Chapter 1 - Castle Smurfenstein: Wait, WHAT???

You may have heard that the first 3-D shooter title was not really Doom, but a PC game released in 1992 called Wolfenstein 3D.

But that in itself was actually a sequel to an Apple II game.

Apple II titles aren't covered on this site as often as they should be, despite the fact that they're every bit just as weird, if not weirder, than what he witnessed on NES.

There is currently an FTP site from heaven that offers every single Apple II program ever made for download. It is there that you can pick up Castle Wolfenstein, the first game in the series, where you are a US soldier navigating a maze of one-screen rooms and killing all the Nazis you can find before they kill you. In the beginning there was a moral issue involved with the murder of virtual brethren. This is how the first FPS justified killing humans...they're Nazis, and who likes those?

Wolfenstein 3D had its loophole, and that allowed it to be the very first FPS. Or I'm guessing.
The Wolfenstein series has had many spinoffs, among them its recent PC sequel, and Super Noah's Ark 3D, which used the same engine and areas but replaced the weapons with apples and the Nazis with angry cooped-up livestock. Much has been made of Super Noah's Ark but really, this isn't the worst hack of a Wolfenstein game that has been sold on the market. There's something even stranger, and it's what you came here to read about.

here is one thing you must understand about the Apple II computer: there are basically 2 kinds of programs: originals, and rip-offs. The originals you will not run into as often as you will the rip-offs, but fortunately, the moochers had some very odd ideas. Prepare yourself for the first product to rise to the challenge of leeching off the big bucks of Castle Wolfenstein...Castle Smurfenstein.

You might be saying, "When he says Smurf, does he mean..." Yes I do. Castle Smurfenstein is basically the exact same game, except the Nazis have been replaced with Smurfs, and you still gotta blow them away. I guess it still works...Smurfs, Nazis, what's the difference...
After a short credits screen, which runs a 10-second Static-like sound clip of the Smurfs singing their happy song we witness the Story of the Game.
And to get it out of the way, let’s look at the story:

"During the cold winter of 1946 former leaders of the third Reich met in Argentina to discuss plans for regaining their former glory. They knew that for any plan to succeed other nations would have to lose their will to fight. They decided to create a cartoon character to embody the ideas of niceness and peacefulness and called it a SMURF.
SMURF stood for Secret Military Underground Resistance Force
They planned to infect the children of enemy nations with their peaceful ideas. And so it began. Now in the present their plan is almost complete, and they are starting their propaganda campaign in the bastion of freedom, the United States of America.
You, Smurfbutcher Bob, were captured while trying to destroy the Smurf’s precartoon ancestors. You have been taken to their Ontario headquarters, Castle Smurfenstein, for interrogation You must escape, kill as many of the blue bastards as possible, and steal the plans to operation Smurfkreig. If you fail, hordes of Smurfs will sweep across the world spewing peace slogans and pumping people full of bullets. When you were being brought to the castle you were able to talk one of your Canadian guards into giving you his gun (not too hard, eh). You also saw some Smurfy Security guards with bulletproof vests and some smurfberry bombs which could be used as grenades to blow the Smurfs into infinity. You can’t fail:
YOU MUST ESCAPE
YOU MUST WARN THE WORLD
YOU MUST ESCAPE IN TIME FOR DINNER."

If THAT isn’t the greatest Story ever Told, I don’t Know WHAT is! *Thumbs up like an Idiot with a Goofy Smile*

The walls are an enemy because if you walk into one, no matter how slow, even if you touch it, the game thinks you bashed your skull into it and you die. So never touch a wall. The ammunition boxes are an enemy because, again, if you touch one you die. I was thinking, maybe you have to shoot them first, then the ammo will appear and YOU can use it. Nope. Of course, the one you were thinking about is obviously the Smurf, who will notice you and capture you in 1 second if he sees you. If even one Smurf touches your body, you lose the whole game (in all other cases, you get 3 lives). This is why it's so important to use your weapons...no wait; you can only fire them from your right arm! That's YOUR right. And for it to register as a hit, you have to be right next to the Smurf when you fight it! So in order to get rid of this Smurf, you have to maneuver around it while it's marching back and forth, making sure it doesn't see you...then plug it from its back, while it's still moving, before it turns around. Unless you're that little schizophrenic kid from "The Wizard," there's no way you'll ever do that. I don't know if Castle Wolfenstein was this messed up.
So we've established that killing the Smurfs is impossible. We've also established that if one sees you, it blasts over to you in 1 second before you can react. So, with all this said, I think I can excuse the fact that I only have screen grabs for 4 rooms.

