Somehow I managed to never actually play the original Doom.

It came out when I did not have a PC (and by the time I got one it was MMO fever time). I remember playing a little bit of the SNES version on my friend's house but the game never caught my attention.

To be fair, the new Doom didn't really caught my attention either... until I played the demo and fell in love with how good it feels and how fun it is.

So I bought the game but have not started it yet, and I was wondering if it is worth it to play the original game first (maybe it will make me appreciate the new one a bit more?) or should I just jump in the new one?

Yes, Doom 1 and 2 are still fantastic. Play it in GZDoom/ZDoom or any modern source port, and you're golden.

You should play the original and Doom 2, but you don't necessarily need to play them (at least not to completion) before the new one. They don't have stories of note or anything like that (though it will make you appreciate the cool things they did in updating the classic enemies and other nods to the original.)

Doom and Doom 2 hold up in a way that later shooters (like Unreal or whatever) do not because they're sort of a different thing from modern shooters. You move really fast and you don't need to aim particularly well (there's no z-axis aiming at all) so they're really about movement and positioning in a very satisfying way. They also have complex and interesting level design and amazing atmosphere (especially the sound, which is just fantastic.) The hand-drawn art has aged nicely (hand-drawn art generally does) and the weapons are all super satisfying to use.

From the sound of pinky demons snorting nearby to the look on the Doom guy's face when you pick up a new weapon to watching monsters fight each other there really isn't anything quite like the original Doom games. They're definitely still worth playing and accessible all over the place (PC, obviously, but the XBLA ports, which run on XBONE, are also great). But they're also kind of simple, can be difficult, and you don't really need to beat them to enjoy new Doom.

I'd say you should spend an hour or two with the first episode of Doom 1 (which is the shareware episode and easily the best in the game) and then figure out what you want to do from there.

Up until this year my only experience with Doom games was on Nintendo consoles and the 360. Went back and played some Doom 1 on pc this year and it still holds up.

Go for it, they're still fun and challenging and feel super smooth. High difficulties get tense as hell, or just go on easy and blow some crap up.

I guess I'm going to be a dissenting voice here. I have no patience for the mazelike maps and keycard scavenger hunts of those old FPSes these days.

I would say they're worth it, but I have deep nostalgia for them. Brutal Doom is also worth your time because it's amazing whether you've played the old ones or not. Download the Complete starter pack here, it's the first one in the list. It has GZDoom and Brutal Doom included but you need to buy the games to have the .WAD files

Play at least an hour of vanilla Doom / Doom 2 (They're still fun honestly, though obviously from a different era) just to know what they feel like before you try Brutal Doom so you can really appreciate the brutalness of it. You'll have to manually bind movement to WASD and turn on mouselook (it defaults to mouse move I think) because this predates all those standards.

@totsboy:

They were amazing at the time of release but I don't really see someone brought up on modern shooters being able to glean all that much from them aside from a purely archival perspective on the passage of time. Those of us who experienced them back in the day can still get a sense of appreciation of how well they work today, along with a healthy dose of nostalgia filling in the cracks where they don't work all that well - map design being one aspect that has aged the worst.

Is it worth it to play the original Doom first before diving into the modern remake? I'd say not really. You'll bounce around in it, you'll get a sense of the frantic pace and unforgiving nature of the original and then move on to the excellent Doom of today. If you already have it then hey why not, but contrary to what some might say I don't think playing these older games is "required reading" for any current gamer that either missed out or was too young to have been around for them. If you lived through those times then it's a fun trip down memory lane that sometimes turns into becoming that old man yelling "they don't make 'em like that anymore!" If you didn't then there are plenty of games that are probably classics of your generation that you can fondly go back to in several years from now rather than trying to puzzle out what people saw in these archaic titles that you can't connect with on any basic level apart from seeing the obvious that yah, games have come a long way.

I'd recommend it as I did the exact same thing. I played the demo of 2016 Doom and loved it but decided to pick up and play through the original first; I've been having a great time with it. I'm on the last chapter now and have been shocked by how well this game holds up after so many years. It feels smooth (though I'd love to read why it's locked at a bizarre 35fps cap), the music is rad as hell, and the level design is really fascinating. As someone born in 1991 who was introduced to shooters by games like Goldeneye and Counterstrike Source, I had no issue immediately falling in love with original Doom.

