Wolfenstein 3D secrets revealed by John Romero in lengthy post-mortem chat

Enlarge / John Romero speaks at GDC 2022. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

SAN FRANCISCO-While the game series Doom and Quake have been heavily chronicled in convention panels and books, the same can't be said for id Software's legendary precursor Wolfenstein 3D. One of its key figures, coder and level designer John Romero, appeared at this year's Game Developers Conference to chronicle how this six-month, six-person project built the crucial bridge between the company's Commander Keen-dominated past and FPS-revolution future.

And if six months for a landmark game seems fast, you should pause for a history lesson.

Original concept art for Wolfenstein 3D. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

"In the last six months of 1991, we started and shipped five games," Romero says as a lead-in to the genesis of Wolfenstein 3D's development. This included multiple Commander Keen side-scrolling games, and id Software began the year of 1992 by prototyping the game that would have been Keen 7, whose major technological advancement would have been parallax-scrolling backgrounds. After helping id Software complete the game's first demo in one week, Romero announced that he wasn't interested in keeping the Keen series going. id Software co-founder Adrian Carmack agreed-"I'm sick of Keen"-and John Carmack (no relation) "viewed the carnage" and assessed that a change might very well be in order.

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