades later, become popular among Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell fans.

The dead also remained where they were, grim reminders of where you had been in case you got lost -- this proved handy since the rooms randomized themselves every time you started a new game.

Another useful tactic was to take away an SS guard's bulletproof vest and then let him have it. Of course, if another guard was in the room, they'd come over to investigate, which could easily spoil your fun. If you were lucky, you could stumble across a uniform for disguise, but the SS would usually see right through it.

The goal in Castle Wolfenstein was simply to escape, hopefully with the enemy's plans in hand, and scavenge what you could for those unexpected encounters. After escaping, you were granted a new "rank" in the game and got to do it all over again, only this time, the enemies were much harder.

At this point in the series, you wouldn't find any occultists waiting in the next room or mad scientists building mutants in the basement. That was to come....

Beyond Castle Wolfenstein (1984)
"Stop the fuhrer!"

In this follow-up, you had to sneak in and take out the fuhrer by bombing his conference room. No, you do not get to play as Tom Cruise.

The sequel boasted improved graphics and a few tweaks to the original gameplay, such as the use of passes that the guards would often request as proof that you weren't working for the Allied scum. Muse expanded the guards' spoken vocabulary, and they gave the player a knife that they could use to silently dispose of nosy goose steppers without alerting their friends. The game also featured an alarm system that would alert everyone to your presence and basically make it impossible to win. Stealth was key.

The moment of truth. Get those running shoes ready.

As if security wasn't enough, you had to first find the bomb and then locate the conference room. Once the bomb was set, you had a limited amount of time to escape before everyone was turned into sauerkraut. No pressure, right? At least there weren't any ghost Hitlers to deal with. You can watch a playthrough of this game on YouTube.

Wolfenstein 3D (1992)

id's revival of Wolfenstein proved to be a pivotal moment in the history of PC gaming.

Nearly a decade would pass before id would revolutionize PC gaming and kick open the first-person shooter floodgates with Wolfenstein 3D. Although Muse was gone, its fans were still very much around -- and apparentely many of them were at id.

At first, the game supposedly was going to make use of the stealthy elements that were part of the Muse originals -- such as silent kills and using uniforms -- until they were dropped in order to maintain the faster pace of the gameplay as well as keep the controls accessible on both the mouse and joystick.

Although id sacrificed those feature, it helped the end result to stand apart from the previous games in the series and come into its own as an FPS juggernaut superceded only by its successor, Doom, less than a year later. It also put id on the map as one of the founding fathers of the modern FPS.

Sliding metal doors, secret passages, and plenty of gory deaths, including spoken lines and Bobby Prince's soundtrack, kept up with all of the action. The game even had a death cam for whenever a boss was defeated, replaying their blood-soaked demise for your pleasure.

The reboot also introduced the occult and strange science to the Wolfenstein universe, including fireball-throwing Hitler ghosts and twisted mutants. The protagonist also got his own name: B.J. Blazkowicz.

The shareware distribution model that Wolfenstein 3D followed allowed players to sample the first 10-level episode, Escape from Castle Wolfenstein, whetting their appetites for the commercial package that they could purchase from Apogee, either via modem or mail order. On top of the first three episodes, the full version also included three more, each also at 10 levels apiece, offering up a plethora of Nazi-bashing action.

Hitler with dual miniguns. This is after you bust him out from the mechanized power suit he first uses to squash you with. Now you can see why his generals were so afraid to contradict him.

The game would also be a major hit among would-be designers. Self-made tools, such as WolfEdit and MapEdit, eventually made it out to the BBSes allowing others to edit and create levels of their own. The tools even allowed users to edit the 2D sprites, all of the graphics, and even the sounds.

Going frame by frame, you could work new animation, and even effects, into the game. Not enough blood? Time to use Windows Paint to make a few changes! Even today, you can find a community of active modders working on new stuff for the game.

Wolfenstein 3D also became a lightning rod of controversy. After all, this is a game whose sprites flaunt their swastikas on their flags and don't shirk from the fact that you're fighting to put a bullet through each and every one of them. The SNES port would be particularly notorious in sanitizing the game, removing references to Nazis and replacing the dogs in the game with rats.

This behavior wasn't too unusual at the time considering that several years earlier, the Japanese version of Bionic Commando for the NES was highly censored when it was ported to the States. Why? Because it made no bones in being about the resurrection of Hitler.

