Is the Super Nintendo version of Wolfenstein 3D a sanitized fever dream, like discovering your favorite slasher film has been re‑cut for Saturday‑morning TV, or a bona‑fide classic that taught console kids to love corridors? Trick question: it’s both, plus the weird cousin who shows up uninvited, hands you a chaingun, and then squeaks something about “giant albino rats.” Underrated? I say yes, because almost everyone wrote it off once Doom stormed the playground a year later. Overrated? Not even remotely; nobody carves marble statues to celebrate censored cartridge art. Essential? If you grew up on pads instead of keyboards, this was your first taste of 3‑D mayhem, ESRB “Mature 17+” label and all (take that, parental locks). Negligible? Only if you think flamethrowers running on fuel cans that look like orange juice cartons are negligible, and I refuse to inhabit that chilly timeline.
Historical Context
Picture late winter 1994: Super Metroid is two sneezes away, NBA Jam is ripping living‑room speakers with “HE’S ON FIRE!”, and Mortal Kombat II rumor mills insist Nintendo might finally allow actual claret to splatter. Into this caffeinated circus waddles Wolfenstein 3D for SNES, published by Imagineer after id Software pulled an all‑nighter three‑week port job because the original contractor stalled (the corporate equivalent of speed‑running your homework at 3 a.m.). Nintendo, still bruised from 1993 Senate hearings, demanded surgical censorship: every swastika swapped for lightning‑bolt icons, Hitler’s moustache sent on vacation, dogs mutated into horse‑sized sewer rats whose screech could wake the dead, and possibly your grandma. (Yes, these rodents will be our white‑furred narrative glue.)
The port’s campaign isn’t a simple chop‑job; it’s a bespoke remix called “2nd Encounter,” thirty condensed maps cherry‑picked from the original PC sixty and massaged to fit console RAM without imploding. It shipped first in Japan on 10February1994 under the subtitle The Claw of Eisenfaust, then marched into North America in March and Europe later that spring. To a cartridge‑only kid like me, that arrival felt illicit, Blockbuster kept it behind the counter next to Doom and, inexplicably, Bazooka Blitzkrieg, as though Mode‑7 rockets and de‑Nazified Nazis shared the same moral danger zone.
Mechanics
Fire up the cart and the title screen greets you with colors that look laundered on gentle cycle. Press Start, and the engine, rewritten around binary space partitioning instead of ray‑casting because SNES’s 3.58MHz brain needed all the coffee it could slurp, pushes textured walls while faking patterned floors and ceilings in software, not hardware Mode 7 (the poor PPU never gets that day off). The illusion still dazzles: hallways stretch like infinite airport carpet, and turning corners feels just jerky enough to remind you no extra coprocessor is hiding under the hood.
Controls demand finger yoga: D‑pad to move, L/R shoulder buttons to strafe (thankfully inverted? Sure, if you like spraining thumbs), B for fire, A to open doors. Within minutes you uncover the console‑exclusive overhead automap, a wire‑grid blueprint floating in the UI like Tron’s blueprint fetish, the first time Blazkowicz ever enjoyed an in‑engine minimap. Rhetorical question: did I spend more time ogling that map than actually fighting guards? Self‑answer: yes, because discovering secret push‑walls becomes a cartographic scavenger hunt, and I’m a nerd who laminates dungeon maps for fun.
Speaking of fights, let’s talk arsenal. The PC quartet, knife, pistol, machine gun, chaingun, returns, but the SNES cart ups the ridiculous with two exclusive room‑clearers:
- Flamethrower – belches pixelated napalm, crackling like a VHS tape on fast‑forward. Fuel cans litter the levels; each slurp inches the ammo counter toward a colossal cap of 299 (triple the DOS limit).
- Rocket Launcher – chunky sprite the size of a French baguette, firing pine‑green warheads that explode into screen‑wide strobe flashes. Rocket crates top you up, and yes, splash damage will nuke a rat into fluffy confetti, as satisfying as microwave popcorn.
Fire both simultaneously? Sadly, no dual‑wielding (BJ hasn’t mastered eldritch wrist strength). But swap mid‑firefight and you’ll feel like a Super‑FX chip sneaked in through the back door.
