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John Romero is one of the designers behind the seminal first-person shooters Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake.
Early Years
The head of John Romero in Doom II
Alfonso John Romero was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on October 28, 1967. He first began working in the game industry in the 1980s for the Apple II programming magazine inCider, working on his first game, Scout Search, which was released in 1984 for the Apple II. He then worked for Capital Ideas Software, which published at least 12 of his games. In 1987 he went to work for Origin Systems, where he worked for eight years as a programmer. He worked on the Commodore 64 port of 2400 A.D. and Space Rogue. He was later offered a position at Blue Sky Production, but instead decided to co-found Inside Out Software, where he worked on Might & Magic II and Tower Toppler. He then co-founded Ideas from the Deep, and worked on Zork Zero, Arthur, Shogun and Journey, all for theApple II.This company still exists today, but is now know as IFD.
id Software
In March 1989, Romero joined Softdisk as a programmer. He left there with otherSoftdiskemployees, John Carmack, Adrian Carmack (no relation), and Tom Hallto foundid Software. His time at id would be what propelled him to fame. id first gained notoriety with 1990's Commander Keen, a side-scrolling action game reminiscent of Super Mario Bros. and other console-only platformers.
It wasn't until the 1992 release of the revolutionary first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D, however, that id became a household name among PC gamers. Romero went on to provide key design and programming for the runaway hit shooter Doom and its sequel, Doom II: Hell on Earth. Romero's last game with id was Quake, which was the first PC action game to offer large-scale multiplayer over the Internet. id almost single handedly popularized the first-person shooter with these games, and Romero is credited with coining the term "deathmatch" during his time with the company.
It wasn't until the 1992 release of the revolutionary first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D, however, that id became a household name among PC gamers. Romero went on to provide key design and programming for the runaway hit shooter Doom and its sequel, Doom II: Hell on Earth. Romero's last game with id was Quake, which was the first PC action game to offer large-scale multiplayer over the Internet. id almost single handedly popularized the first-person shooter with these games, and Romero is credited with coining the term "deathmatch" during his time with the company.
Ion Storm
The infamous Daikatana ad
Later Years
After Ion Storm, Romero formedMonkeystone Gamesto focus was on smaller games for mobile devices. The company lasted for three and and a half years. He then went to work at Midway on Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows with Tom Hall, but left before the game was completed. He is currently working atSlipgate Iron working onan unnamedMMOGand a new FPS for the Cyberathlete Professional League.
Quotes
- "To win the game you must kill me, John Romero!"
- "I completely love playing and designing games and always will. I am so into games that I listen to game music all day. That may sound strange, but you can guarantee I'm a hardcore gamer and would never let you down by designing a crappy title."
- "I think Doom had just the right mix of elements that keep people coming back to it: great monsters, excellent weapons with great balance, a spooky environment and extreme speed."
- "If you walk into CompUSA or Babbage's and see the vast array of game titles on the shelf, chances are that 95% of those titles are not worth playing."
- "In marketing I've seen only one strategy that can't miss - and that is to market to your best customers first, your best prospects second and the rest of the world last."
- "Daikatanawill be the greatest game of all time"
- "Doom 2 is just such a bigger, badder, better version of Doom"
- "It has to be well timed. It needs to have the right components that maybe contain emerging technologies or something like, say, when Doom came out -- the Network play -- there weren't many games like that. There was a really great 3D world that a lot of people hadn't seen. It was light-years ahead of Wolfenstein. It was shareware, so it had Internet distribution. We used the Internet to get it all over the place. So it used a lot of stuff that was just becoming popular at that time. id just capitalized on it." [Responding to the question of what makes a classic game]
