Wolfenstein 3D's winding journey from pitch to release

gamedeveloper.com:

There are legitimately few games and studios as groundbreaking as Wolfenstein 3D by id Software, the early 1990s PC hit from which many now-staples of the industry, from first-person games, episodic content packages, and the concept of speedrunning, were born. This year, at GDC 2022, studio founder and design icon John Romero gave attendees a complex breakdown of the game's path to development, revealing key insights into the process of this historical title's journey from casual idea to completion. 

The first part of Romero's talk detailed the humble origins of Wolfenstein 3D, from their start as a small studio in Madison, Wisconsin, to the game's near-purchase by Sierra Entertainment to its later release after the team's move to Dallas, Texas. The play-by-play of how the game's pieces came together is a fascinating case study on what was essentially the start of the first-person shooter genre.

Id Software was a busy company in the early 1990s; as Romero tells the audience, in the last half of 1991, the studio started and shipped five games. It was after several months of work on Commander Keen 4, 5, and 6, having just finished a prototype with parallax backgrounds, that Romero declared to his team, "I don't want to make another set of games." Adrian Carmack agreed. Sensing mutiny, creative director Tom Hall pitched a "more advanced version of Hover Tank 1's premise, but with you walking around in first-person", which Romero says immediately inspired a new idea: to do a new version of the classic Castle Wolfenstein from 1981. "And that idea won instant approval."

Development began in mid-January of 1992, using a Catacomb 3D engine, which was in 16-color EGA mode. Adrian Carmack, the studio artist, set about making 16-color