John Carmack on why he never did an Apple II port: I've received a fair amount of mail about this in the past couple of weeks. The bottom line is that we have no plans for a IIGS port. There are two major reasons (feel free to pass this around): 1: (The technical) The SNES implementation of wolf is the absolute borderline of acceptable gameplay. The GS is simmilar, but not quite as capable as the SNES. The most time consuming parts of the program are the clearing of the screen, the scaling of the walls, and the copying to the video memory. The SNES can do all of these thing faster than the GS. The SNES can do the clearing and copying with DMA, which is about four times faster than the tightest possible pea/pei stack tricked code. The SNES rom clocks at 3.5mhz and the ram at 2.5. I am also using one of the SNES dma registers to fake an autoincrement addressing mode. This lets the scaling be about 60% faster than the best possible on the GS. You couldn't reasonably use more than 16 colors in a scaled GS game, which would require ALL THE ARTWORK TO BE REDRAWN. Bottom line: While a GS game would be possible at a lower frame rate and resolution (or if it required an accelerator), it would not do justice to the game. 2: (the market) A runaway hit in the GS community might sell a few thousand copies. Possibly. Our time right now is split between jaguar ports, retail DOOM, and preliminary work on QUAKE, all big ticket items. We are a small company, with only six people in the development effort. We just don't have the time for niche products. I feel for you (a GS was my first real computer), but we are making our mark by looking forward, not back. Sorry. John Carmack
The SNES port would also be used as the backbone for the MAC, Jaguar and 3DO ports. Due to the source code being more streamlined, and the assets pared down to run on devices with less ram. Its also why they share the same staged designs and the extra weapons. Though the Mac would recieve a "Third Encounter" version which featured the 60 levels found in the MS-DOS original, and the 3DO release got the "Original Encounter" as well as the 60 PC levels from the get go, making it arguably the most feature rich port.
Wolfenstein 3D and Doom both had some very interesting ports. DOS PCs at the time had vastly different architecture than any of the home consoles, so a lot of work had to be done with even the most powerful systems. One thing to note with Wolfenstein 3D is that the Jaguar, 3DO and Macintosh (not included in this video) ports were all based on the SNES port, not the PC original. That's why the BJ Blazkowicz portrait in those versions is different from the PC original and any ports based upon it, and the enemy sprites always face towards the player, making it impossible to sneak up on them with the knife like you could in the DOS version. They also allow you to collect more ammo and health than in DOS, making the experience easier. Because of this, I have to give the edge to the PC original. It doesn't sound like much, but it's enough to make a difference in the gameplay. However, the Jaguar and 3DO versions have a much better overall presentation and can be argued to be superior.
The MD version is surprisingly good. Sega missed out by not getting a port for Mega CD. If the MD can handle it so well, MCD could've done it even better with its 12.5 MHz 68000.
Core Designs would have had no trouble making an FPS that ran buttery smooth for the SEGA-CD. Just look at their offerings on the add-on. All next-gen looking stuff.
@@SomeOrangeCat I've seen their Soulstar and Thunderhawk. They're really good. So is Jaguar XJ220. If only Sega would've rebuilt their CD version of Super Monaco GP to be more like that.
Regarding the canned Lynx version: John Carmack said he had planned to use the Lynx vertically " to make efficient use of the scaling hardware for column stretching". So the Lynx version of Wolfenstein 3D would have been quite unique.
It would be amazing to see the MD fan port of Wolfenstein 3D with CDDA tracks from 3DO by using the Mega SD cartridge. It will give a better FPS experience than the official port of Duke Nukem 3D on the system.
@@Brand2Tiny The 3DO version was mostly based on the Mac version, yeah. I actually like the musics of the Mac version much more than the 3DO which only kept the title screen theme (albeit remixed) then changed the rest of the tracks.
@@Brand2Tiny Both were based on the SNES version aka Wolfenstein 2.0, which truncated level designs and sprite directions, to make the game more friendly on low-memory architectures.
The Wolfenstein 3D engine would be re-used by several developers, each making their own tweaks and improvements. My favorite of these Wolfentstein-based "Doom Clones" was the Blake Stone Duology.
