Castle Wolfenstein

Castle Wolfenstein is a video game by Muse Software for the Apple II. It was released in 1981 and later ported to the PC for DOS, to the Atari 8-bit family, and to the Commodore 64.

Description

Castle Wolfenstein is a combination action and adventure game. It is set in World War II during Hitler's reign of terror. The objective of the game is to traverse all the levels of the castle and find the secret war plans and escape alive.

The game features a top-down view of each room on the level, though the characters are seen upright like in a side-scroller. The player tries to traverse the levels by stealth, impersonation and sometimes killing opponents. The game is controlled via a joystick, paddles, or the keyboard. The player successfully completes the game by finding the plans hidden in a chest and escaping without being captured.

Gameplay

Upon entering the castle, where the game begins, the player is equipped with a gun and bullets. Once the player starts moving, he attracts the attention of the guards, who will try to shoot or apprehend him. He must either run from the guards, or kill them.

There are two styles of guards, the basic guards, and the SS Stormtroopers who wear bulletproof vests with "SS" plainly emblazoned on them. The regular guards are fairly daft, reacting only to the sounds of gunshots and grenades, or seeing you wandering about without a uniform. The SS guards are much smarter, and tend to chase you once you grab their attention. They usually require a large number of bullets or a grenade to kill as well.

The player can attempt to kill enemy characters (guards) in two ways, either by shooting the guard, but this expends bullets, a scarce commodity in the game, and risks raising the alarm if another guard is present in the room, or by using a grenade, which is sure to attract the attention of nearby SS guards. The guards die with a scream of, "Aieegh!" which is made even more chilling by the raspy quality of the digital sample. Once an enemy soldier is dispatched, his body can be searched for bullets, keys, grenades, and bulletproof vests.

An alternative to shooting your way out of the castle is to find a uniform (either in a chest or from a dead guard), at which point the normal guards will think you are one of them. However, the SS guards are smarter than that, and will usually notice that you aren't one of them. Typically, this means that the best strategy is to quickly obtain a uniform, and then attempt to sneak by any SS guards you run into along the way, since it's difficult (especially at higher levels) to win an outright shootout.

Guards do not always have to be killed, however. Pulling a gun on a guard usually will cuase them to put their hands up, and you can frisk them for ammo, bulletproof vests, grenades, etc. The player can still choose to kill the guard at this point, but it is not strictly necessary.

Some rooms contain locked chests which can be picked and searched. Some are empty, but some contained useful items such as bullets, grenades, the war plans, uniforms, and bulletproof vests. And some contain leibfraumilch, schnapps, Eva Braun's Diaries, and other items that are interesting but worthless for gameplay.

Analysis

Though the game's graphics are dated—and almost comical—by today's standards, they were acceptable for an Apple II game. And though the game suffered from some technical idiosyncrasies (for example, bumping into a wall caused the screen to flash random characters and generated a screeching sound), it still gained appeal. One of the main drawing points for fans was its use of digitized voices—an unprecedented technical achievement. Though the voices were scratchy and almost unintelligible because of the Apple II's limited sound facilities, they were good enough for such a break-through effect.

With an emphasis on the player trying to avoid detection for as long as possible, this game (along with its sequel) is considered an ancestor of the first-person sneaker genre of games that would gain popularity in the 1990s.

Legacy

Muse followed Castle Wolfenstein with Beyond Castle Wolfenstein which was almost identical in terms of game play and appearance. The objective of that game was to kill the Führer himself.

But Castle Wolfenstein's greatest legacy was inspiring the break-through game Wolfenstein 3D by id Software. Though id's game shared a partial name with Castle Wolfenstein, its game play, plot and look and feel were vastly different. Wolfenstein 3D initiated the first-person shooter genre on the PC which is still healthy to this day. Few fans of Wolfenstein 3D know of its digital pedigree (indeed, to keep confusion to a minimum, most fans of the original game now call it "Wolfenstein 2D" to differentiate it), but, besides being an entertaining game in its own right, inspiring the seminal Wolfenstein 3D is probably Castle Wolfenstein's greatest gift to computer gaming.