Wolfenstein 3D was released on 5 May 1992, developed by id Software and published as shareware by Apogee Software. B.J. Blazkowicz, a prisoner in Castle Wolfenstein, shoots his way out through sixty levels of brightly coloured corridors. It was not the first FPS, but it is the one that established the genre: John Carmack built a raycasting technique able to draw textured walls at full speed on a plain 286, while the competition was still struggling to animate wireframe scenery.
Apogee's shareware model did the rest: the first episode, Escape from Wolfenstein, circulated freely and ended up on every hard drive of the era, with the other five episodes sold by mail order. A standalone prequel, Spear of Destiny, came out the same year from FormGen. The success directly funded the development of Doom, eighteen months later.
id Software released the engine source code in 1995, later relicensed under the GPL. Recalbox uses ECWolf, a modern source port by Braden "Blzut3" Obrzut derived from Wolf4SDL: it preserves the original look and pace while adding mechanisms borrowed from ZDoom, notably proper support for mods and for the other games built on the engine. ECWolf needs its own data file, ecwolf.pk3, which Recalbox provides.
| Studio | id Software (published by Apogee Software) |
| Year of release | 1992 |
| Engine | Wolfenstein 3D engine (raycasting), replayed by ECWolf |
| Game type | FPS |
| Port licence | GPL-2.0 |
| Controller | Mandatory |
Recalbox ships the Wolfenstein 3D shareware episode already installed on this system, along with the
ecwolfdata file and the ApogeeCATALOG. See the Included games page.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro ecwolf | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
ECWolf is the only emulator for this system and is therefore used by default on every machine. Netplay is not available on this system and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled by the core.
The ECWolf libretro core is driven by controller only. The original menus, mouse, keyboard and number-key weapon selection are not carried over: everything is configured from the core options in RetroArch.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/ports/Wolfenstein 3D/
Supported extensions: .pk3 .exe .zip .7z
ECWolf needs two things in that folder: its data file ecwolf.pk3, and a game data set, identified by the extension shared by all of its files. The folder shipped by Recalbox contains the shareware episode, whose files all carry the .WL1 extension:
/recalbox/share/roms/ports/Wolfenstein 3D/
├── ecwolf.pk3 ← ECWolf engine data (required)
├── WOLF3D.EXE ← the "Wolfenstein 3D" entry in the game list
├── CATALOG.EXE ← the period Apogee catalogue (not a game)
├── AUDIOHED.WL1
├── AUDIOT.WL1
├── GAMEMAPS.WL1
├── MAPHEAD.WL1
├── VGADICT.WL1
├── VGAGRAPH.WL1
├── VGAHEAD.WL1
├── VSWAP.WL1
├── ORDER.FRM
├── READ1ST.TXT
└── VENDOR.DOC
To play another game built on the engine, copy all of its data files into this same folder, next to ecwolf.pk3. ECWolf identifies games by their file extension:
| Game | Data file extension |
|---|---|
| Wolfenstein 3D (shareware) | .WL1 |
| Wolfenstein 3D (full version, 6 episodes) | .WL6 |
| Spear of Destiny (and its mission packs) | .SOD |
| Spear of Destiny (demo) | .SDM |
| Super 3D Noah's Ark | .N3D |
Also add the game's original executable (.exe): that is what creates the matching entry in the Recalbox game list, since data files are not listed directly.
If several data sets sit side by side in the folder, ECWolf shows a picker at startup so you can choose which one to launch.
.zipand.7zarchives are accepted, but each one must contain exactly one file. Since Wolfenstein data sets are made of several files, it is better to drop them in uncompressed.