Wow....speccy port - that really is some serious wizardry goin on there. I bet you can smell that ickle cpu starting to sweat upon compilin what its gotta do....(i remember quake on my saturn litterally doin this lol )
Wasn't expecting this! To the SNES version's credit, it was running on a stock cartridge with no special helper chips. It's also the template for the levels in the Mac and Jaguar ports. The expanded weapon selection was carried over from that port as well. So, if you look past the censorship, the end result is still blocky, but an impressive feat.
they more likely wanted to avoid the extra cost of special chips. same happened with the SNES port of another world. but the SNES version of wolfenstein 3D runs better than what I'd have thought. the censorship is a massive letdown though. for such a game, it's just too much of a fail. same for desert strike still on SNES, the immortal on NES or doom 1 and 2 on GBA (the latters really annoy me because if it wasn't for that, I might have bought them, being such a doom fan, having some ports to play on the go sounded like a cool idea)
@@ryzmaker11 Nintendo had nothing to do with Doom 1 and 2 on the GBA getting censored. That was on the publisher who wanted the games to sell more copies. The GBA was marketed mainly at the T for Teen market.
Tiertex was working on a Mega Drive version. There was also an official Lynx version in development, as someone else mentioned. Apparently Atari's Chicago office made the deal with id Software without the Tramiels knowing about it.
it requires 2 megabyte RAM tho, not sure ST or STE machines ever came stock with that amount of memory. A bit choppy but full screen and impressive nonetheless for the humble ST.
The GBA version was a major disappointment to me because it didn't have any in-game music, it definitely hurt the atmosphere. Conversely I enjoyed the SNES version quite a bit - yes you couldn't always tell if it was a guard or a pot-plant! but it was probably one of the better FPS on the system at the time (and ran much better than Doom, which came out years later.)
Wow, the moment I saw this episode in my notifications my eyes lit up! This was the first PC game I ever truly fell in love with as a kid. I played the living shit out of it on my first PC, a 386DX 40Mhz W/4MB of RAM. Thanks so much for doing this!
I'm starting to believe that, in the hands of the right developers, the Acorn Archimedes could have been the European Sharp X68000 (not sure which came out first). It's worth noting that it is one of the earliest ARM machines, pretty much the grand daddy of multiple devices we all own today.
The iOS port is actually a lot of fun, and One of John Carmacks last ports before he moved to Facebook, to do whatever it is he does there. The touch controls are good, better than whatever they did the Doom updates, and nice graphics.
The GBA port was made by 2 people, and music was made for this port, but was "scrapped". In reality, the music is still in the game files, and can be enabled through a patch. You can listen to the OST here. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-V9wHniSiXKQ.html
Excellent video, Mark. Before I mention anything about the various ports of Wolfenstein 3D, I have to mention one that I've played that I really don't think many people ever had a chance to try: Wolfenstein VR for the arcades, licensed from id and ported by Alternate World Technologies out of Louisville, KY. I'm not sure if this was ever technically out of beta, and I believe only a handful of machines ever existed, but AWT had one setup at River Falls Mall in Indiana, across the river from Louisville. It was a sit-down cabinet controlled via joystick (maybe 2, I can't recall for sure) and, obviously, had a VR headset that could track head movements. There was also an external monitor so others could see what you were playing. Pretty cool and impressive stuff the the early-mid-90s (it showed up there in maybe '93 or '94). It was expensive to play though: I think it was either $3 or $5 a go, so I only played it a handful of times. Later on, they converted it into a different non-VR cab that reminded me of a deluxe After Burner cab without the VR functionality (and price lowered to a quarter a play). At least, I assume that was the same machine, since it retained the joystick controls and still used the same altered levels. I don't believe there is any video of this version of the game online anywhere, AWT has long since went out of business, and the mall has long since been closed (mostly). I have no clue what happened to that machine, but I imagine this is one of the rarest arcade machines in existence. I absolutely love Wolfenstein 3D. I first played it when my uncle brought a shareware version back from a PC convention type deal. My uncles, my cousins, my dad, and I were all blown away the game, even though it didn't necessarily run smoothly on my