as of today, Rise of the Triad is 30 years old! i wasn't even born yet when the game came out, but it's become easily one of my favorite games of all time simply because of the beauty of its presentation. the art, the sound, the music, and yes even the gameplay. its so hectic and crazy and creative that i just can't help but love it. you get a distinct sense that the developers had a lot of fun working on this game.
i won't reiterate the entire ROTT development history here, but if you're reading this post then you probably already know that it was originally meant to be a direct sequel to Wolfenstein 3D, but the deal fell through and Apogee lost the IP. they were able to keep working on what they'd made, though, and after another ~year of development they released the shareware version on December 21st, 1994 (the full game was later released in February 1995). by all accounts it was heavily outdated by the time of its release, both from a technical and gameplay standpoint. by the end of 1994, FPS players were craving more DOOM, not more Wolfenstein. and while the game is very unlike Wolfenstein in so many ways, the DNA is undeniably there.
i'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but the thing that really got me interested in ROTT was the video review done by Civvie 11 on YouTube, which really just professed a love for the game i hadn't seen before. hearing someone talk about the game from that perspective really piqued my interest! though i didn't end up playing until the Nightdive remaster came out in 2023...
...at which point i became utterly enamored with the game! i played through all of the episode packs front-to-back in about 6 days (except for Extreme ROTT) and immediately started digging into the sourceports and mods for the game. i'm sorry to say that the sourceport situation for ROTT is fairly bad. most of them are just as buggy as the original game, and none of them support modding in any major capacity. i've been working to rectify this in small ways, including making my own cruddy sourceport and contributions to the existing Taradino port. unfortunately i think the "scene" for this game has just always been small and will continue to get smaller as the years go by. i am grateful to Nightdive for doing the Ludicrous Edition though, even if their post-release handling of it hasn't been the best. without it, ROTT probably would've remained as obscure as ever.
so maybe spend some time today getting LUDICROUS GIBS and burying some cultists in a lunchbox. who knows, it might be fun!
P.S. here are some absolutely wonderful custom mapsets for Rise of the Triad, courtesy of the community: