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More about Castle Wolfenstein (from Wikipedia):
Castle Wolfenstein is a 1981 action-adventure game developed by Silas Warner for the Apple II and published by Muse Software in 1981. It is one of the earliest games based on stealth mechanics. A port to Atari 8-bit computers was released in 1982, followed by Commodore 64 (1983) and MS-DOS (1984). The player takes the role of an Allied prisoner of war during World War II who is held captive in the fictional Castle Wolfenstein. After escaping from a cell, the player's objective is to find the Nazis' secret war plans and escape from the castle. Nazi soldiers can be dealt with via impersonation, sneaking, or killing.
Warner was inspired by the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone and the 1980 arcade video game Berzerk. The 60 room castle is procedurally generated.
Castle Wolfenstein was positively received by critics and became one of the best-selling games of the early 1980s. The game was praised for its graphics, and gameplay, but criticized for long waiting times when opening chests. It had a direct influence on modern stealth games. A sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, was released in 1984. The rights to the Wolfenstein name were purchased for the 1992 first person shooter Wolfenstein 3D.
Development and release
Castle Wolfenstein was developed by Silas Warner at Muse Software and the game's cover art was drawn by John Benson.
The game was initially conceptualized as a game set in the mid-1980s in what Warner describes as "a guy running around rooms" and did not know how to develop the game further. He was uninterested in using space as a setting due to his belief that there were so many of them on the market. The concept changed after Warner watched the 1961 British-American war film The Guns of Navarone and was amazed by the Allied commandos who broke into a German fortress to destroy the German artillery battery. Within the same day, he played Berzerk, a multidirectional shooter arcade video game in which the player navigates through a maze with laser-shooting robots. He decided to use the same concept but with Nazi soldiers instead of robots. His idea was to take the basic common concept of an arcade shoot 'em up, where players dodge enemies with the intent of killing them, and change the objective to escape the enemy guards and their castle with shooting guards simply a means to an end and not an end in itself.
Warner implemented procedural level generation to the game, which took 35 to 60 seconds to complete before the gameplay of the original Apple version started; as a result, the game produced a new set of 60 rooms, the arrangement of which was nearly always different. He designed the game's architecture using three programs, each of which was on separate floppy disks and later integrated into a single floppy disk. The first one initialized the graphics and shuffled 64 interchangeable floor plans. The second disk governed the behavior of the castle's guards, while the third disk handled the player character's behavior. According to Warner, a lot of work went into synchronizing the programs, and he was satisfied with the result. For the soundtrack, he implemented his own voice for the German guards, using Apple II software called The Voice (also published by Muse Software). He used eight German phrases, such as Achtung, Schweinhund, and Halt.
Muse Software released Castle Wolfenstein in September 1981 for the Apple II and the game was made on other platforms. A port to the Atari 8-bit computers was published six months after the Apple release, and a Commodore 64 version in 1983 and to MS-DOS in 1984. Following the game's release, a software developed by Moxie, The Great Escape Utility, was marketed in 1983, promising bug fixes to speed up the opening of chests and the startup time of the game. It also allowed players to choose their starting location and gain an unlimited amount of items. The software is regarded as the first commercial trainer in video gaming.
Reception
According to Harvey Bernstein of Antic, after its release, Castle Wolfenstein "quickly shot to the top of the charts" and became "one of the most popular games for any microcomputer". In the October 1982 issue of Computer Gaming World, associate publisher and game merchandiser Dana Lombardy released an incomplete list of top-selling games as of 30 June 1982, where the game landed in 13th place with 20,000 copies sold. The game ultimately sold about 50,000 copies by 1983.
Creative Computing Video and Arcade Games complained about slow gameplay, but added "thrill of the escape" is "worth the wait".
In a 1991 Computer Gaming World survey of strategy and war games, M. Evan Brooks called the game an "arcade classic", and stated that despite the outdated graphics, it had remained in his "fond memories". In 1996, the same magazine listed Castle Wolfenstein as the 116th best game of all time.