Uncle's 286 PC (8MHz, if I recall) with 1MB of RAM. Plus, he only had PC speaker sound. We didn't have a computer that could run it at the time, but in early 1993, dad bought a PC with a 486 DX33 and 4MB of RAM, ostensibly to be able to use Excel for Windows because his work was moving from DOS Lotus 123 to that, but the very first thing he did was install the shareware Wolf 3D on it. Man, did it fly compared to my Uncle's computer, and we ended up mail ordering the first set of episodes. We still didn't have a sound card though, until a few months later when my uncle also upgraded to a 486 PC (a DX2-66) but bought a multimedia kit with a CD-ROM and Sound Blaster Pro. Literally the next day after hearing the digital speech in Wolf 3D on my uncle's new PC, dad went out and bought a sound card haha. I love the original, and I've owned the SNES version, which is okay but not amazing, since the 16-bit days. However, Wolf 3D on 3DO was one of the first games I bought for the 3DO when I finally picked one up years after its release, and the 3DO quickly became my favorite version of the game. It's nice and smooth and that soundtrack is way better than it deserves to be. I love it. Now, I have to admit to pre--ordering Wolf3D on GBA, and I'm still disappointed in that version. It's "okay", and I like that it was based on the PC version. But, still, it's just not up to snuff. with performance that could be a little better and no soundtrack (that plays that is...I've heard the music that's still in the ROM, and, well, ugggg). Now, gasega68k's Genesis port is really impressive and fun, and on a CRT the filters aren't too bad, though I don't think they look good on an LCD. Still, it's a great port. For it's level of completion, ChillyWilly's 32X port isn't bad either; not as impressive as the Genesis homebrew mind you, but nice looking.
I got my nostalgia more from seeing the sprites and some of the music that were reused in Doom II's secret stages! Funny that~ :P Well maybe not HA HA funny but...anyway... That Megadrive version looks like something that could have been out at the time, I wonder how it looks on a real CRT given that dithering added- must look better~ FM music is right at home on the system too so that's not a surprise~ :) Another great video as always Mark!
Using an emulator and a good composite filter, I can say that the dithering on the Genesis version works really well. I'd be curious to see something similar used on the ZX Spectrum version.
there was a port for Apple IIGS by Logicware (same dev behind 3DO) and Mac version also list of unofficial ones are includes TI-84 calculator, Amiga, GBC, C64, Atari ST and some source ports for PC as well
John Carmack said he started work on Jaguar Wolf. one afternoon and 15 CD's later and the next morning, he had a functional port of the SNES version up and running. Jaguar Wolf runs full screen at 30 FPS and with 4X the detail of the PC version.
Today im tried to play this game in VR. Quite surreal to play such a old game in VR.... and actuelly its works quite well. Its named Wolfenstein 3D VR and was created by a fan.
id software on the Atari Jaguar version. "Jaguar Wolf 3D is sporting several new features, including source artwork at twice the resolution (4x the data), a high, fluid refresh rate, 22 kHz sound effects, and MIDI device emulation. Doom pushes the hardware a lot harder and already looks trey cool. The anti-aliasing effects of composite screens coupled with the very hip 16-bit CRY pixel mode makes images look even more realistic than the DOS version. "
Actually played the originals back in the day on an Apple 2C. Never played the PC version,played it and finished it on the PS3 in 2010 when it came as a bonus with the 2009 game. Pretty cool since finishing it unlocked stuff when you started the 09' one. Yes the maps can be confusing but if you stick with it and take your time it's not that bad.
I played Wolfenstein 3D back when it first came out on PC and didn't know anything about the originals until quite a bit later. I'm sure someone probably told me, but as a little kid I'm also certain I forgot lol!
@@AzrialAlaria Understandable. The original 2 games aren't really talked about much. But they were interesting for the time and kind of paved the way for games like Metal Gear.
The 3DO version is definitely the best console port of Wolf 3D, but the Mac release is now my favorite way to play it. It has the updated graphics of the 3DO and Jaguar but runs much more smoothly. If anyone is interested, a mod was just released called MacenWolf which plays the Mac version on Windows without having to install an emulator. Definitely check it out if you've never experienced the 3DO/Jag versions.
I can't believe the game runs in that quality on original Genesis hardware. It's so much more detailed and so much faster than comparable 3D-shooters for the system like Zero Tolerance or Battle Frenzy.
