Re: How many releases of Castle Wolfenstein were there for Apple II?

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

On May 10, 10:37 pm, Toinet <antoine.vig...@laposte.net> wrote:
>
> Thank you Mitchell. I did a disassembly of the demo once,
> commented the source and saw that it had all the features a
> game would require: joystick management ;-)
>
> We all know it is a simple hack and slash repetitive game but
> the animation on a stock GS is still impresssive. I hope we will
> see it one day just like Sim City (BB? Are you hearing us?)

If the GS version is like the one in the youtube video that
Mitchell linked I agree that it is technically impressive.
However, IMHO disassembling it to see how optimized the
video routines are is probably the most fun and use one
could get out of it.

The graphics are good - no doubt about it - and there is
a nice amount of splatter but the design is rotten:

The player sprite is often too far to the right border of
the screen making the game a trial and error affair which
means your success depends mainly on learning the level
by heart.
Not exactly much variety in the fighting leading to button
mashing - combined with hokey sword swishing sounds
(did they make that using the mouth?).
Random rolling barrels defy what's left of plausibility
and one can clearly see the bad collision detection.
etc. etc.

It reminds me a lot of the Shadow of the Beast series
by Psygnosis which are also beautifully looking games
on the Amiga. Technically somewhat impressive - but
not exactly the pinnacle of game design, too.

bye
Marcus