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#castlewolfenstein #retrogaming #appleii
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More about Castle Wolfenstein (from Wikipedia):
Castle Wolfenstein is a 1981 action-adventure game developed by Silas Warner for the Apple II and published by Muse Software in 1981. It is one of the earliest games based on stealth mechanics. A port to Atari 8-bit computers was released in 1982, followed by Commodore 64 (1983) and MS-DOS (1984). The player takes the role of an Allied prisoner of war during World War II who is held captive in the fictional Castle Wolfenstein. After escaping from a cell, the player's objective is to find the Nazis' secret war plans and escape from the castle. Nazi soldiers can be dealt with via impersonation, sneaking, or killing.
Warner was inspired by the 1961 film The Guns of Navarone and the 1980 arcade video game Berzerk. The 60 room castle is procedurally generated.
Castle Wolfenstein was positively received by critics and became one of the best-selling games of the early 1980s. The game was praised for its graphics, and gameplay, but criticized for long waiting times when opening chests. It had a direct influence on modern stealth games. A sequel, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, was released in 1984. The rights to the Wolfenstein name were purchased for the 1992 first person shooter Wolfenstein 3D.
Development and release
Castle Wolfenstein was developed by Silas Warner at Muse Software and the game's cover art was drawn by John Benson.
The game was initially conceptualized as a game set in the mid-1980s in what Warner describes as "a guy running around rooms" and did not know how to develop the game further. He was uninterested in using space as a setting due to his belief that there were so many of them on the market. The concept changed after Warner watched the 1961 British-American war film The Guns of Navarone and was amazed by the Allied commandos who broke into a German fortress to destroy the German artillery battery. Within the same day, he played Berzerk, a multidirectional shooter arcade video game in which the player navigates through a maze with laser-shooting robots. He decided to use the same concept but with Nazi soldiers instead of robots. His idea was to take the basic common concept of an arcade shoot 'em up, where players dodge enemies with the intent of killing them, and change the objective to escape the enemy guards and their castle with shooting guards simply a means to an end and not an end in itself.
Warner implemented procedural level generation to the game, which took 35 to 60 seconds to complete before the gameplay of the original Apple version started; as a result, the game produced a new set of 60 rooms, the arrangement of which was nearly always different. He designed the game's architecture using three programs, each of which was on separate floppy disks and later integrated into a single floppy disk. The first one initialized the graphics and shuffled 64 interchangeable floor plans. The second disk governed the behavior of the castle's guards, while the third disk handled the player character's behavior. According to Warner, a lot of work went into synchronizing the programs, and he was satisfied with the result. For the soundtrack, he implemented his own voice for the German guards, using Apple II software called The Voice (also published by Muse Software). He used eight German phrases, such as Achtung, Schweinhund, and Halt.
Muse Software released Castle Wolfenstein in September 1981 for the Apple II and the game was made on other platforms. A port to the Atari 8-bit computers was published six months after the Apple release, and a Commodore 64 version in 1983 and to MS-DOS in 1984. Following the game's release, a software developed by Moxie, The Great Escape Utility, was marketed in 1983, promising bug fixes to speed up the opening of chests and the startup time of the game. It also allowed players to choose their starting location and gain an unlimited amount of items. The software is regarded as the first commercial trainer in video gaming.
Reception
According to Harvey Bernstein of Antic, after its release, Castle Wolfenstein "quickly shot to the top of the charts" and became "one of the most popular games for any microcomputer". In the October 1982 issue of Computer Gaming World, associate publisher and game merchandiser Dana Lombardy released an incomplete list of top-selling games as of 30 June 1982, where the game landed in 13th place with 20,000 copies sold. The game ultimately sold about 50,000 copies by 1983.
Creative Computing Video and Arcade Games complained about slow gameplay, but added "thrill of the escape" is "worth the wait".
In a 1991 Computer Gaming World survey of strategy and war games, M. Evan Brooks called the game an "arcade classic", and stated that despite the outdated graphics, it had remained in his "fond memories". In 1996, the same magazine listed Castle Wolfenstein as the 116th best game of all time.
