Wolfenstein RPG

Wolfenstein RPG from 2008 proves that in the era before smartphones, id Software was looking for ways to get its brands onto the mobile phones of the day as well. The game for Java ME and BREW was developed in collaboration with id Software by studio Fountainhead Entertainment, which specialized precisely in porting major brands into the limited world of feature phones.

Instead of the action shooter the name might suggest, it's a turn-based RPG with a first-person view of a grid-based maze - a mechanic much closer to Wizardry than to the original Wolfenstein. Playing as agent B.J. Blazkowicz, the player moves through a Nazi fortress full of occult experiments, collects weapons and upgrades, and fights in simple but brisk turn-based battles adapted for control via a numeric keypad. Progress between the fortress's floors is divided into short, self-contained sections, so the game could be picked up for just a few minutes on a bus ride and you could still make progress in it. The small scope and short missions match what phones of that time were actually good for - playing in short breaks, not for long gaming sessions.

Wolfenstein RPG followed up on Doom RPG, released a year earlier by the same pair of studios, and confirmed that in the second half of the decade id Software was systematically testing how its action brands would hold up when converted into a turn-based RPG genre on hardware that wasn't up to a real shooter. Both titles today serve more as an interesting footnote in the company's history than as central entries in their series, yet they show that the developers took even limited mobile platforms seriously and weren't just going for a simplified promotional toy for the brand.

An iOS version came out a year later, showing the concept also held up on touch devices, but the 2008 mobile version is the original one they built upon.

Why play it: For players curious what an RPG combining two legendary brands looked like on a feature phone, before the rise of smartphones.