Apocalypse Then – Rise of the Triad: Dark War

15 Years of ROTT!

I talked about it the other day, and here it is. Today it the fifteenth anniversary of one my favourite FPSs from the 90’s: ROTT, or Rise of the Triad. The full version of ROTT, known as Rise of the Triad: Dark War was released on the 17th of February, in 1995.

It feels just like yesterday that we all celebrated the tenth anniversary, with 3D Realms releasing the “ROTT goodies pack” for free which included a lot of cool stuff, like pictures, MIDIs, sounds from the game, maps, and other stuff.

Now, not everybody is familiar with this game, and has been branded infamously as “one of those games that time forgot”. Initially is was meant to be a sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, a game by id Software, except this time developed by Apogee (now 3D Realms) by the team known as the DIPS (Developers of Incredible Power), and even went under the working title of Wolfenstein 3D II: Rise of the Triad. This idea was cancelled though, and the title became a standalone game, although remnants of the original design stuck, like the Triads, uniforms, and weapons.

The game featured an enhanced or heavily modified Wolfenstein 3D engine (some people think it was an early incarnation of the Build engine, but Tom Hall said after the game was released, he wished he had gone with the build engine instead). The game featured gameplay similar to Wolf 3D, with collecting of Ankhs and other items, but brought so much more interesting and humourous additions to the game, like powerups, smart enemies, and not to mention you could choose from five people to play as, all members of the H.U.N.T. (High-risk United Nations Task-force), which all had different attributes and voices too. Their mission was too investigate a cult lead by the maniacal El Oscuro (actually it was Tom Hall, just like with the dev team).

ROTT also introduced some things to the FPS genre that people don’t often credit. It had alternate fire modes for some weapons, which usually meant the player had to hold in the mouse button for an extended period to achieve this. It had a more accurate and realistic approach to missile based weaponry, unlike Doom, which was ironically the game that garnered more attention than this game, as well as the sequel, Doom II. Gibs also featured heavily in the game.

More recently, an iPhone port of the game was made available on iTunes, and even the expansion, Extreme ROTT will be out soon.

Apocalypse Then – Rise of the Triad: Dark War