Ahhh yes! Wolfenstein 3D! A game that first introduced me to first person shooters! I actually never played the game when I was younger, rather I watched my friends or classmates play it, and thought it was one of the coolest looking games ever! And you get to kill Nazis as well as battle Mecha Hitler! I didn't get to fully play it until I bought it for the PS3 via PlayStation Store as one of my first digital games back in 2011! Visually, it didn't age too well, but the game is still a lot of fun in my opinion! I never played any of the ports, and from what I'm seeing on this video, I'm actually surprised that the Jaguar and 3DO version turned out great. Guess they do have their strengths, and their versions of Wolfenstein 3D is proof of it. I'd love to try out most of these ports, should I ever get the chance. Thanks for the nostalgia trip!
I'm playing Episode 5 (Nocturnal Missions) right now for the first time ever. I got really interested in older FPS titles after playing Duke Nukem 3D Atomic about 3 years ago. Wolf3D is the granddad one and I wanted to experience how FPS titles got started in the first place. The game experience is nice for 1st generation. But the map layouts and similar wall textures will definitely leave you rotting in the Castle for lack of finding your way out. Secret passages abound and if you don't find them to keep your health up, you'll be gunned to bloody death. Next up for me is Spear of Destiny. Happy gaming!
IF you ever do an updated version of this video, please include the Atari ST/STE versions. The STE version uses 32 on-screen colours, authentic texture mapping, and a high-detail mode (activated by hitting the asterisk key on the numerical keypad). Chipmusic is by Mathieu Stempell and thus truly outstanding as you would expect. Sound effects are fantastic and played using the DMA hardware on the Atari STe.
Just the pistol. It's also quite different, with level orders being remixed or omitted to flow better. I think it was level 3 or 4 that you run into the episode 1 boss, and then it jumps straight to episode 2 material.
Hey its finally sunday and I have some free time from the company. And what do I see ? A Wolf 3D botp episode ! Thanks to the released source code porting this game would be quite easy nowadays. I bet this is how MD version was created. I do not understand the censorship behind the Super Nintendo version though, not including the lack of blood
The Mega Drive version is using a lot of dithering and other graphical effects that look dodgy on a HD monitor but played on a CRT would probably look okay. It's an impressive port. The SNES port isn't bad either considering it isn't using the SuperFX chip if I recall correctly. Neither of the 16-bit consoles were designed with FPS games in mind, so it's impressive that both appear to be able to handle Wolf at a playable speed. I'm impressed with the Archimedes port too; my best friend growing up had one as his parents always wanted him to have a computer he could use educational software on (he upgraded from a Beeb) and I remember the amount of games being very limited compared to the Amiga I was using at the time. It always seemed like a very capable machine but Acorn just weren't interested as positioning it as a games machine. At the other end of the spectrum (no pun intended) the Lynx and Speccy ports, whilst impressive as technical showcases, look completely unplayable. The Speccy version in particular just seems to turn into a mass of white pixels as soon as you get too close to anything. It's fantastic to see the game running smoothly on such limited hardware but I don't think I'd want to play through it like that.
Never expected to see ya cover the granddaddy of the FPS genre here, Yakumo. Not bad... And on the topic of versions, ya didn't cover the Mac version. It was the basis of the 3DO, Jaguar and SNES versions, with the added flamethrower and rocket launcher, and it used only front-facing sprites for the Nazi guards and bosses like those 3. And it was where the high-res visuals for the 3DO version came from, and it has a unique soundtrack. And the weapons from the Jag version, mainly the pistol, minigun and rocket launcher, were redrawn Doom weapons, meaning that BJ Blazkowicz is using a Beretta M9, a 1972 weapon, in 1945. And BJ had a nice time and place appropriate Luger P08 in the other versions
And the Super Noah's Ark 3D rumor with John Romero pawning off the code to Wisdom Tree out of vengeance for SNES Wolf 3D's censorship was just bunk, cuz what Id did was just hand them the source code. And it was originally gonna be a Hellraiser game, even
So many memories of this game. The PC version is the only one that had multiplayer, probably the first ever LAN FPS. The SNES version is an embarrassment, and if I'm not mistaken, it's one of the earliest examples of what developers have come to call a "German Build", nicknamed after the strict censorship requirements for releasing games in Germany during the '90s and early 2000s (no blood, no Nazis).
