Wolfenstein made Lucy Liu cry

If Ned Flanders let his sons play a videogame, this would be it. Super Noah’s Ark 3D is a Christian-friendly first-person shooter built with Wolfenstein 3-D’s game engine. Instead of BJ Blazkowicz, you play as Noah. Bloodthirsty Nazis are replaced by packs of wild critters. Instead of filling enemies with lead, you collect bits of feed to lob at aggressive animals in order to tame them. None of the animals die, of course. They just fall asleep so that Noah can cart the pacified critters away later.

Above: We thought Wolfenstein 3-D’s dogs were vicious until we got a face full of goat ass in Super 3D Noah’s Ark

Super 3D Noah’s Ark was not licensed by Nintendo – and required that you attach it to an actual SNES game (kind of like a Game Genie) in order to play it. Wild internet rumors suggest that id Software gave Wisdom Tree – the developers of Super 3D Noah’s Ark – the Wolfenstein 3-D game engine in order to “get back” at Nintendo for heavily censoring their game.

Above: The PC version of Super 3D Noah’s Ark is still available onWisdom Tree’s website. While you’re there, you can purchase a copy of Jesus in Space

Nazis, Swastika’s, and a mechanical Hitler - with way too many chainguns - weren’t the only controversial references in Wolfenstien 3-D. It also included the Nazi Party’s anthem, Horst-Wessel-Lied, as the game’s theme music. Wolfenstein 3-D’s soundtrack was a far cry from the original anthem and didn’t include any of the lyrics. Here’s a brief taste of what patriotism from the wrong side of the tracks sounded like:

An English translation of Horst-Wessel-Lied’s second verse:

Clear the streets for the brown battalions.
Clear the streets for the stormtroop men!
Millions already look hopefully up to the Swastika.
The day is breaking for freedom and bread!

And what about the bloops and beeps playing beneath the soundtrack? It’s a secret Morse code message that says:

Above: “DE” is shorthand for “from.” Now you know

Players who made their way through the challenging pushwall maze in Episode: 2, Level 8 found an unusual sign that said, “Call Apogee Say Aardwolf.”

Apogee’s Joe Siegler shed some life on the "Aardwolf" sign. Here’s what he had to say:

"Call Apogee and say Aardwolf." It's a sign that to this day is something that I get asked about a lot. This is a sign that appears on a wall in a particularly nasty maze in Episode 2 Level 8 of Wolfenstein 3D. The sign was to be the goal in a contest Apogee was going to have, but almost immediately after the game's release, a large amount of cheat and mapping programs were released. With these programs running around, we felt that it would have been unfair to have the contest and award a prize. The sign was still left in the game, but in hindsight, probably should have been taken out. To this day, Apogee gets letters and phone calls and asking what Aardwolf is, frequently with the question, "Has anyone seen this yet?"

Above: A real aardwolf in its natural habitat

Most people know about the handy ‘MLI’ cheat. Pressing the ‘M,’ ‘L,’ and ‘I’ keys at the same time topped off your ammunition, gave you the gold and silver keys, maxed out your health, and awarded you with the chaingun. Using this uber cheat also dragged your score down to zero and added ten minutes to your time.

But did you know that ‘MLI’ actually stands for Machine Language Interface? This was id Software’s way of tipping their hats to the ProDOS operating system for the Apple II.

Above: The ‘MLI’ cheat may have sapped your score and screwed up your time, but it sure was handy

Did you know that work on Spear of Destiny was hampered by the presence of two fun fighting games in id Software’s office? According to The Official Hint Book of Spear of Destiny, Fatal Fury for the NEO-GEO and Street Fighter II for the SNES were major distractions at id’s office when they were supposed to be working on Spear of Destiny.

Above: Fatal Fury was jokingly referred to as “Fatal Productivity” at id Software

We’re not used to seeing such geek-friendly backstories in the television show, Ugly Betty. But Grace Chen (played by Lucy Liu) dropped some uber Wolfenstein references in Derailed, the 17th episode in the show’s first season. Lucy Liu may have mispronounced Wolfenstein as “Wolfensteen,” but it’s hard to hate on a show that let Liu create some sexual tension while dropping the W-bomb three times in a row.

Above: Hear Lucy Liu say “Wolfensteen”

How it all went down:
- Daniel Meade (Eric Mabius) stood up Grace Chen (Lucy Liu) when they were in college.
- With no date, the forlorn Grace Chen is forced to celebrate New Year’s by herself playing “Wolfensteen” on her computer.
- Grace never got over her lonely night with Wolfenstein. When Daniele tries to hire her to be his lawyer years later, she tells him how she spent her lonely night, screaming “Wolfensteen! Wolfensteen! WOLFENSTEEN!”

You are about to see the strangest Easter egg we’ve seen in a Wolfenstein game. First, you’ll need to access floor 18 in Spear of Destiny. If you don’t feel like playing through the whole game again, you can quickly get there by adding ‘-debugmode’ to the command line when starting the game. Then just hit the ‘TAB’ and ‘E’ key to skip to floor 18.

If you’re playing this PC classic on Steam, working ‘-debugmode’ into the command line will require a few adjustments to the game’s files. But a quick trip to Steam’s forums will help you make the necessary changes in a jiffy.

Once you reach floor 18, head to the menu and select ‘Change View.’ Shrink the screen size down a notch, press ‘ENTER’ and then hold down the ‘I’ and ‘D’ keys. You’ll start to hear a funky groove and will soon be treated to an outrageously post-eighties picture of the id team.

OR… you can just scroll down a few pixels and see the Easter egg image for yourself.

Above: Pants have been ruining the game development process for years. Thank god id knew what they were doing. But wait…

Above: John Carmack gets “crazy” by unleashing a discrete Mona Lisa-like smile

Well, it looks like they were wearing pants after all! Here’s another version we found on John Romero’s blog at www.rome.ro. According to Romero, this picture was taken in Mesquite, TX at the same time as the one shown in the game (above). This was supposed to be a “crazy shot,” which wasn’t used. Notice that Carmack’s idea of a “crazy” pose is to smile ever so slightly. Then again, that blue outfit with the hot pink trim is pretty “crazy” enough as is.

Mar 9, 2009

Read their exclusive hands-on preview of the next Wolfenstein game

Third time lucky for the Third Reich