Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein

Today, I'm offering you two gems from the 8-bit era for the price of one—the very pioneers of all stealth games. If you love sneaky and cowardly beatdowns, preferably from behind or above, maybe hidden in a haystack, and if you've platinumed entire sagas like Assassin's Creed, Hitman, Max Payne, Metal Gear Solid, all the Batman Arkham "something" games, and Thief, then know that these gameplay dynamics existed even in the prehistoric days of home computers, and were a treat for us rookie Sunday ninjas.

The Stunning Intro Screen.

Before the Wolfenstein saga introduced William "B.J." Blazkowicz as the protagonist, debuting in the fabulous Wolfenstein 3D of 1992 by Id Software, another character with an undefined name starred in two 8-bit stealth games in the series: Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.

You can search corpses, but also the living
under threat, just like in the best of Assassin's Creed games.

The first game, born in 1981 for Apple II, was released in 1983 for the Commodore 64 and other machines of the time, and quickly became a top game. After all, how could it not be? The player must rely on an approach of avoiding confrontations, infiltrating a Nazi castle, and searching for secret documents. Guards are alerted by gunfire and will surrender, raising their hands if you point a gun at them, and you can even search them. It was the 1980s, if you catch my drift.

The second episode's screen—well...
better than the first!

But the developers at Muse Software aimed for a double and in 1984, they released Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, which increased the stealth complexity of the gameplay experience. In this second chapter, our Nazi-busting troublemaker, unsatisfied with the documents stolen in the previous episode, will infiltrate the infamous German castle to assassinate Hitler and end the war.

The player's available actions in Beyond Castle Wolfenstein are expanded compared to the first episode. You can: disguise yourself as a Nazi soldier or SS officer to pass unnoticed, kill soldiers with a gun or silently with a knife, hide bodies to prevent enemies from finding them and raising the alarm, find and disable the alarm control panel, obtain passes to avoid confrontations, bribe guards, pick locks by finding combinations, heal yourself if wounded, and finally, find the bomb that you will set near the room where Hitler is hiding with his Nazi officers.

We found the documents! Don't worry, they're in a random chest every time.
Now, we need to escape from this dump.

It's clear that with such a plethora of available actions, the extremely sparse graphics—even for the time—took a back seat in favor of the novelty of the gameplay dynamics. The sound, however, was an innovative gem. Silas Warner of Muse Software designed a small audio engine called 'The Voice', capable of producing rudimentary vocal digitizations. It wasn't uncommon, if caught by the guards while navigating the labyrinthine corridors of the castle, to hear a "halt" or a "Kommen Sie!" (come here), and the fantastic "aargh" groan they emitted after being hit by a weapon, though it sounded more like radio interference on the C64's tiny speaker.

Here's the famous mustache idolized by his ghostly officers in his bunker.
Our protagonist is ready to leave a little present, and that's not a shopping bag he's holding.

The AI of the low-ranking guards is generally that of a long-tailed macaque: scripted paths that halt if you enter their line of sight or shoot wildly like Billy the Kid, along with the not insignificant limitation of being unable to leave the screen they're on. The SS officers are smarter, and if they see you, they'll chase you throughout the game until you find a way to evade them. And since they also have bulletproof vests, you either have to empty an entire clip into them—like Romero's zombies—or throw a grenade, which is always a pleasant gift.

After playing them in the past on a real Commodore 64,
I’ve replayed them for you on a more convenient
PSP using a Commodore 64 emulator.

Overall, both games are playable and fluid in their event dynamics and can be completed in a short time, which was considered a flaw in longevity back then. But applied to what is now called vintage, it's certainly a plus, given the amount of material to go through to become a "Master Minstrel of Video Game History”.

The Verdict

Complex gameplay dynamics packed into a machine barely more advanced than a toaster (the C64)—if this isn't art, then tell me what is...

Pros:

• You get to kill Nazis (even Indiana Jones would approve...)
• If you have enough imagination to make up for the ancient graphics, you might even have a lot of fun.

Cons:

• If you don't have enough imagination... well, that's a con... even against yourself.
• The sound is extremely sparse, almost nonexistent, except for the groans of "The Voice."

Score	Rating
Commodore 64 Game	96%