AFAIK the first LAN FPS was MIDI maze on atari ST, back in 1987! as its name implies, it used the system's MIDI ports to connect up to 16 players at once. pretty rad for the time and yet another groundbreaking ST game!
Hah that ZX version is great. Sadly the Amiga didn't have the grunt for a port (Carmack said in 96 I believe), at least at the time that's what was thought. Later there were a few FPS clones on Amiga, I had Gloom on my beefed up A1200 around 1996.
Doesn't Gloom run at around 10 fps most of the time and plays in a small window? I've not played it myself but everytime I see a video of it the framerate is awful.
The Archimedes was pitched for the educational sector as a replacement for the BBC 8-Bit line. They seemingly never had any interest in capturing the consumer gaming market and making something pitched at that price point. Much like the BBC I guess.
It's a shame. School was the only place I ever used one. I remember the IT teacher loading up R-Type racing game and thinking it was amazing. Way beyond my Mega Drive and my Friends Amiga.
You should do Jr. Pac Man sometime. You covered other Pac Man games before, and Jr. Pac Man has a decent amount of ports, including a homebrew Intellivision port.
To all you 'Wolfies': I have both the original Castle Wolfenstein and its sequel 'Beyond'. I play all my DOS games on actual hardware not an emulator. The motherboard is Socket 370 running a Pentium III 1 GHz CPU. All DOS games that use hardware timers work A-Ok. Even a few that use software timers. I can't get the first original two to work. When I launched them for the 1st time, I thought I had corrupt downloads. The command prompt just seemed to return to the next line. After several repeated attempts, I noticed something ghostly transparent-like flashing on the screen: "Game Over". I have tried a slowdown utility called 'moslo' at its lowest possible value to no avail. It's like the game is killing me in 10msec. Anyone of you 'Wolfies' know how to further slow down the CPU? Or is something else wrong here? Any comments welcomed.
I have an excellent suggestion for you. Next time or sometime later you should do Doom (1993). Looking at every port and few unofficial ones. List: MS-DOS NEC-98 Atari Jaguar Super 32X 3DO Super Famicom Playstation Sega Saturn Gameboy Advance Xbox 360 Xbox One Etc.
@Diskun yep, I'm referring to the OFFICIAL conversion done by John Carmack himself, years ago. Not fan conversions. The Tramiels in true style, sent the first milestone payment 3 months late, so Carmack pulled the plug. GTW should soon have answers to Lynx Vindicators and Rolling Thunder.
@TrueSinister I watch all the videos and assist with background info on lost versions wherever possible, I am a regular on likes of GTW and Unseen 64. The story about the OFFICIAL Lynx conversion isn't well known, so I wasn't surprised it wasn't covered here.
Quote from the industry folk back in the day Well, we have a PowerMAC 8100 at High Voltage Software and Wolf on the Jag looks considerably smoother on a full screen than the Mac running it on a full screen. You can see copy-raster jitters on the Mac as it updates since it doesn't just do bitmap swapping for the double-buffering (it does a pixel-copy instead). adisak pochanayon - jaguar programmer
If you think that port for the ZX Spectrum is impressive, you've clearly never seen the DOOM port. It's way-more impressive: bigger display size, audio and it's in colour
Awesome as always thanks Mark. I think I'll pick up a copy for my 3D0 after watching this. This game has some amazing ports I didn't know about and that speccy version definitely would have been amazing in the day, you should try micronaut 1 for the speccy which had smooth corridor shooting that was out in the day, also that Archimedes version is stunning. I've never played one but would love to with all those flat shaded pologon games running so smoothly on it.
Source Code for this game has been released long time ago, so newer systems could been based on that. So its might not been direct emulation, but more a source code port. Yes its does require tweeks as the source code was 16 bit code as im is aware of. Howover framerate could run faster in the MSDOS version, but what im remember framerate on most machines was around that shown in the video.
In my view the best port is the Mac one. Yeah, it's pretty much the same as the 3do version but with worst music, however, there is something that makes it better than all other ports, all the variety of great mods for it. Castle totenhaus, astrostein, in the wolves lair...
