Doom

Overview

Released in 1993, Doom was unleashed on the gaming public shortly after id Software's breakout production, Wolfenstein 3-D, established a base level of expectations for early first-person shooters. Doom quickly became a smash hit around the world, producing a then-unseen level of graphic fidelity and realism. There were over 10 million downloads of the game's shareware version. The game's violence may seem crude and comical by today's standards, but all those blood-red pixels were enough to stir up controversy right alongside Mortal Kombat during the first wave of video game violence fear-mongering, which led to the establishment of the ESRB rating system that North American games are still shackled with to this day.

Story

Doom puts the player in the role of a nameless character who is referred to externally as the " Doomguy," a space marine working for a private military owned by the Union Aerospace Corporation. The U.A.C. has been experimenting with alien teleportation technology discovered on Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars. Naturally, this goes awry and opens up a portal to Hell, flooding the Human bases with murderous demons and causing Deimos to disappear out of the sky altogether. It's the player's job to go to Phobos in an attempt to clean up the mess and make it back to Earth alive.

The Spider Mastermind

The first episode, called "Knee Deep in the Dead," is the marine's journey through the base established on Phobos. He blasts his way through various labs and facilities until he meets the two Barons of Hell. He blows those two away and uses the Martian teleporter to go to Deimos, wherever it is, where the second episode, "The Shores of Hell," takes place. The labs and facilities on Deimos have been completely overrun by the forces of Hell, and opposition is even tougher than it was on Phobos. The marine blasts his way through Deimos to get to the Tower of Babel, where the Cyberdemon waits to attempt to make our hero into chunky salsa. The marine defeats the Cyberdemon, and discovers that Deimos has been teleported to the infernal afterlife, and is currently hovering over the surface of Hell itself, where the final episode, "Inferno," takes place. He travels through various demonic cities and places mentioned in the bible until he gets to Dis, where the Spider Mastermind lurks. He kills the Spider Mastermind, finds a portal back to Earth, and all is well with the universe... at least until the final cutscene reveals that the demons have beaten him to Earth and have begun murdering its inhabitants, including innocent rabbits.

id Software later made an expansion pack for the game, The Ultimate Doom, which adds a fourth episode, "Thy Flesh Consumed." This episode takes place when the marine goes back to Earth. He blasts his way around places that, let's be honest, look nothing like Earth at all, and sends all those demons back to Hell. At the end of the episode, we find out that he really just wanted revenge for Daisy, his pet rabbit that they killed. The theme of demon-infested Earth would be revisited in the sequel, Doom II: Hell on Earth.

Skill Levels

* Doom also alters placement and amount of monsters and items depending on difficulty level.

Weapons

Fist Fist Damage: 10 per punch, 200 with Berserk Pack When entirely out of ammo, your fists are your last option of self defense. The damage and attack rate of the fists are very low, however, with the berserk power-up the fists turn into a deadly weapon for a short period of time.

Chainsaw Chainsaw Damage: 20 per 'hit' The chainsaw nearly nullifies the fists' existence with its superior damage and attack speed. The chainsaw is particular useful against a single enemy since it stuns the enemy for periods of time. However, the chainsaw should still be seen as a last resort when low on ammo.

Pistol Pistol Damage: 10 per bullet The starting weapon. Its damage and attack speed is low and once the player is in possession of the chaingun, which uses the same ammunition, the pistol can be entirely ignored.

Shotgun Shotgun Damage: 10 per pellet, 7 pellets per shell, 70 damage maximum The shotgun is the "go-to" weapon of Doom. Its fire rate is slow, but the high damage output makes up for it. The shotgun is a viable weapons throughout most of the game, and many players remember the enemies HP by how many shots from the shotgun they require.

Chaingun Chaingun Damage: 10 per bullet The chaingun is the second fastest firing weapon in the game. Its damage is at the same level of the pistol per round fired, but the high fire rate makes it into a deadly weapon. It shares ammunition with the pistol, which means the players can fully ignore the pistol once they get their hands on the chaingun since there are no disadvantages, as ammo is commonly found within the game.

Rocket Launcher Rocket Launcher Damage: 200 per rocket This is a very deadly weapon - both to the enemies and the player himself. The rockets deal a very high amount of damage and has splash damage. Furthermore, the Rocket Launcher's fire rate is high, which makes the player able to carpet bomb areas.

