Wolfenstein 3D (SNES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Imagineer's 1994 first-person shooter for the Super Nintendo, Wolfenstein 3D.

In this video I play through the entire game on the normal difficulty, scoring 100% for enemies, treasures, and secrets in every level. After the main run ends at 3:45:32, I go back and show the two secret stages (3-5 and 6-7) and how to reach them.

By 1992, 3D graphics were nothing new - there were several "3D" games released in the 80s - but it was generally accepted that any game attempting such a feat was going to be ugly and would run terribly on the hardware of the day. Thankfully, that all changed with the release of id Software's Wolfenstein 3D. Responsive controls and a fluid framerate were no longer an impossibility on consumer-level hardware! Id might be better known as the house that Doom built, but Wolfenstein 3D provided the foundation that made it all possible.

But for as impressive as it was to see an FPS running at double-digit framerates on a 286, it was perhaps even more mind-blowing to see Wolfenstein 3D in a playable state on stock Super Nintendo hardware when it launched eighteen months later.

We have id themselves to thank for that. The guy they had hired to do the port was a complete flake and the publisher's deadline was quickly approaching, so the guys at id ended up having to do it all themselves. They temporarily halted work on Doom and threw themselves headlong into a three-week crunch session during which they learned the SNES hardware and built the game from the ground up, ray-casting engine included. On top of that, the cartridge doesn't contain any fancy hardware (like the DSP-1 or SuperFX chips) to boost performance.

Pretty incredible feat, wouldn't you say?

There are some major differences between this game and the original, though - it's not a "faithful" port so much as it is a good facsimile. The story is different, the level layouts have been simplified, and a lot of stuff had to be changed to placate Nintendo's censors, but we now have an auto-map feature, new weapons (the RPG and the flamethrower) and powerups, and a few music tracks have been brought over from Spear of Destiny.

Considering the SNES's relative lack of hardware muscle, nobody ever expected Wolfenstein 3D to be as smooth, fast, or pretty as the PC original. Most people, however, probably didn't expect it to come so close, either. This was the sort of game that stretched the legs of computers that cost ten times what a SNES deck did, after all. Many gamers got their first real taste of the FPS genre with this cart, I'm sure.

There's no reason to play this version today if all you're looking for is the pure Wolfenstein 3D experience, but it does make for an excellent time-capsule piece. In its time, Wolfenstein 3D was a phenomenal piece of work.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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