Doom 1 and 2 are both great. TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment (the megawads that came with Final Doom) are also both really good. Use a sourceport, though. I use the Doomsday Engine which is pretty good. You can also use that to play Hexen which is really fucking good.

EDIT: Oh! Almost forgot. It'd probably worth finding a way to play the original Playstation version of Doom as well. It's actually really interesting. Complete change in atmosphere with higher quality sounds, coloured lighting and so on.

Absolutely. I may be biased a little, though, since those games are some of my most favorite ever. If you like it, there's a big modding scene with lots of fun stuff to check out.

@veektarius: The map design does get up its own butt later on, but the first episode of Doom 1, at the very least, is not so bad. Doom 2 is when it went truly convoluted, and I agree for some people there will be a point where the requirement to find secrets and opacity of 'what to do next' will make it stop being fun, and they should either hit up a FAQ or stop playing.

@humanity:Someone who can't appreciate at the VERY LEAST the rippin' tunes of Doom 1 is someone who shouldn't be ALLOWED to play the new Doom!

I also think you understate how well these games still play. It's not just nostalgia, they're great games (in the same way that Ms. Pac-Man is still a great game, it's not modern but it's great.) Maybe I'm a little personally 'biased' because I've never had a problem going back to old games, even that I didn't have any nostalgia for. Like I never had a 2600 when I was a kid, but when Activision Anthology came out for the PS2 I played the heck out of it, because Enduro is a great game, even in 2002, or 2016. Likewise I enjoyed (some) of the old British games on the Rare Replay disc, even though I never had a British PC or played any of those. Sure some games age very poorly, but I don't think Doom suffers from Tomb Raider syndrome.

Thank you all for the response, I'm getting really excited about this, I'll give it a try and report back =)

I recently formatted an old PC running windows XP and started installing all my catalog from GOG and old Steam games, this will be a perfect opportunity for a test drive =D

Definitely give DOOM 1 a try, I think it holds up super well. You could play it by using a sourceport, but keep in mind that many of them have some modernized settings enabled like mouse look and graphical effects.
Another option is to buy Ultimate DOOM on Steam or GOG to play it straight up via DOSBOX.

I wouldn't say you need to play the original DOOM before you play the new one, at all, but if you're a fan of fast first person shooters it's one of the best ones.

Or Heretic, which imo is the best Raven shooter.

@bigsocrates: Hey I agree and think they play pretty well to this day compared to some other older titles, like the aforementioned Tomb Raider. I simply don't think anyone really needs to go back and play them. You can and if you get something out of it then thats awesome but on the grand scheme of things I don't think it's really all that important anyone does. Then again much like yourself I am personally a little biased in the complete opposite direction in that I find it incredibly difficult to go back to older titles- even ones that I absolutely loved. I beat Fallout 2 a dozen or so times in 1998 alone and to this day consider it an amazing RPG, far above anything that Bethesda has duct taped together. That said I am never going to be one of those people that replay Fallout 2 at least once a year.. or replay any old game for that matter. I admire people like Jeff that load up old stuff and just enjoy it. There is something that makes it impossible for me to get over that hump created by time.

This shouldn't have to be a question. Hell, I'll even walk you through how to do this.

Get The Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 on Steam. Then, you'll want to get a good source port. Chocolate Doom is great for making it real faithful to the original release, but these days, I like to use Zandronum. It comes with a server browser that'll seek any additional files you need for whatever the server you try to join is running, if you decide to try out the weird stuff people are still making for Doom, and after some tweaking of the settings, you can use it for just regular ass solo play fine too.

When you first run it (the application to run for solo play looks like a sci-fi helmet) you'll have to tell it where you have your IWADs. These are going to be in your Steam/Common/SteamApps (I might have that order wrong, it could be SteamApps then Common), folder, and then inside the folders for the respective games. They are essentially the games proper. You might also want to make a folder somewhere specific so when it asks where you want it to put any PWADs it installs you have them all in a spot you can easily find.

