Wolfenstein 3D (Mac)

The Macintosh version of Wolfenstein 3D was created by MacPlay, at least at the time a division of Interplay, and released in October 1994. It was based on the Atari Jaguar version, which in turn was based on the SNES version. Thus, it inherits:

Inheritance

from the SNES

• Automap.
• New weapons: a flame thrower and a rocket launcher, using special ammo.
• Different bosses: Gretel Grosse was turned into a guy with the unlikely name Trans Grosse, Otto Giftmacher and General Fettgesicht replaced by the Übermutant and Death Knight.
• Slightly different level design.
• Different music. Most notable, there is no Horst Wessel-Lied at the beginning.

from the Atari Jaguar

• The game renders at resolutions up to 640×480.
• Tiles are 128x128, not 64x64.
• Larger sprites, but front-view only, so enemies face you all the time. They do not even have a special stand-still frame. They balance on one leg when standing.
• Consequently, guards do not patrol, nor can you sneak up on them from behind.
• New items: a backpack increasing the amount of ammo you can carry, ammo boxes containing 25 rounds. (May already have been in the SNES version, I'm not sure.)
• Difficulty level affects only damage taken and starting ammo, not the number of enemies.

System Requirements

Officially, a 25 MHz 68030 is "strongly recommended", and you are discouraged to try running it on System 6. I did, of course.

The size of the rendering window is not adjustable, but you can choose between three resolutions, 320×200, 512×384, and 640×480. To access this menu it is absolutely necessary to have a keyboard with an Esc key.

The bad thing is that 320×200 means having just a tiny window at the center of the screen on most Macs. There is an extension called Wolfenzoom that fixes that. It is a pixel doubler that blows up 320×200 to 640×400, just with a coarser resolution. I have not tested it yet.

Macintosh IIcx, 6.0.7

Ran surprisingly well, though only at 320×200, and I turned off the music.

Performa 630, 7.5.3

Ran very smooth in 320×200, and reasonably well in 512×384. I did not try higher resolutions.

Performa 6400, 8.5.1

Now we are talking…

I do not really recommend playing it on anything less than a PowerPC.

Links

Though Interplay complained about the sales, Wolfenstein 3D seems popular among Macintosh users. There are a number of fan pages dedicated to it, more, I think, than there are for Marathon.

• Wolfenstein 3D Archive: While concentrating on the Mac version, this site bears lots of interesting information about the game in general. It has recently been expanded to include the PC version, and is a very good source for version differences. Though it does not give you a fair warning, you need to have JavaScript enabled to view it. Without, it will look very, very strange.
• Laz's Wolf3D Page, while not relying on JavaScript, features a frameset that makes viewing at resolutions smaller than 1024×768 rather difficult. You will find all kinds of utilities here. You will often get 404 errors, just hit refresh or click on the offending link again. The site is complete, but takes a while to come out sometimes.
• The Wolfenmania Chronicle is dedicated to the promotion of Wolfenstein 3D, the Macintosh Version. It has the best history of the game series I found.