Recently I purchased a used copy of Wolfenstein 3D for the SNES at Game Crazy in Golden Valley. Those of you who are old skool might remember it’s 2D predacessor: Castle Wolfenstein. Later Castle Wolfenstein would be pirated and turned into Castle Smurfenstein. Wolfenstein 3D became the successor. I bought this game for three reasons. One, I didn’t even know that there was a port of it for the SNES. The second reason I was interested in this retro title was that I had only played the demo on my Macintosh Performa years ago and really enjoyed it. However, there were only three levels to beat in the demo and I thought that it would be fun to try the whole game out. And the final reason? It’s the mother of all first person shooters.

The game play is pretty much the same as it was on the Mac ‘lo those many years ago. I found it to be a fairly fun port with the SNES gamepad. The graphics are hideous even for a 16 bit system like the SNES. This does not detract from gameplay however. It’s like watching an old episode of Doctor Who. The special effects suck but the story and action are well worth sitting through. The AI is as stunning as it was in the early 90s and the upper buttons on the SNES controller allow you to strafe left or right. You can’t prone or jump but if your a fan of the FPS platform you should respect this game for what it was at the time of it’s creation.

I have only a couple of complaints. The dogs are not as scary and they removed Hitler’s mustache. It seems Nintendo marketing folks took issue with historical accuracy. They didn’t want Hitler in a game with Nazis, attacking dogs and whatever else. Of course, this game was made at a time when there was no ‘rating system’ for console or computer games. So wholesome titles today like Grand Theft Auto: Porn City would have likely been re-written until the game size was approximately 256K–removing any sort of lude or violent programming before it’s incept into American culture. This is par for the course with Nintendo. They are also the company that took Mortal Kombat and changed the blood to a lovely ‘grey’ so as not to offend parents as much. Nintendo has always been very family oriented. I’m sure we’ll see much of the same with the Wii.

Overall, this is still fairly true to it’s original counterpart and I can’t help but simply enjoy playing the game. I give it a four out of five on the joypad scale.