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Hurt Me Plenty - Remembering Doom

Posted by simoniker on from the frag-me-baby-one-more-time dept.

Thanks to TotalGames.net for reprinting a GamesTM article remembering the genius of id Software's seminal PC FPS, Doom. The article starts with the question: "How many of the lodestones of modern gaming do we owe to Doom?", and continues by arguing: "Without Doom conceiving the multiplayer deathmatch, it could be radically touted that the PC today would be an abandoned platform insofar as gaming is concerned." The piece finishes with comments on Doom 3: "While tradition alone will endear Doom 3 to many, the long-anticipated game may yet fail to make the evolving grade it was fundamental in establishing. Let it be said that the gaming world is nothing if not perverse."

2 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. 1987 LAN parties: via MIDI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Without Doom conceiving the multiplayer deathmatch, it could be radically touted that the PC today would be an abandoned platform insofar as gaming is concerned.

    Sure, it was one of the first popular multiplayer deathmatch games for PC, but Doom didn't invent the multiplayer deathmatch idea.

    I'm pretty sure that MIDI Maze & Faceball 2000 can claim the FPS multiplayer deathmatch credit for home gaming. It came out in 1987 and you actually used MIDI cables to create a ring network of up to 16 machines. Faceball followed in the same vein for the Game Boy (up to 4 players plus drones) and Game Gear (2 players plus drones). The ST game became quite a cult classic at user group meetings.

    LAN parties before LANs! Yee ha. MIDI cables in the 80's. Where there's an FPS deathmatch will, there's a way...

  2. Doom had a unique gameplay mode by EvilBastard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Early versions of Doom (Up to 1.6) you could enter the three commands below

    Machine #1 : doom -devparm -nodes 3 -left
    Machine #2 : doom -devparm -nodes 3
    Machine #3 : doom -devparm -nodes 3 -right

    and you'd have your main machine as the front screen, and the other two showing the left and right side, for a 270 degree wrap around mode

    I actually got it working one night at a LAN, but couldn't 'unlock' my play style enough to use it effectivly.

    Now you have video cards like the Matrox Parhelia-512 that do the same thing onboard, a mere 11 years later.