If you know anything about the history of id Software, you know how 1992's Wolfenstein 3D helped establish the company's leadership in the burgeoning first-person shooter genre, leading directly to subsequent hits like Doom and Quake . But only the serious id Software nerds remember Catacomb 3D , id's first-person adventure game that directly preceded and inspired work on Wolfenstein 3D .

Now, nearly 35 years after Catacomb 3D 's initial release, id co-founder John Romero brought the company's founding members together for an informative retrospective video on the creation of the oft-forgotten game. But the pioneering game—which included mouse support, color-coded keys, and shooting walls to find secrets—almost ended up being a gimmicky dead end for the company.

Texture maps and "undo" animation

Catacomb 3D was a follow-up to id's earlier Catacomb , which was a simplified clone of the popular arcade hit Gauntlet . As such, the 3D game still has some of that "quarter eater" mentality that was not very fashionable in PC gaming at the time, as John Carmack remembered.

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