Although brutal, Wolf 3D's tone was positioned somewhere between video nasty and campy b-movie romp. The in-game Nazis were, after all, working on a series of biological experiments to add supernatural mutants to their ranks and swing the war in their favour. For those who made it that far, the encounter with Adolf Hitler, fully decked out in a dreadnought-style robotic carapace, was both hilarious and unnerving to behold. "Romero and I were always riffing off each other" says Tom, referring to this and some of Wolf 3D's other bizarre inclusions, "I designed the bosses and such, and always like humor in games. Things like that, and the secret 'we’re not wearing any pants' pic in there were my doing. I think Romero came up with the fart-deaths instead of screaming-deaths on the secret level."

Some may recall that Hall provided the voice of sinister agent Walton Simmons in Deus Ex, so it's no shock to learn that he'd previously put his vocal cords to good use in Wolf 3D. In both instances, financial pressure played a part: "[I] did a lot of the voices in Wolfenstein 3D. Sometimes it’s necessity – like at id, when you have no budget ... or you need so much voice acting [and] it’s so expensive, you look around the company (Deus Ex)." Despite being introduced to videogame voice acting via economic frugality, Tom says he always enjoys the chance to do a spot of emoting - "I actually did improv and acting in college, so I was happy to do that a little bit again." Even if things don't always go quite according to plan: "I did a temp for Gretel Grosse (the boss for Episode 5) that we meant to replace…. And we forgot… and it shipped with my obviously-not-female, badly pronounced German. It’s pretty rough. [And] please, may I never do half of the sound effects with my mouth, like I did for Rise of the Triad!"

Sharing und Caring

For all its innovation, Wolf 3D owed a lot to the Shareware model of distribution, which allowed id to introduce the title to a great number of people in a relatively short space of time. Tom tells me that it was Scott Miller of Apogee/3D Realms who dreamt up the system used by id: "[He] came up with the shareware trilogy idea, which was really smart. He called it the 'Miller Model': get one free, get two when you pay for ‘em. id was a success following that model." As he goes on to explain, this model offered far more than a standard demo while also dangling the enticing carrot of a gaming bargain, "It’s much more appealing than just a demo, because you get one complete experience, and when you pay, you get TWO episodes – kind of appeals to the commercial mentality of 'Act NOW, and we’ll send you TWO for the SAME PRICE!'" This episodic-style release system could even be seeing something of a renaissance, with adventure gaming specialists Telltale Games in particular following a similar model (albeit without the first episode being a freebie at this stage.)

In summing up the success of Wolf 3D, Tom states it plainly: "It was just the genesis of the first-person shooter. It started a genre, and sold 10 times as much as other shareware titles. I think it could have inspired some folks to start making games, now that they could be so in-your-face and intense." When I ask him whether he feels Wolfenstein 2009 can hope to do justice to such an influential forefather his response is diplomatic, "Well, I like it when games really try to do cool new things. But it’s really hard to innovate to the level of a whole new genre or type of thing."

This respect for new design appears to have contributed to his eventual decision to part company with id. "We were finishing off the shareware episode of DOOM, but we’d made the same game over and over again (Catacombs 3D, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny) and I wanted to innovate a bit more in DOOM (crazy huh?)" Tom recalls, "I just wanted to have a little bit of story at the start and end, like 'Aliens' has, so it deepens your experience a bit, add some active environment dangers, some other things."

"Anyway, it was just creative differences as they say. DOOM of course turned out brilliant, stellar and all that. I was just making Heretic or Duke Nukem 3D in my mind while folks just wanted some cool levels in this amazing technology. It was bound to happen eventually, they just kinda kept making the same game – I woulda gone crazy." That said, he still has high regard for the potential at id, "I’m really excited to see their new stuff when they break out of the FPS genre. Lotsa brilliant folks over there."

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