Hitler was resurrected as Master D when he came Stateside.

If you own a PS3 or an Xbox 360, you can now download Wolfenstein 3D and experience what this particular classic was like.

Spear of Destiny (1992)

Released a surprising four months later in September of the same year, Spear of Destiny's story served as a prequel to the series.

In this adventure, Blazkowicz is in serach of the Spear of Destiny, the weapon that had pierced the side of Christ while he was crucified on the Cross. Whoever holds the spear, it is said, will conquer the world, so the Allies take no chances and send their best man in to take it back. You know, just in case all that occult stuff happens to be real.

Most of the graphics and sound effects were the same -- it technically could be thought of as one long episode -- but it was also packed with bosses, especially at the end. Seizing the spear would allow the player to fight the last boss -- the Angel of Death -- and escape with the relic.

Depending on who you ask, this is believed to be the real Spear of Destiny, also known as the Hofburg spear, kept in the Schatzkammer of Vienna. It's also the version that Hitler took possession of during the Anschluss and which General Patton returned after WW2. As far as I know, it's safe for viewing...as long as you're not B.J. Blazkowicz.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001)

Historically accurate? Yeah, right. Fun? You betcha.

Nine years and a few engines later, id and Grey Matter teamed up for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Using the popular Quake 3 engine, RTCW continued the story of B.J. Blazkowicz, only this time with an even heavier helping of the supernatural, coupled with an incredible class-based multiplayer experience courtesy of Nerve Software.

It was a huge leap up from where the series had left off at both in terms of storytelling and technology, with perhaps the best flamethrower effects ever seen in a game at the time. It wasn't unusual to see players armed with the 'thrower in multiplayer try to create smiley faces in the air while waiting for something to happen before rushing forward into the opposing team and crisping them all in the doorway. Ahh, the memories.

The story took players on a whirlwind trip into the dark side of Nazi mysticism, as well as the superweapon research they were thought to be involved with by asking the question, "What if this were all true?" An X-Files with submachine guns and mutant bad guys, its fanciful take on the rumors surrounding the Third Reich's obsession with the occult proved to be as much fun as its predecessors in offering a very different take on WW2 as it secretly happened from the shadows. It was pretty heavy handed in this regard, something that wasn't quite what everyone had expected Wolfenstein to turn into (especially close to the end), but it was still a solid adventure.

The last boss in RTCW was a towering, undead German king named Heinrich I, likely based on the historical version of Henry the Fowler -- but you can bet he didn't look anything like this. At the end of RTCW, Blaskowicz has to kill Heinrich while SS head Heinrich Himmler watches from a distance, careful to avoid the exploding-head syndrome his boss had suffered from.

Activision later ported the game to other platforms, without the censorship, unless a particular region required it. The console versions included a new level, and the Xbox's multiplayer component was given a few tweaks. PS2 players, however, were left completely out of the MP picture.

Modders soon took to breaking down the game, especially those coming in from the Quake 3 crowd, often with tools initially intended for Quake modding. Because RTCW was essentially built using the same engine, it was only a matter of time before the tools could be modified to work with it, and soon custom maps started flooding in for multiplayer.

One of the more successful mods, Enemy Territory, was first expected to be released as an expansion for the game, but only the multiplayer would make it out as a free download that quickly become one of the most popular ways to play RTCW online. And just as with the original Wolfenstein 3D, you can still find an active community supporting the game with new skins and levels.

Wolfenstein RPG (2009)

A special version of Wolfenstein is available on the go.

id even came up with a mobile version of Wolfenstein, only this time, it's an RPG complete with experience points, round-by-round combat, an inventory for you to stuff discovered goods into, hidden items, and plenty of enemies. The grid-based movement is remiscent of old-school RPGs, such as Wizardry or The Bard's Tale. You can even bribe scientists -- or beat them down -- in order to force them to help out.

Even though this version has been sanitized of swastikas, it's not hard to guess who these guys are supposed to be or how much fun you can have by keeping a war in your pocket for when you feel the need to earn a few experience points. And of course, it wouldn't be Wolfenstein without flaming skeletons, supersoldiers, or enraged chickens.

Return to the Front...

And so now we've come full circle into another full-fledged adventure behind enemy lines as the series continues to dig up the dead. As a longtime fan, I'm looking forward to experiencing what weirdness Raven has put together for fans and newcomers alike later this month.