Shame there was no official Amiga port, at least for A1200, it should handle it no problem. ID was so angry at Nintendo censorship, they borrowed source code to Wisdom Tree, and they made Super Noah Ark 3D.
Isnt that an urban myth? I thought ID just licenced the engine to anyone who asked for it and the fact that wisdom tree had reverse engineered Nintendo s hardware was just a happy coincidence.
A stock 1200 could do, and in facts has done, games that would look similar to Wolf3D (or even Doom) but always with some limitations like screen size and /or heavy pixelation. The Amiga simply does not have the graphical modes needed for this kind of FPS. As far as porting the original Wolf3D engine goes, all efforts so far show that a lot more memory than the stock 2 megs is required and a beefier CPU is welcome. There is a homebrew CD32 attempt which shows that on a stock 2MB 68020 machine the game would run acceptably only on a very small screen. And that's on top of the additional CD32 Akiko chip helping with graphics (which would have been a great implementation on Commodore computers in 1992, but Commodore hadn't been doing the right thing for a long time at that point).
If you want to see a full playthrough of the 3DO, SNES, Atari Jaguar, Mac Pc, orinal MS-Dos and some modded (like xmas) versiobs of the game... check out my channel :) I just finished 5 different ports of the game that follow 'The Second Encounter' mission pack. At first I was sceptic, but theres a deeper layer to this. I wish you would have pointed out more differences between the versions though. I know all of them inside out. Like on the Jaguar you get 4HP for every treasure for some reason, different graphic packs, some versions of the game enemies can't even used locked doors, where in other ports they can... etc ect
Atari's press release way, way back in 1994: SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Wolfenstein 3D, a contemporary cult favorite on the PC platform, now is available on the industry's most advanced video game system, the award-winning Atari Jaguar. "Fans of Wolfenstein 3D were disappointed with the Super Nintendo version of the game," explained Jay Wilbur of ID Software, the company that created Wolfenstein 3D. "In both the original Wolfenstein 3D and the 64-bit Jaguar version, the player assumes the role of William J. 'B.J.' Blazkowicz as he blasts away the Nazi enemy," he added. "But Nintendo insisted on watering down the game and turned it into a generic shoot 'em up romp against generic bad guys." "Wolfenstein 3D continues to be a favorite of PC owners," stressed Atari Corp. President Sam Tramiel. "We wanted to be faithful to the original plot while exploiting the Jaguar's 64-bit technology to take the game to a higher level." With the Jaguar system's cutting-edge graphics and resolution, game players experience "you are there'' perspectives. They have unlimited character movement in a virtual war zone and can call upon a complete arsenal of weapons, including flamethrowers, machine guns and rocket launchers. Players can conduct six missions with 30 levels of bullet-riddled mayhem - a guaranteed challenge for even the most seasoned player. "The smooth and fast graphics of Wolfenstein 3D for the Jaguar system are the best I've seen," said Zach Meston, author of the upcoming book, "Atari Jaguar Official Games Secrets," and a contributing editor to Video Games Magazine and Wired. "Unlike versions for other systems, Jaguar's Wolfenstein 3D has realistic bullets, realistic blood, digitized sound and real 3D action."
It is the irreverent representative of a bygone era. Nazis, portraits of Hitler, blood galore and tons of soldiers and German shepherds killed in cold blood... ah, it was a good time 👍 😍 One of these games that made PC enter in the gaming world. God bless ID Software 😉
actuelly the GBC homebrew version could run on a stock gbc, its just used quite a enhanced cartridge, like the enhanced chips used on the SNES. But sure its would not have done that back in the days.
but you is also right too. That version got help from a 45mhz arm cocpu. a cpu that was not done before much later, but the cpu was on the cartridge throught. Etc such a cpu that first got released much much later than the GBC life span. Recently Atari 2600 does something similar.
Having the same rom size as a floppy doesn't mean anything I'm afraid. Both games use different programming language and use different data for graphics. There are also plenty of early beta roms on the Mega Drive which also have the same rom size as the finished game. Roms on consoles are often padded out with dummy data to meet a required size.
3DO wins this one, with the Jag close behind. and the GBA taking up the rear. I can't wait to see what the Sega Genesis version'll look like when it's complete, but it looks like it's coming along nicely. PC98's got a bit of a dire frame rate...
