The (re)programmers' web site, http://evlweb.eecs.uic.edu/aej/smurf.html, explains it best:
"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 uninteligible 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.)"
Anyone who remembers the Smurfs can probably agree that they got their due as targets for gamers.
Johnson, Nevins and Romanchuk founded a now-proud tradition of game fans modifying their favorite games. These days, player-made "mods" are so popular that makers of the original software will sometimes release them publicly and share the profits with the modifiers, rather than stifling those who mess with their products. So if you'd like to see Ms. Pac-Man sporting a stars-and-bars hair bow and gobbling up little Osamas, get to work! This could be that radical career move you've been looking for.
This week's theme: Uh, software?