Like practically everyone who owned a PC in the early '90s, I tore through the shareware episode of *Wolfenstein 3D *shortly after it came out. At the time, the game’s mere existence seemed like a magic trick, offering a smooth-scrolling first-person perspective that was unlike pretty much anything I had ever seen. Strictly speaking, the game might have been ironically two-dimensional (lacking even the simulated gameplay “height” of follow-up *Doom*), but the sense of depth conveyed by the viewpoint was simply mind-blowing.

Coming back to *Wolfenstein 3D *in 2026 feels quite a bit different. The initial magic trick of the game’s perspective has worn off after nearly 35 years of playing the countless first-person shooters it inspired.…