Plasma Rifle Plasma Rifle Damage: 20 per cell The Plasma Rifle is often compared to the Chaingun, because of their similarities. They both have a high firing rate and is generally useful in the same situations. The main difference between them is the projectile speed. Whereas the Chaingun's bullets hit the target instantly, the Plasma Rifle 's shots has to travel through the air before hitting the target, making it possible for enemies to dodge incoming attacks. The trade-off for this inaccuracy is a much higher damage output. The Plasma Rifle shares ammunition with the next weapon, which is actually the reason why a minority of players refuse to use the Plasma Rifle.

BFG 9000 BFG 9000 Damage: 1000 per blast, 40 cells expended Big Fantastic Gun, Big Fucking Gun, Bio-Force Gun - no one really knows what the BFG stands for, but one thing is certain: it is a big freaking gun. The BFG 9000 fires a huge plasma ball which moves slowly through the air. Upon impact, the target it hits receives a huge amount of damage and hits additional nearby enemies for a high amount of damage as well. The player in unable to damage himself with the weapon, which makes it the best weapon of choice against large groups of enemies that are relatively close to the player.

Enemies

Former Human Health: 20 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 311
Former Human Sergeant Health: 30 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 426
Imp Health: 60 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 719
Demon Health: 140 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 389
Spectre Health: 140 A partially invisible Demon. Total in single player (ultra violence) : 114
Lost Soul Health: 100 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 242
Cacodemon Health: 400 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 126
Baron of Hell Health: 1000 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 37
Cyberdemon Health: 4000 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 2
Spiderdemon A.K.A. Spider Mastermind. Health: 3000 Total in single player (ultra violence) : 1

Episodes and Maps

Knee-Deep in the Dead

The Shores of Hell

Inferno

Platforms

Atari Jaguar

• The first console port developed by id Software, the Jaguar version of Doom was released in 1994. The game engine was largely developed by John Carmack. 22 of the original 27 levels are included, though modified and simplified, and two new maps are included. Music is only included during the title screen and between-level screens. Two player multiplayer Deathmatch and Co-op modes are available through JagLink.
  The code developed for this port served as the basis for future ports including the Sega 32X (which was released before the Jaguar version), the 3DO, GameBoy Advance, and PlayStation.

Game Boy Advance

• Based on the Jaguar port, the GBA version of Doom was released by David A. Palmer Productions in 2001. Five new multiplayer-only maps were designed for this version.

iPhone / iPod Touch

• An official iOS port of Doom, titled Classic Doom, was released by id Software in 2009. The port is based on the source port PrBoom which allows for OpenGL rendering.

Linux

• The Linux port of Doom was created by Dave Taylor of id Software and released in 1994. The source code of this port was made available to the public in 1997 and is the basis for all subsequent source ports.

MS-DOS

Playstation

• Doom on the Sony Playstation is more of a re-imagining. It features slight variations of levels from The Ultimate Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth. Some level secrets were changed The overall brightness of the game was a lot lower compared to the PC versions and utilized more colored lighting. The game's soundtrack differs from the PC version and many enemy and weapon sounds were also changed to make them more intimidating. These changes made for a more darker and atmospheric tone for the franchise which carried forward into DOOM 3. Enemies from Doom II were added to levels from the first game for an added challenge. Fans of the game in Doom's active modding community have brought it to the PC using the ZDoom source port to add in the various graphical enhancements unique to this version of Doom.

Sega 32x

Sega Saturn

SNES

Doom on the Super Nintendo was released in September 1995 by Williams Entertainment is one of the few games to include a Super-FX 2 chip. This version includes 22 levels from the PC version and features the 5 missing levels from the Jaguar version but instead is missing 5 different levels and does not include support for saving your game progress.

Due to hardware limitations monsters can only be viewed from the front making monster infighting impossible, floors and ceilings are not texture mapped and the spectre enemy is not included being replaced by the regular demon instead. Other limitations include not being able to play Episode 2: The Shores of Hell on I'm too young to die (very easy), and hey not too rough (easy), Episode 3: Inferno can only be played on the ultra violence (very hard) and nightmare (hardest) difficulties.

Automap support utilizes Mode 7 scaling and rotation to allow the map to rotate around the player instead of the player's icon rotating inside of the automap itself a feature unique to this version of the game.

The 2 boss demons, the spider mastermind and the cyberdemon are included in this version of the game which were missing from other ports of that era. Multiplayer support was included for gamers with X-BAND modems.

Bill Gates at a Microsoft event in 1995

Windows

• Known as WinDoom or Doom95, developed by Windows, unveiled in 1995 and released in 1996, this port capitalized on the popularity of Doom and was used by Microsoft to showcase their new DirectX technology. It supports screen resolutions up to 640x480 and features a GUI launcher allowing easy selection of episode, map, difficulty, custom wads, and multiplayer settings.

