On Fri, 06 May 2022 12:18:45 -0500,
ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:
From https://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&boardid=1&threadid=247714 :O
Wow. I was a teenager back then and playing it on my slow IBM
PS/2 model 30 286 10 Mhz PC. I remember making maps and
editing graphics (changing human heads to ant heads, making T1000
animations, etc.) in Wolf3D. Hehe.
(I think I've told this story before)
When Wolfenstein 3D came out, I knew nothing about it beforehand. I
was literally playing "Ultima Underworld" when a peer came up to me
and asked if that was 'Wolf3D', and (if it was), could I make a copy
for him. He went away empty-handed, but that was how I learned of
Wolfenstein's existence.
I knew about "Wolfenstein", of course; I'd played "Castle Wolfenstein"
and its sequel "Beyond Castle Wolfenstein" years prior, and had
exceptionally fond memories of those games. I am not sure if I'd heard
of Id software at that point, but if I had, I certainly associated
them with cheap, cheesy platformers like "Commander Keen" and not with
any compelling 'must-play' games. Still, the possible association of
this "Wolfenstein 3D" with the classic games of yore was enough to
send me to Usenet to learn what this game was about.
(Since this was - I think - back before the c.s.i.p.games hierarchy
split into .action, .rpg, .etc, the main group was so busy no person
could humanly read all the articles. Back then you only followed a
selection of interesting-looking threads and ignored everything else.
So even though there was talk about Wolfenstein 3D there, I'd never
noticed it. Using Usenet was so completely different back then than it
is today)
Long story short (ha!) I read up about the game, found the appropriate
FTP sites, downloaded the shareware game, installed it... and was
almost immediately disappointed. Oh, from a technological standpoint
it was an impressive game, and its association with the "Wolfenstein"
franchise was nice... but the gameplay? Its level design? Too
simplistic for my taste. Plus, its flat-shaded ceilings and floors
were ugly, and its music annoyingly repetitive. I played a few hours
and then deleted the game. At the time, I was certain I wouldn't be
hearing much from those guys at Id Software again if "Wolfenstein 3D"
was the best they had to offer.
Weeks later, when conversation about that silly Wolfenstein game
continued to dominate the newsgroup, I went back and played it again;
this time I had more fun and started to appreciate it for what it was.
"Wolf3D" never became one of my favorite games, but I was no longer so dismissive of it. Anyway, I found it interesting enough to keep
playing it, and eventually I mail in my $20 (or whatever it cost) to
buy the other episodes. When Id announced the 'sequel', something
called "Doom", I was all-in from the start.
I think my PC at the time was a 386 DX 25MHz with 4MB RAM. My first
soundcard was a Thunderboard, but I may have upgraded to a
SoundBlaster Pro by that time. The hard-drive was either 80MB or
120MB. It definitely rocked both a 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drive, and I
was connecting to the 'net via a super-fast 9600 modem. I've no idea
anymore what the video-card was, except that it definitely was VGA (I
always assume it was a Trident with 256KB RAM, because that seemed to
be the default for so many PCs back then).
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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