Pick the game you want to run, and it should start up fine. Go into the settings, tweak the graphics to your liking, make sure you disable jump and crouch, and go nuts.

Give it a shot. I'm not a fan of the puzzles, but the combat is great, and the level design is quite good as well.

Pros: simplicity and focus on gameplay; atmospheric levels with a sense of place; tons of enemies and clever encounter designs.

Cons: mazes, keyhunts, bad switch puzzles; backtracking through empty areas; inconsistent or ridiculous logic, inescapable deathtraps, and other frustrating trial 'n' error situations.

The first Doom is pretty good about it's level design up til about halfway into Episode 2. That's when it starts getting tricky with you. Then in Episode 3, it gets to be on the more tedious side.

Doom 2 is more of an expansion than a sequel. You're expected to have knowledge of how the map design can work, what kind of tricks they'll pull, that sort of thing. I can name off some of the maps from it as legitimately my favorite maps from any FPS ever, and others as some of the worst shit that I dread every time I replay it.

Dead Simple is a fucking incredible map and I will get in a physical altercation over this.

Unless you have played original Doom in the past, going into those from a modern-gaming background would probably give you an appreciation for those games only (unless you actually do dig them). Having no jump button is still wild to consider, and if yo decide to play the original way of keyboard-only, then it's gonna blow your mind. Then there is the level design, which were made by insane people, with fun factor ranging from enjoyable to nightmarish.

But damn are they still fun to play: the crazy speed, the feel of the weapons, and that excellent beefy sound design (best sounding sci-fi doors in the business).

Go rip and tear the originals.

@sdoots: Wait, let me see if I get this right. Do I need the source ports for mouse look? If I just download ultimate doom on steam it's the original version with it's keyboard only?

You can use the mouse in Ultimate Doom but you can't freely look around with it(up and down), it's on a fixed horizontal axis.

Mouse Look is limited to horizontal axis in the base game, like @magmamud A source port (besides Chocolate Doom) will give you true Mouse Look. Just make sure you go through those settings thoroughly.

If you want some other suggestions besides Zandronum, I've liked my time with GZDoom. Also, there's a program called Rocket Launcher that tries to streamline this whole process of using source ports if you get confused. It might make things more confusing, but it's worth looking at. I like it when I use additional .PWADs like Demonsteele, which makes Doom a weird Devil May Cry-like.

Yeah you should definitely play them. First, they are great games, second they are historically significant so it's good to have the context if you care about games. Maybe write up a blog post about them for the site when you are done. I'd read it.

Then play Duke Nukem 3D if you haven't already.

Oh boy, Duke Nukem 3D.

Before I start, I should mention that I don't really care much for Gearbox these days. I had days worth of time on Borderlands 1, adored Brothers in Arms, the works. Then I was burnt by Borderlands 2, Aliens, etc.

The best way to play Duke Nukem 3D is the Megaton Edition. Interceptor, the guys who put out Rise of the Triad released it. It has the base game, Duke it Out in D.C., Duke Caribbean, and Nuclear Winter, as well as a rewind feature when you get killed that you can optionally use in single player. It's amazing and was available on pretty much everything, even Vita.

Gearbox got the rights to the series back, and promptly had Megaton Edition delisted everywhere.

Don't worry though, you have the more expensive, with less content, Duke Nukem 3D World Party coming soon. It has a new episode by the original team, which doesn't carry much clout these days. Also, the new graphics were possible via a community mod that Gearbox shut down.

Basically, try to find Megaton Edition, if you can. If by some miracle you get your hands on it, play that.

@sdoots: Agreed that Megaton Edition is/was fantastic. Huge bummer when it got removed. Luckily I still own it on Steam but I used it to play a fair amount of the online too.

I didn't know Gearbox shut down a community mod though. Man, that's pretty shitty.

I wouldn't worry about playing the original games before you play the new Doom. But with that being said, I definitely would still consider playing them at some point, they still hold up extremely well and are amongst my favourite games of all time.

@magmamud: I can't find anything on it now, but I vividly remember reading the update from the mod makers about getting the DMCA. I'll see if I can find it during my lunch break.

Edit: Okay, I had misremembered things. There was a fan made game that had the green light from Gearbox.

