- Everyone knows Wolfenstein 3D made the FPS a phenomenon. What this mod presupposes is… what if it didn't? - 11 May 2026
Where your average modder looks at a videogame and asks themselves "what could I add to this experience," Isowulf creator LoGeKyl approached the classic Wolfenstein 3D with a slightly different perspective: "What if this was an entirely different, and worse, game entirely?".. Read more.
- FPS legend John Romero says Wolfenstein 3D was the first game id Software took its time with—a luxurious 4-month development instead of just 2 - 3 August 2025
In a recent appearance on Nightdive Studios' Deep Dive podcast , Doom designer John Romero talked about the ways id Software casually revolutionized PC gaming in the early '90s, all on a blistering release schedule where "taking their time" meant cranking out an all-time classic faster than most hero shooters are able to add a new character... Read more.
- Wolfenstein 3D looks amazing with ray tracing - 28 August 2024
We've seen plenty of older games getting treated to a dose of Nvidia RTX magic, including Doom and Quake II, but now we've been given a taster of how Wolfenstein 3D ray tracing would look with full RTX path tracing, and the result is both beautiful and bewildering in equal measure. Arguably the original first-person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D wowed 90s PC gamers (including me) with its fast-paced and surprisingly smooth 3D action on our big, beige boxes, although it all looks quite primitive by today's standards. However, these screenshots show a secret Wolfenstein 3D level in Doom 2, with the lighting handled by an RTX path on one of today's best graphics cards , making the game almost unrecognizable. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Doom is back, enhanced, better than ever, and free to upgrade Doom is back, as a medieval prequel arrives in 2025 Get $154 worth of FPS games, in…
- Mail trucks and millions of dollars: how shareware transformed PC gaming forever - 15 November 2023
The year is 1982. The internet won't exist for several months yet, and the Web won't go World Wide for another decade. But if you send a formatted floppy disk to a man named Andrew Fluegelman, he'll pop a copy of his communications program PC-Talk on it and send it back free of charge. If you like it, you can make further copies for your friends. In the event you really like it, you can send Fluegelman $25. "If you order the program and are disappointed," wrote PC Mag in its August-October 1982 issue, "you've lost nothing but a stamped, self-addressed envelope.".. Read more.
- Snag two 9/10 FPS games for less than $10 in this Steam sale - 26 September 2023
The entire Wolfenstein series is dirt cheap right now, as the series that started in the '90s is part of a Steam sale that sees each of its games get massive discounts for a limited time. Some of the Wolfenstein games are among the best FPS games ever made, with the modern Machine Games part of the series offering up top-tier action. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: QuakeCon sale gives you up to 85% off these essential FPS games Get Bethesda's best games for dirt cheap ahead of Starfield Big Bethesda sale gives you 80% off Wolfenstein, Prey, Rage, and more
- Get Bethesda's best games for dirt cheap ahead of Starfield - 16 June 2023
The Elder Scrolls , Doom, Fallout, Dishonored, Wolfenstein, Quake, The Evil Within - you name it, Bethesda has some of the best PC games in its catalog, and you can get most of them for next to nothing right now thanks to a sale with up to 85% off the likes of Skyrim , Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, Wolfenstein 2, and Prey. With the Starfield release date swooping over the horizon, what better time than now to enjoy Bethesda's best? Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Dishonored meets Jurassic Park in this steampunk RPG Awesome Games Done Quick's complete January 2018 schedule has been released Dishonored co-creative director "hopeful" for future of complex, PC-like multiplatform games
- Wolfenstein 3D runs on a 1979 processor now - yes, seriously - 20 January 2023
There's now a version of the groundbreaking FPS game Wolfenstein 3D that runs on a computer processor first produced in 1979. A game developer has created a version of Wolfenstein 3D that works with IBM's first colour graphics card, and all the processing power it needs is an Intel 8088 chip. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Classic RPGs arrive on PC Game Pass to celebrate QuakeCon Wolfenstein 3D fan-sequel coming end of April Here's that Wolfenstein 3D x Super Monkey Ball crossover you were looking for
- People in Germany can at last buy Wolfenstein 3D - 16 September 2022
You can always rely on PCG to bring you the news of the hottest game releases as soon as they're announced. Whether it's shadow drops at Gamescom, bombshell announcements at TGS, or the latest news on hotly-anticipated titles like, uh, Wolfenstein 3D... Read more.
- John Romero recalls the time Sierra almost bought id Software: 'I was dumbfounded' - 23 March 2022
They say hindsight is 20/20, but I'd like to think if I were a successful videogame executive in the early '90s, I would have been pretty jazzed to see an early build of id Software's Wolfenstein 3D . According to John Romero, the revolutionary first-person shooter didn't set off any sparks for Sierra On-line co-founder Ken Williams in a meeting that nearly ended with Sierra buying id... Read more.