Xbox

Xbox 360

• Released in 2006, this port was developed by Nerve Software and was made available for download in the Xbox Live Arcade. Single player contains all four episodes and supports multiplayer (splitscreen or online via Xbox Live) Deathmatch and Co-op with up to four players. The Xbox version includes achievements and leaderboards.

Music

Doom's music was interesting to note because, it could be said that it was one of the first games to actually use rendition's of actual music tracks into the game. While the game did have original music tracks into the game, many were actually either, riffs, verses, or other particular pieces of actual songs from heavy metal groups such as Pantera, AC/DC, Metallica, Slayer, Judas Priest, and S.O.D.

• The famous E1M1 theme is based on Metallica's "No Remorse" verse
• E1M4 is based on Pantera's "Rise" main riff
• E2M1 is based on AC/DC's "Big Gun" verse and also comparable to Helstar's "Burning Star"
• E2M2 is based on Metallica's "Call of the Ktulu" main opening
• E2M3 is based on Pantera's "Regular People (Conceit)" main riff
• E2M9 and E3M1 is based on Pantera's "Mouth for War" main verse
• E3M3 is based on Slayer's "Behind The crooked Cross" opening and main riff

• E3M8 is based on S.O.D.'s "Sargent D and the S.O.D." main riff

Pop Culture

• Doom's importance in the rise of gaming's popularity can't be understated. It generated a massive influx of new game players, established " deathmatch" as a term to mean free-for-all competitive
  multiplayer in a shooter, and was also one of the first games to inspire a large amount of user-generated content, including new maps and full remakes based on Aliens and The Simpsons. Some of the creators of Doom hoped that they would decrease productivity of businesses around the world, as stated in a press conference. This actually came true, because after the game's release people who worked in office jobs would hog up the bandwidth spending time playing deathmatch.
• The game has also generated controversy due to it being one of the first games to have such a horror and satanic theme... along with bloody explosions of guts and heads and the like.
• On the "PTV" episode of Family Guy, Stewie is show in first person perspective cycling through the level E1M5.
• The Doomguy (See image below) is a bonus skater in the PC version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

Trivia

• If the player cheated while playing the Sega 32x version of Doom, after the game ends they are taken to a fake DOS prompt. The player can not quit it, and the only way to escape the screen was to reset the console. If the player did not cheat, they get an extra cutscene.
• The most well-known game built on the Doom engine is Heretic, which was an unrelated title taking place in a dark fantasy world with magical artefacts and weapons. Heretic had its own set of cheat codes, though it had special punishments for those who entered Doom's cheats in an attempt to gain an advantage, such as stripping them of all their weapons if they entered the all guns cheat from Doom.

Source Code Release

Also see: Source Port

On December 23 1997, Doom's source code was made available to the public. This has now spawned many new 'Doom' engines, such as Boom, ZDoom, GZDoom (OpenGL), and Legacy, these engines and many like them have been developed to 'update' id Software's original engine and most now support all modern windows platforms, run in high resolutions, have optimized online code, free-look (up/down), jumping & crouching, a console, and cross-hairs.

These engines require the original DOOM.wad or IWADs to run, and are of course able to play modifications of these files such as NeoDoom.

System Requirements

Minimum System Requirements

• 386sx IBM compatible computer
• MS-DOS v3.3 or higher
• VGA (320x200x256) graphics
• 4mb RAM
• Hard Drive - 4.8 MB (Shareware), 12 MB (Mail-order)

Original Release Versions

Shareware Version

• Includes one of the three missions
• Includes network and modem support

Mail-order Version

• All shareware features
• Includes all three missions (three missions each with eight levels and a secret level)
• Includes Plasma rifle
• Includes BFG 9000

Versions

• v0.2 - February 4, 1993 (alpha version)
• v0.4 - April 2, 1993 (alpha version)
• v0.5 - May 22, 1993 (alpha version)
• v1.0 - December 10, 1993 (uses v0.99 engine)
• v1.1 - December 16, 1993
• v1.2 - February 17, 1994 (introduced modem support and Nightmare mode)
• v1.3 - undocumented / never released
• v1.4 - June 1994 (Internet Beta version)
• v1.5 - July 8, 1994 (Internet Beta version)
• v1.6 - August 1994 (Internet Beta version)
• v1.666 - September 1994
• v1.7 - October 11, 1994
• v1.7a - November 8, 1994
• v1.8 - January 23, 1995
• v1.9 - February 1, 1995 (the final version)