It garnered numerous awards and sold over 250,000 copies by the end of 1995. Wolfenstein 3D was a critical and commercial success and is considered one of the greatest video games ever made. An additional episode, Spear of Destiny, was released as a stand-alone retail title through FormGen. The game was released through Apogee in two sets of three episodes under the shareware model, in which the first episode is released for free to drive interest in paying for the rest.

Wolfenstein 3D features artwork by Adrian Carmack and sound effects and music by Bobby Prince. He and designer Tom Hall designed the game, built on Carmack's engine, to be fast and violent, unlike other computer games on the market at the time. After a design session prompted the company to shift from the family-friendly Keen to a more violent theme, programmer John Romero suggested remaking the 1981 stealth shooter Castle Wolfenstein as a fast-paced action game. In mid-1991, programmer John Carmack experimented with making a fast 3D game engine by restricting the gameplay and viewpoint to a single plane, producing Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3-D as prototypes. Wolfenstein 3D was the second major independent release by id Software, after the Commander Keen series of episodes. The player traverses each of the game's levels to find an elevator to the next level or kill a final boss, fighting Nazi soldiers, dogs, and other enemies with knives and a variety of guns.

In Wolfenstein 3D, the player assumes the role of Allied spy William 'B.J.' Blazkowicz during World War II as he escapes from the Nazi German prison Castle Wolfenstein and carries out a series of crucial missions against the Nazis. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game Castle Wolfenstein, and is the third installment in the Wolfenstein series. Wolfenstein 3D is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen.

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