Alles Gute zum Geburtstag! Wolfenstein 3D Turns 16

Rob Williams

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It's a common misconception that id Software's 'Doom' was the first popular 3D-shooter for the PC, but it was actually Wolfenstein 3D, a Nazi-infested game that was released a full 18 months earlier. If you grew up with a PC and happened to be a gamer, then chances are good that you've played it. I know I did, and at nine-years-old, I shouldn't have (I was good at sneaking things).

Wolf 3D was the first game to actually scare me bad enough that I had to leave the room. Walking around a corner after a five-minute lull and having a Nazi shout in German at you and a rabid dog bark its yap off might do it for anyone. It was then that I knew I should have been playing Ken's Labyrinth instead.

Thanks to Wired's never-ending knack of remembering things, we know that the game has just turned sixteen... incredible. In reality, that's far from being long ago, but to look at where gaming is today and looking back, the situation is nothing short of spectacular. Who would have played Wolf 3D or Doom and even thought for a second that gaming would be what it is today? If you spoke out loud about it, you may have found yourself in protective care for a while.

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Wolfenstein 3-D may not have been the very first "first-person shooter," as the genre came to be known, but it was by far the most successful. Technically the genre goes back to the '70s, but no one really paid any attention to it. Even id released an earlier FPS called Catacombs 3D, but again, it wasn't nearly as good as Wolfenstein.

Source: Wired
 
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