The great grandfather of every shooter in existence.
I recently checked my Xbox Live statistics and one of the games I have played the most since I bought my Xbox 360 at launch is Doom for XBLA. That says alot about the games quality compared to todays market. The story of Doom is a long and extremely interesting one. The story of John Carmack, John Romero and friends who sat in a cabin out in the woods and created a game in their teens. Its a long and very emotional one for someone as into gaming as I am to read and everyone should read it. Anyway, the end result of this hard work of pure enthusiasm was Doom, a work of pure love for gamecreation. Sure, there were shooters before Doom but Doom is really the game that created the genre. This is it. Doom is still a checklist for everyone that does anything even remotely actionoriented. It was Doom that made it so that a shotgun or a rocketlauncher has to be included in every game these days. I feel that the developers today dosent pay enough respect to Doom. Think of any game that has some shooting in it that you have played, well, deep deep down there is an essence of that game that comes from Great great grandfather Doom. But not only is Doom the reason the actiongenre exists the way it does today, its still more fun to play than most other actiongames that gets put on a disc these days. The release on XBLA is something that everyone should own, its worth buying a 360 just to buy Doom since its hard to find a PC these days that runs it. Doom is perfected shooterdesign, its the essence of action, its a PC revolution and something that way to many kids these days goes "hah, really? you still like doom, dude doom is just a mindless shooter" at before they return to playing Counter Strike wich makes me both sad and angry at the same time. The kids of today dosent know that Counter Strike wouldnt exist without those few enthusiast boys in the early 90s who sat up around the clock and coded Doom.