- Wolfenstein 3D fan-sequel coming end of April - 18 April 2021
A fan-sequel to Wolfenstein 3D that's been years in the making has a release date. The third chapter of Wolfenstein: Blade of Agony arrives the end of this month, revamping the previous chapters in addition to several more stages of Nazi-killing FPS game action. The premise here is that you're a retired B.J. Blazkowicz, who'd taken more of a leadership role in the effort against the fascist oppressors. After receiving an encrypted message from an old friend, he leaps back into the fray, prepared to kill any swastika-toter that stands in his way. Over 30 levels are included across the three chapters, and some secret maps besides, voice-acting, high quality orchestral music, and the expected range of weaponry. There's plenty of enemies to blast at, including zombies. Blade of Agony was made using GZDoom, and takes some inspiration from the early Medal of Honor and Call of Duty games, in a…
- Super Monkey Ball and Wolfenstein 3D collide in this fan game - 12 January 2021
No, you read that right, there's now a fan game combining Super Monkey Ball and Wolfenstein 3D. It wouldn't be the top of my list for potential crossovers, but somehow, it works. Made by Nickireda and published on Itch.io, Return to Castle Monkey Ball is a free browser game that lets you smash Nazis in a hamster ball to your heart's content. So yes, it's the perfect antidote to last week's news. The fan game has the classic Super Monkey Ball timer, goal and banana collection mechanics, but smacking into Nazis can earn you extra time... if you can avoid getting shot by them first. You only get three lives to make it through the stages, but there are health item pickups along the way to help you through. I gave the first few levels a go and it's a truly bizarre collision of worlds, while moving around the maze can be rather trippy. My main tip: don't let those Nazis box you in. Read more
- Great moments in PC gaming: Fighting mecha Hitler in Wolfenstein 3D - 20 May 2019
Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.   There were a lot of shareware games that didn't get played beyond the first, free episode in my neck of the woods. One that absolutely did was Wolfenstein 3D because word got out that at the end of the third episode you got to kill Hitler himself. But first you we had to get to him. The final level contains new enemies who look like Hitler in a robe, shoot fireballs, and mock you with an echoing laugh after they die. These angry Hitler wizards are apparently just puppets with flamethrowers according to the internet, but I like the thought of the Führer keeping a bunch of magic clones in bathrobes around because it's no crazier than what happens next. In the final room you confront Adolf Hitler, strapped into his own mechsuit, with chainguns for hands. The evolution of th…
- Wolfenstein 3D mod The Golden Parrot swaps Nazis for pirates - 16 April 2019
Here's a pirate-themed total conversion for Wolfenstein 3D, a sentence that feels particularly wonderful to type. Creator fraggeur's mod The Golden Parrot has just hit version 1.0, and it changes up the base game to a surprising degree. You'll notice that the very grey corridors of the original Wolf3D have been replaced with a colourful, tropical landscape, while its Nazis have shuffled off in favour of pirates swinging cutlasses like there's no tomorrow. You can wield a blade yourself, as you explore the island and its interiors, and you'll want to, as guns need to be reloaded now—and they're slow to do so. There are a bunch of new weapons drawn from the general pirate milieu, including flintlock pistols and rifles. But perhaps the most interesting change is the inclusion of friendly merchants, who will sell you character upgrades in exchange for an…
- Wolfenstein 3D spawns three strange new games this week - 12 April 2019
It has been a bizarrely busy week for Wolfenstein 3D mods. In the past six days, there’s been three impressive total conversions released for the great grandaddy of the modern FPS, two of which are entirely standalone. We’ve got pirates in The Golden Parrot, we’ve got vampires in Project X: Insurrection and we’ve got a bizarre tribute to an even more bizarre DOS game in Nitemare: Hugo’s Revenge. It’s proof that if you give fans the right tools, they’ll keep hammering away until the cows come home, leave and then come home again. Take a peek at the three games below. (more…)
- This Wolfenstein 3D mod brings the SNES port to PC - 1 January 2019
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. C…
- Someone has ported Wolfenstein 3D for the Pico-8 fantasy console - 25 October 2018
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 ',…
- I've somehow been WASDing wrong my whole life - 18 July 2018
The Wes Maneuver. 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 arro…
- B.J. Blazkowicz and the need for more diverse Jewish characters - 16 May 2018
For a series built around the deconstruction of Aryan bodies, it s taken a long time for players to take the hint that Wolfenstein s ubermensch William Blazkowicz is Jewish. That hesitation betrays our definitions of Jewish identity as old-fashioned, and also reflects that the few prominent Jewish characters in games play into and reinforce stereotypes. While Blazkowicz is the most high profile character to break the mold, what does it say about games that the most diverse representation of a Jew we ve seen is simply whiter than most? (more…)
- The history of Wolfenstein - 28 April 2018
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 fol…
- This Wolfenstein 3D mod lets you pat the dogs until they go to sleep - 14 March 2018
When Wolfenstein 3D released in 1992, the game was missing one crucial feature: the ability to pat dogs. Instead, the dogs in Wolfenstein 3D were prone to biting you, and the only way to retaliate was to brutally murder them. Sure, they were dogs belonging to Nazis, but that didn't mean the dogs themselves were Nazis. When you think about it, the dog violence is unacceptable. Anyway, there's a mod for this particular predicament now. Dubbed Return to Castle Woofenstein, or Woof3D, not only does it let you pat the dogs until they have a snooze, but it totally removes nazis from the game.  "There's a big ol' castle full of dogs wanting pats and you're the one to pet them," reads creator's description . "Sorry, they jump up on you, I hope you don't mind dog paw prints on your jeans. Just pat them and they'll fall asleep pretty quick." No, I…