Enemies follow the censorship memo. Gray guards shout pseudo‑German gibberish, blue‑uniform elites jangle keycards, and the end‑boss “Staatmeister”, a legally distinct Hitler clone sporting a ketchup‑colored jumpsuit, switches to mecha‑suit Phase 2 because boss fights without costume changes are so 1992. In place of dogs, the aforementioned albino sewer rats scuttle on hind legs, squeaking like a 28.8k modem mid‑handshake. Fun fact: dataminers found the original dog sprites untouched in the ROM, contraband locked in Nintendo’s attic. (I’ve seen modders patch them back in; I prefer the rats. They’re meme‑tier.)
Level geometry remains orthogonal labyrinths of locked doors and secret booze‑rooms, but the new map order freshens pace: you’ll burn through Episode‑style chapters in under an hour if you know the warp keys. Speedrunners love a quirk called RatBounce, where eating damage from a rodent nudges BJ’s hitbox through a soldier, physics jank that slices seconds off PBs. Try explaining to your Twitch chat that vermin are a legitimate strat while your flamethrower turns corridors into a fondue fountain.
Audio? Bobby Prince’s militant MIDI marches were rearranged for the SNES SPC chip into something that sounds like Mario Paint cosplaying as military parade: snare rolls converted to clacky woodblocks, basslines fuzzed out, melodramas brightened so my mom thought I was playing Pilotwings. My favorite track? The secret‑level loop that somehow channels Seinfeld’s slap bass, immersion shattered, comedy amplified.
Legacy and Influence
Why does this cartridge still matter three decades later (aside from serving as a quality rat meme repository)? Two pillars:
Technical trailblazer. By proving a vanilla SNES could fake a first‑person shooter without a Super FX co‑processor, Wolfenstein 3D laid plumbing for later console ports. Sculptured Software took notes when they tackled Doom SNES, their engine bolted a Super FX2 on top, but the conceptual “yes, it’s possible” came from this rat‑chewed trailblazer. Rare’s early GoldenEye prototypes likewise mined the lesson: restrictive hardware isn’t a prison, it’s a puzzle box begging to be lock‑picked.
Censorship time capsule. The cartridge is a museum exhibit of Nintendo’s early‑’90s moral panic. Between Mortal Kombat’s gray sweat and ContraIII’s renamed alien “Red Falcon,” Wolfenstein 3D SNES stands as the most dramatic makeover. When the ESRB launched later in 1994, the game still carried an M for Mature 17+ badge, proving that giant rats and red lightning bolts weren’t enough to placate ratings boards. It’s delicious irony: the watered‑down port earned the same adult label as its blood‑spattered PC parent.
Commercially, print‑run gossip pegs North American copies at roughly 60 000, far fewer than mass‑market evergreen carts, hence today’s collectors selling boxed sets for small‑estate‑car money. That figure remains unverified (magazine scuttlebutt, not SEC filings), but the scarcity feels right; I rarely saw more than one copy in rental stores.
For modders, the SNES source code seeded other console versions: Atari Jaguar, 3DO, even Mac’s Second Encounter. Every one of those descendants kept the flamethrower and rocket launcher, proof that once you hand BJ Blazkowicz pyro toys, you never take them away.
And yes, modern speedrunning marathons still trot the cartridge out. Watch a runner chain clip glitches through pillars, fuel‑hop over alarms, and leverage rat RNG like WallStreet quant traders. The world record sits comfortably under fifteen minutes, which is only slightly longer than it took id Software to port the game in the first place.
Closing Paragraph+ Score
In the end, Wolfenstein 3D on SNES is equal parts museum piece, science experiment, and Saturday‑morning cartoon remake of a midnight grindhouse flick. It’s the chili dog where someone swapped the chili for mild salsa, then sprinkled Pop Rocks on top, unexpectedly tasty, undeniably weird, and liable to explode if you chew too hard. For historians, it deserves shelf space between Star Fox and SuperMetroid as the jittery toddler step toward console FPS greatness; for purists, DOSBox still beckons with uncut blood and German barks. Me? I keep coming back for those shrieking white rats and that overhead automap that makes me feel like BJ’s personal GPS. Final verdict: 7 / 10, or, measured in rodent squeals per minute, an ear‑melting 11.