February 21, 2026
Retro reload, comment carnage
Show HN: Iron-Wolf – Wolfenstein 3D source port in Rust
Wolfenstein reborn in Rust; bugs, cheats, and politics ignite the comments
TLDR: A Rust remake of Wolfenstein 3D lands with a playable web version and shareware included. Commenters celebrate nostalgia but clash over browser flicker, missing cheat codes, coder one‑upmanship, and whether the game’s Nazi theme would be too controversial today—making this revival both tech feat and culture flashpoint.
The ’90s shooter is back as Iron Wolf, a Rust-made remake of Wolfenstein 3D you can play in your browser at wolf.ironmule.dev. The shareware version ships right in the code, and if you’ve got the full game, you can upload it to unlock everything. The dev’s promise: a pixel-perfect, mod-friendly blast from the past. The comments’ reality: chaos, nostalgia, and spicy takes.
One early tester cried that the web build “flickers like crazy” on Chromium browsers, flashing hero B.J. Blazkowicz’s face like a strobe. Purists slammed the missing secret cheat—“MLI”—as a dealbreaker, because if you’re recreating history, the retro codes are part of the vibe. Meanwhile, a coder deadpanned that “Wolfenstein is peanuts compared to writing your own doubly linked list,” flexing hard enough to summon a mini flame war over whether game ports are art or a warm-up exercise. Another commenter lobbed a culture grenade: would Wolfenstein’s Nazi-blasting premise be “too politically incendiary” today? Cue a split between “it’s history, relax” and “yeah, times have changed.”
There’s even crossover drama: one user dropped a link to a Rust-based Doom port, iron-doom, turning it into a Rust retro show-down. Nostalgia heads chimed in with “Sweet memories,” while bug hunters and authenticity cops demanded fixes, cheat codes, and zero flicker—now.
Key Points
- •Iron Wolf is a Rust-based source port targeting a pixel-perfect, mod-friendly recreation of Wolfenstein 3D.
- •An E1M1 demo (E1M1.mp4) is provided to showcase current gameplay.
- •Local play is supported via a run-sdl-shareware command, using shareware data included in the repository as test data.
- •A web version is available at https://wolf.ironmule.dev/; users can upload full game files to play the complete version in-browser.
- •Configuration is optional and done via TOML by copying default_iw_config.toml to iw_config.toml next to the executable; options are documented in the default file.