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Doom Is Twenty Years Old

alancronin writes with a quick bite from the Dallas News about everyone's favorite FPS: "Few video games have had the impact that Doom has on the medium as a whole. While it wasn't the first first-person shooter out there, it was certainly one of the earliest hits of the genre, due in no small part to its revolutionary multiplayer. Today, that game is 20 years old. Made in Mesquite by a bunch of young developers including legends John Carmack and John Romero, Doom went on to 'transform pop culture,' as noted by the sub-title of the book Masters of Doom." Yesterday, but who's counting. Fire up your favorite source port and slay some hellspawn to celebrate (or processes). I'm partial to Doomsday (helps that it's in Debian).

11 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Ah the memories by cold+fjord · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There were some fragging good times playing that with friends.

    --
    much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  2. Bought from a shareware machine! by Pope · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I remember a friend and I bought the full version of Doom at a shareware vending machine at a local mall. We brought our own floppies and a two rolls of loonies to pay for it. Then spent the rest of the day taking turns playing on his 486. Good times! :D

    --
    It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
    1. Re:Bought from a shareware machine! by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The first machine I played it on cost in the areas of $2000. Now I can run it on a $10 MP3 player smaller than a pack of matches using RockBox. I kind of like the future.

  3. Memories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My first memory of DOOM was playing it on a 385 25MHz with 2 MB of RAM. Yeah, that ran like a slideshow. I couldn't understand the big deal. Shortly thereafter I got a screaming 486DX 66MHz with 8 MB of RAM. THEN I understood why the game was a big deal.

    I feel silly, but I started playing this game pretty young, about 9 or 10. And I was terrified. Not enough to stop playing mind you. But the snorts of the imps in adjacent rooms really terrified me. If I wanted a bigger scare, I'd turn off all the lights. I sure played games differently then. Not like I play games now, where I stroll around with a cocky sense of invincibility, just soaking damage and pressing the kill button as fast as I can.

  4. Re:We called them by fluffythdestroy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We need more people like you

    --
    PC Gaming enthousiast that gives comments, opinions and reviews on Games. I'm just having fun with games while doing let
  5. Re:"legends John Carmack and John Romero"? by tuffy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Although John Carmack's engine opened up a lot of possibilities, John Romero's level designs were also a big part of Doom's success. The key difference is that Romero hasn't done much since Daikatana landed with a thud.

    --

    Ita erat quando hic adveni.

  6. Re:IDDQD by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    IDSPISPOPD - that was the fun one.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  7. Re:We called them by X0563511 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ah, back in the days when developers (and players) were (mostly) honest.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  8. Re:1st 1st-person shooter by timftbf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Most people don't realize how far we've come until you go back and play those games. If I recall correctly, in Doom, there was no jumping, and you couldn't aim up and down. The only way to move vertically was going up small steps, which your character automatically walked up. The levels were all 2 dimensional. It didn't support rooms above other rooms.

    See, for me, these are features, not limitations.

    One set of directional controls. Look where you move where you shoot. That's controls I can have fun with.

    FPSes went downhill as soon as Quake introduced mouselook, and haven't been able to interest me since.

  9. Re:"legends John Carmack and John Romero"? by VortexCortex · · Score: 1, Insightful

    One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn't belong...

    Did you know that Carmack didn't want to include Multiplayer in Doom? Romero demanded it be in the game. Did you know Carmack sent nasty letters to modders and map editor tool creators like me, and considered us competition? Did you know it was Romero who pushed to have multiplayer included, because it was such fun? Did you know it was Romero who pushed Carmack to release the nodebuilder so we modders could more easily make user created maps/editors? (after we had already reverse engineered the BSP format, and built superior nodes anyway). It was Romero who convinced Carcmack to allow the Doom Community to launch their game into the stratosphere with user generated content, and pre-internet online multiplayer Dwango and Pinnacle.

    Instead of a Doom community we were considered by Carmack to be weakening the Doom brand by creating our own maps and map editors. This couldn't have been further from the truth. It was Romero who finally convinced Carmack with sales spikes corresponding to our UNDERGROUND wad collection releases. Yeah, that's right, under-fucking-ground: We gathered our maps in secret under threat of legal persecution, and then coordinated releases to mask the actual identity of the WAD creators. Thank Satan Romero pushed to end this shit and let the things that make Doom great flourish. You know Romero was primarily responsible for refining Doom's gameplay into the fast-frenetic style that the slow-bullet-sponge filled FPS genre is largely still lacking? You could weave in and out of streams of rockets, plasma, BFG blasts. Romero made Agility a power on par with Accuracy.

    You're a fucking moron. If anyone doesn't belong in the category of Legend it's that litigious asshole John Carmack who churned out the same game with updated graphics over and over after the design talent like zany fun loving Tom Hall, and dark and twisted John Romeo left ID software. Carmack churned out a nice series of Quake clones. Without Romero Doom wouldn't have been half the game it is, or the empire it became. In many ways I'm glad that Romero left ID software - I'll take Deus Ex over yet another arena shooter any day. Did you know Quake was originally going to be a multiplayer RPG / FPS? Carmack turned it into another Doom clone. Oh hey, you know what, instead of deathmatch, you know would go great in a FPS / RPG? Mario Cart. How "legendary". Rage was a tech demo that wished it was Borderlands.

    PS. Yes, it's ID software, not "id" -- Screw the edgy re-branding. I prefer to remember the better days, and First impressions matter most.

  10. Re:"legends John Carmack and John Romero"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The anti-Carmack sentiment has really kicked up a notch in the past year or two. I really have no way of knowing if what you say is true, since it seems to contradict with everything Carmack has said publicly about modding and litigation over software. I just find it interesting that every group feels the need to tear down their idols once they reach a certain level of reverence and deification within a subculture.