'Official' Castle Smurfenstein Home Page

Castle Smurfenstein was a parody of Silas Warner's original Castle Wolfenstein game written for the Apple ][ and the Commodore 64 and several other computers in the early 80s. Castle Wolfenstein was a terribly fun and addicting game but something was missing. Nazis just didn't seem that threatening to a suburban high-school kid in the early 80s. Smurfs. That was the real threat now.

So we changed the game. The nazi guards became Smurfs, the mostly uninteligible German voices became mostly unintelligible Smurf voices. We created a new title screen, new ending screen, new opening narration, and an opening theme, and changed the setting from Germany to Canada. (I'm still not too sure why we had this Canadian fixation, but then growing up near Detroit does expose one to a fair degree of Canadian culture.)

The conversion was pretty straightforward, needing only a paint program, a sector editor, and Muse Software's very own 'the Voice' to add in the new audio. I think we did this during the summer of 1983 but I'm not completely sure.

Here is the new opening narration for Castle Smurfenstein, setting the stage for your adventure:

The first game in the series: Dino Smurf based off of Dino Eggs introduced our hero, Smurfbutcher Bob, as he tried to save his children by going back in time and destroying the smurf's prehistoric ancestors (including the now extinct orange smurfs.)

Failing in this task, Bob is captured and taken back to the present where he is imprisoned in Castle Smurfenstein, the Canadian headquarters for operation Smurfkreig. Bob must escape, killing as many smurfs as possible along the way.

The third game was to have been Sky Smurf based off of Sky Fox where you would have gotten to fly around Ontario your jet fighter killing lots of smurfs. Unfortunately the third game only got as far as the new plot and a partial title screen before college beckoned.

In the original Dino Eggs, the main character was named 'Timemaster Tim.' When we started playing around with modifying that game we obviously needed a more appropriate name so 'Smurfbutcher Bob' was born.

Here is the new opening narration for Dino Smurf, setting the stage for your first adventure:

In February '99 we received the following email from David Schroeder (www.davidhschroeder.com), the Author of the original Dino Eggs:

I heard various rumors years ago about your amazing Anti-Smurf works, but it wasn't until being invited to a big 8-bit Apple II reunion just last summer that I learned what Dino Smurf really was. I am honored! Honored to have Dino Eggs chosen as the middle of your Trilogy --- and honored to have Dino Eggs and Timemaster Tim live on on your web page. How amazing it is to see my art and narration and characters (albeit in parody form) on the WWW after all these years. What fun.

guess that makes that parody official ...

With the large number of Apple ][ emulators available today it was terribly nostalgic to play Castle Smurfenstein again and with Smurfs reappearing in toys stores it seemed like a good time to give Bob his place on the WWW.

This also gives us a nice way to link in to the sites where you can find Castle Smurfenstein and Dino Smurf and emulators to play them on.

Here are the disk images of Castle Smurfenstein and Dino Smurf. Note that to be able to read the lower case text in Smurfenstein you will need either a //e emulator or a ][/][+ emulator with lower case emulation.

You can find other related disc images at: ftp://ftp.apple.asimov.net/pub/apple_II/images/games/

Castle Wolfenstein was copyright by Muse Software, so on the off chance that somebody still owns the rights to that game I want to make it perfectly clear that:

we were minors
it was over 40 years ago
we were creating a parody
we did not make any profit from its creation
we owned a copy of the original Castle Wolfenstein bought at full retail price(and STILL have the box and disk to prove it)
and I don't think we even had to break any of the copy protection to make our alterations

Smurfs were created by that Belgian bastard Pierre Culliford (Peyo) whose estate probably still has some legal rights. I don't really blame Pierre since his 'Schtroumpfs' spoke French ... making them no threat to Americans ... except for the money grubbing intervention of NBC which may also still hold some legal rights as well as a majority of the blame. For more info see www.smurf.com.

www.salon.com has an article on game mods called 'Triumph of the mod' which credits Castle Smurfenstein as the first mod. The article can be found at www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/04/16/modding/index1.html.

Here is an excerpt:
By one estimate, what we now know as mods appeared in 1983, with a fan-made reinvention of the original "Castle Wolfenstein," a classic arcade-style action game for the Apple II. (You played an Allied spy fighting it out with Nazi combatants, who'd shout at you in German as they opened fire.) But the inspiration for this mod was not so much WWII as Saturday-morning cartoon.

"In the true mod spirit," says Tom Hall, a co-founder of id Software, "The first instance I know of that type of modifying an original product was "Castle Smurfenstein," probably the first total conversion, where they took the original Apple II classic and replaced all the actors and text with Smurfs and Smurf-related items ... It was hilarious!"

The first 'Official' Castle Smurfenstein Home Page

by Andrew Johnson and Preston Nevins
with help from Rob Romanchuk

What is it?

The New Opening

The Planned Trilogy

Why 'Smurfbutcher Bob'?

More On Dino Smurf

Why a web page?

Links

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