Talked about this a little in your episode 51 blog post, but wow - Wolfenstein 3D. I bet that audio podcast will be amazing. Are you going to setup an Armchair Arcade podcast on iTunes and just dump the audio in there? Perhaps you might as well just get the logo, description and everything on iTunes so you can roll out items in the future.

I think Romero made a lot of good points about what made Wolf3d work. I have to agree with him. VGA was really just getting mass adoption in the games industry at that point. While many displays had VGA capabilities, it seems like things were still getting released in EGA/VGA. Obviously, a lot of the id/Apogee games as well as Sierra games were EGA/VGA. Wolf3d presented a lot of things at once - graphics, speed, sound, and intensity. I couldn't remember feeling that way about a PC game before Wolf3d came out. There were plenty of good games, and Star Trek 25th Anniversary certainly dazzled VGA monitors, but Wolf3d really amped things up.

One thing Romero didn't mention specifically in the interview we saw in ep 52 was the face of the player in the bottom center of the screen. I think watching BJ's face as he took damage just *really* added to the intensity of the game. You have a percentage on the bar at the bottom that defines your health, but the face instills a bit more of a fear of dying. I mean when you get down to the teens, his face is pretty messed up! Very nice work. Wolf3d is one of those games I wish I could go back and experience again for the first time. It really was just unlike anything else I had played at the time.

Did Romero talk about the aardwolf E2L8 level of Wolf3d? It was an Apogee thing more than a id thing, but how interesting...

The death animation of Hitler is something else fun to talk about. Heh - also the "deathcam" was hilarious. The idea of having an instant replay of a boss's death up close is just awesome.

Thanks again, Matt.