The man who made Wolfenstein

Tragic

"Despite being on kidney dialysis, Warner continued to work until he was laid off in 2002. After that, his health failing and unable to work, he and Owen moved out of San Francisco. He spent his last years in Paradise and then Chico in California’s central valley.

“He fought so hard,” recalls Owen. “My one regret is that Silas didn’t have the financial acumen to see to it that he was well-paid for his work and for his intellectual property. Neither of us were especially good at that, which I regret, because it would have helped him at the end.” She says that they discussed trying to secure some claim on the Wolfenstein name, but were advised that the legal process would be too costly."

https://www.polygon.com/features/2019/12/24/21029936/castle-wolfenstein-silas-warner


(HAL_404 )

And this thread has brought up the desire to play Return to Castle Wolfenstein, again, for probably the 15th time, at least.

I've never had the opportunity to play the original Castle Wolfenstein Games on Apple ][/e/gs systems, and have always wanted to.
I'm shocked to find out that Silas Warner's wife, Keri, up until very recently, had a therapeutic horse ranch basically in my backyard (only a few hours away from where Far Cry 5 takes place ).

Heck, I have had the poster of his original game up on my wall for years now to serve as inspiration for retrocomputing:


I used to play Wolfenstein 3D back in 1992 on an Intel 80386 with my dad, and ironically enough, that helped to turn me to the passion I follow now, and I had never realized just who Silas Warner was.
Even though it has been years now, I hope he can rest in peace, and hope he knows of the countless people in the world who have been heavily influenced by his motivation, skills, talent, and passion.

Again, thank you for another wonderful article, erek, it is much appreciated.



Now I just need to get my hands on an Apple ][/e/gs with a copy of the original games!

Thank you for finding this well written and interesting story about the man who created Castle Wolfenstein. In a world of news snippets and short videos, it was awesome to read an in depth and fascinating story about a computing pioneer.

Escape From Castle Wolfenstein, as I thought it was called, was the first game I saw boot-up on my grandfathers Apple II+. The guy doing the booting up was a college kid who had brought my grandfather some software and was giving him some tutoring in how to use it, so not only is it the first game I saw boot up in glorious amber green at about 11" worth of CRT monitor, but it was also my first crack screen "What's a Pirate Bay BBS mean?".......Zenith, Beer Run, The Bilestoad.....Data East's Magic Ring, Aztek.....but Wolfenstein was amazing, a game that made you anxious, if you suddenly saw the SS guys marching on a new screen...jinkies. "Halt! Komenzein!".....

Damn-you thread.....giving me the feelz......+1

I guess I'm a pessimist, but id made Wolfenstein a thing. It looks like the only thing they really got from this was the name.

I thought it was a great read on a brilliant man. Silas Warner really needed a good agent though.

Wolfenstein 3D from id is what got me really into computer games. Pretty exclusive to FPS.

Thanks erek.