Room One is Fairly Simple, Only One Smurf, and then there’s walls, Boxes, and the trip out. Simple and not much to say, it’s only a level to get used to movement and such.
ROOM TWO: If your run-away skills are good enough, you can make it to the stairs in that first room before the Smurf knows about it. But chances are, 9 times out of ten, that when you enter this next room you will instantly lose. Why? Look for yourself...the stairs end right where that Smurf's vision is. If he's not marching the other way at the moment, he'll get you right at the nanosecond the computer finishes drawing the screen. As you can see, I got lucky here. Of course, now I have to get through that door, which is also in his line of vision. Once I did, I was in....
ROOM THREE: From where I'm standing, I'm in no immediate danger from the Smurf across from me, because he can't seem to get through that blue laser. I'd go see if the laser is friendly or not, but I know better, since everything else in the game has killed me. I haven't talked about the controls, have I? Look down and pick out the 3X3 row of keys: QWE, ASD, and ZXC. Those function as your directional pad as a whole...of course, it's obviously lopsided. The button in the middle (S) makes Smurfbutcher Bob stop walking. You'll be using S a lot since pushing any other button makes him walk that direction forever. Believe it or not, this actually ISN'T the worst control I've had on an Apple II game. Back when I had one, I had a game called Ice Demons where, if you pushed left, the little guy went right, and vice versa. It doesn't get worse than that, people. I haven't seen a ROM of Ice Demons at all, so no screen of that for you.
Anyway, this screen is rather simple, so let's go to....
ROOM FOUR: Wow, miraculously, there are no Smurfs in here(but still deadly walls). This is the room where I found out the boxes could kill me, as I tried to open one while I was in here. I then went through that bottom opening and entered room 5, but was attacked by a Smurf in .003 seconds, and that ended everything. I didn't have much of a chance of getting back to room four, so that ends this session for the both of us.
I have three deciding factors in whether or not a game ends up reviewed on my Blogs. It has to be either an amazingly good game, an amazingly BAD game, or an amazingly WEIRD game. Castle Smurfenstein, in its infamy, fits all three. The concept can't be beat--you shoot Smurfs here (Even Though I like the Smurfs, the Concept as a rip-off was funny.) The game play is unbelievably bad, and the whole thing is off-da-hook weird. Through all this, though, you might have been asking: "If they were going to rip off Wolfenstein, why didn't they use the Ku Klux Klan instead? Nobody likes THEM either." Silly retro gamer...they couldn't use the KKK because that was already taken.

Klan Cookout (Google it) is a lot more fun than Castle Smurfenstein, albeit in a mindless way. Any game that gives you a flamethrower that flames 1/4 of the screen on every trigger-pull is a good game. This is pretty much all you do...you set advancing Klansmen on fire until one gets fast enough to make it to your side of the screen. This is what anyone who never owned this misses by skipping the world of Apple II.

BONUS: MINI RETRO MOMENT!
BRICK OUT (Apple II, 1979) is exactly like Breakout, except the first word is "Brick" and not "Break." Oh yeah, and it's sideways. I've always enjoyed a good Breakout game ever since the days in TAG where we used those clunky 70's computers called "PET" that stored programs on tape(cassette tape...it didn't get slower unless you count punch card). All of us lived for the mythic moment where someone in the computer lab would successfully clear the screen of bricks, and earn 5 extra balls. I witnessed it only once or twice in my lifetime. I have a shot of my screen clear in Brick Out. And don't ask why my name is "BURP."

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