They changed their mind.

It looks like the original article by Ben Kuchera on PA is gone now, unfortunately. I can only find links to a 404.

It's worth noting that Schreiber in these stories is one of the heads of Interceptor.

I love the original Dooms. I actually never played the GZ or Brutal Doom. Plain old vanilla is good enough for me.

@giantlizardking:That's a good idea, it's been a while since I made a blog post =D

I was about to say that I didn't think it would be hard to go back to Doom because I've been playing Duke Nuken on my vita and having a great time! (I'm on Area 51 now, so pretty close to the end)

It definitely took me a while to get used to id, but once I got a hang of the movement speed I had a blast!

@sdoots: got it, thanks! =)

@beardandcompany: It's important to note that Brutal Doom isn't a source port, it's just commonly mistaken for one because of how popular it is. You can run it with other .PWADs, like Scythe 2, a really popular (and great) set of levels.

@sdoots: Huh, interesting. Well it wouldn't have surprised me that much if they did straight up DMCA claim a community mod. They wouldn't be the first company to do so.

I also don't have high hopes for World Tour. I do want to play the new episode, but the price point and the fact that only one of the expansions is included makes it a hard buy.

You can buy every Doom, excluding the new one, on G2A for like £3.50. There's no reason you shouldn't play these games NOW. :D

@sdoots: I don't recall calling it a source port but thanks. I've been meaning to try something like that.

Absolutely, that game is still a blast and at the very least it'd be cool to see one of the pioneers of the FPS genre. The new Doom is not all that different from the original incarnation.

To be completely honest, for having not played the originals, I would just say play the first episode of the first game and then play Doom 2 until you get lost on a level, this will be enough to make a judgment if you want to continue playing them or not; going in completely blind into these games means you will get lost/stuck quite easily. The first episode of the original Doom is pretty simple with only the last couple levels really being labyrynthian, but some of the levels in the later episodes are pretty contrived and you would only know some of those pathways if you played it before.

Also I don't suggest using wads or anything overly fancy; use the Retro Doom source port or GZDoom/ZDoom but unbind the jump and crouch keys.

In other words, don't force yourself to beat the first two to enjoy the new Doom.

If you absolutely loved the first two games, I suggest getting Doom 64 EX which is a pretty faithful port onto PC, and even though these games are light on story, Doom 64 is actually connected with the new Doom.

If you can't get enough Doom by the end of playing all these, play Doom 3, you will either love it or hate it.

The newest Doom is a bit of an amalgamation of all the previous Doom games; it takes weapons, monster designs, levels, etc etc from the original two, Doom 64, and Doom 3, so you get this nice mix of all of them you will really appreciate if you have played them all.

One last thing, if you do end up playing the originals, I would absolutely love if you streamed it/recorded and uploaded so we can all laugh at how much you get got and cringe when you miss obvious secrets :D

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Yet ask me what my neighbor's name is, and I'll shrug my shoulders. I was 12 when Doom came out, so I'm perhaps a bit nostalgic (and old).

Doom's so cheap and the gameplay is unlike anything that's around. Even if you just play a handful of levels, I'd say go for it. You just don't get the option to dodge enemy projectiles anymore.

I don't think you'll get mouse look without some sort of port. I think Duke Nukem 3d was the first FPS where you page-up'ed and page-down'ed to look up and down. (Or moues looked). In Doom, if an enemy was in the middle of the screen, you'd hit them. Flying cacodemon? No problem. Just shoot straight ahead, your plasma shots would arc up like an airsoft gun to hit your target.

@beardandcompany: My mistake, I saw GZ and figured you meant GZDoom, and from there made even further assumptions.

So that this post isn't just me apologizing, here's some suggestions on .PWADs people check out when they are done with the base games...

Demonsteele makes Doom play like a first person Devil May Cry, and it actually totally works. Shift sends you flying forward, alternate fire swings your sword, regardless of what gun you have out, and depending on how many orbs you have filled up in your meter, you can hold do a special move that kills just about everything in sight. I forget how off hand, but it isn't complicated or a series of inputs. You can pick from two different characters, the second of which can alternate between three different "settings" to increase her efficiency with guns, melee, or her rocket boots. The only problems it has are the aesthetic is definitely some DeviantArt Anime stuff, and it doesn't include any levels of its own, so you'll have to run it with a level pack. When I first got it, I was suggested Scythe 2 to use with it. I'd echo that.

Scythe 2, while we're talking about it, is inspired by castles and dungeons and that sort of thing. The level design is on par with professional maps, with some of the best key logic I've seen. It's on the hard side, and the first map has a door right near the start that I'm still unsure how to actually trigger to open, (I just run around at it and hit my open key a lot), but after that, it's stellar.

Russian Overkill replaces all the guns with absolutely absurd ones. Off hand, I can recall at least 5 that killed everything on the map. There's tons of them, enough that you'll hit a key, and then hit it again, and again, and again, and still be cycling through weapons on that slot. Most of them have alternate fires. Most of them will hurt you in the process of murdering your foes. It's dumb as hell and it knows this.

Hell Revealed 2 was made with the intent of being just fucking hard. It is. I don't actually care much for it. That said, with how absurdly powerful Russian Overkill makes you, you can actually stand a chance on your own in these maps.

Okay, that's enough from me for now. I hope you all have fun! Also, some of these don't play nice with Zandronum. In that case, use GZDoom.

Yes.

@sdoots: Thank you for those PWADs, I for one will check them out. I have been personally looking for some really solid D3D user maps, but there is just so much to dive through (not as much as DOOM 1&2) but It's nice to get some specific maps recommended.

1. Get Zandronum

2. Get Brutal Doom

3. YES DEFINITELY.

You should play Wolf 3D first but yes you should experience all the DOOM.

I played the original Doom last summer, and was shocked at how well it held up. I hadn't played it before then either and I had an absolutely blast, which just goes to show that tight mechanics and good level design are timeless.

That being said, I think you'd gain very little by playing Old Doom before New Doom. It's not like those games have any important shared story beats or anything. At most you'll go "oh that's neat, it's like the old thing," once or twice. I say just play New Doom, since you should get to it before GotY, and then go back to Old Doom after.

Mode 16H, the 320x200, 256 color graphics mode (a.k.a MCGA or sometimes VGA, though the latter was the name of a different higher res mode) that most DOS games used at that time ran in 70hz, so 35 fps is exactly half the refresh rate of that mode.

Absolutely. I played it first on 360 years ago and it was one of my favorite XBLA games ever. It holds up a hell of a lot better than other FPS genre defining games like Halo CE and Goldeneye, in my opinion.

If you're on PC don't even try playing it without some kind of enhancement because it looks horrendously pixely. I really like DoomsDay Engine for this. Makes it look super clean and runs wicked smooth. (in addition to letting you manually aim)

Only if you plan to play more of it than the first chapter.

Doom is one of those games that peple love because they have nostalgia for it. It is a very primitive FPS game where you can't even aim and and down. I'm sure people will disagree but mostly those that played it back in the day and have nostalgia for it. It wasn't until the late 90's that FPS games became good with games like UT,Q3A and HL. Doom is an important historical landmark but that's about it.

@dagas: Yes, but with a source port with mouse look it's still good. The new DOOM is arguably better in my opinion and perhaps the best singleplayer shooter ever made, but the old ones still have a good atmosphere, art, level design (most of the time) and combat impact (no need for Brutal Doom) and with mouse look it still feels good too in terms of controls. Without it, it will feel sluggish for most people.

When not taking source ports in consideration, Quake proably holds up better because it has build in mouse look and more consistent solid level design. Although I dislike the messy aesthetics of that game.

I think it's equal dose nostalgia and good game design. Doom holds up in a very simplistic way that most games of that era hold up. The gameplay isn't terribly complex so the one thing Doom does it does well. These days video games are much more complicated and as such have a lot more chances at screwing something up. I appreciate Doom because I played it as a kid, but I don't ever feel a particular drive to go back and play it - that said I don't really like going back to any old games, even ones that I really loved. Modern times have spoiled me and I like all the comforts that came with them. Doom is something I might play for about 5-10 minutes to get a feel for what it was like to be 8 years old again, but thats about it.