It really cemented the good and bad of the first-person shooter genre, the unique vocabulary of the format that everyone else has built on over time. Which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate what the game accomplished, or that I can’t have a good time with it even now.
In fact, by the time Doom finally limped its way over to Mac, I kind of didn’t care any more. I ended up playing some pretty fantastic games waiting for Doom: Spectre VR, Star Wars: Dark Forces, and one of my all-time favorites, the Marathon Trilogy. But that tantalizing glimpse I saw inspired me to go hunting for whatever first-person experiences I could find for my poor little Mac.
Jeremyīeing a Mac owner tragically shut me out of Doom access for years the game had a rocky road making its way to Apple systems, to the point that somehow Doom II ended up being ported before the original. In fact, by the time Doom finally limped its way over to Mac, I kind of didn't care any more. I ended up playing some pretty fantastic games waiting for Doom: Spectre VR, Star Wars: Dark Forces and the Marathon Trilogy. Of course, these days I’m sure it’d look like an explosion in a LEGO factory running at 20 FPS, but back then, this was the very pinnacle of PC gaming. So of course, he spent countless hours making Doom run at what was then ridiculous frame rates and top resolution.
He was using graphics and sound cards when most people didn’t even know they existed, and spent a lot of time hacking drivers so that he could get games working exactly the way he wanted them to.
He was a hardcore hacker/programmer and complete hardware nut, and his PC was phenomenal for its period. I played it almost exclusively at a friend’s house. The idea worked great for DOOM, because it went on to be a huge seller. But of course it wasn’t crazy at all - just a nascent version of the now-ubiquitous free-to-play business model that is so commonplace these days. Back then, I thought it was a crazy (but cool) idea to encourage people to copy a game and share it. And then I remembered why - Doom was one of the first big games to be released via shareware. Not because it seems like such a long time ago (which it is), but because I was sure I’d played it well before December 1993. When Pete mentioned that it was DOOM’s 20th birthday, I paused for a second.
WAD files on that disc so I'm not altogether surprised it got missed!
They got in a bit of trouble for that, but to be fair, there were about a thousand other.
My most enduring memory of Doom, though? UK magazine PC Zone accidentally putting a pornographic mod on its cover-mounted CD that replaced the wall textures with… uhh… inappropriate images.
And, like mods for many games today, a number of Doom mods ended up actually being better than the base game - I have particularly fond memories of an Alien-inspired total conversion called Invasion that featured full animated intro and end sequences. The popularity of modding Doom helped pave the way for modern PC games such as Skyrim today infinitely expandable games that you can potentially play forever, so long as dedicated enthusiasts are continuing to make new content for it. That didn't stop me exploring other people's work, though I have very fond memories of exploring hundreds of new maps, graphics mods and total conversions of the game that other people more talented than myself had put together. I was an active member of the Wolfenstein 3D modding community thanks to how easy it was to generate new maps for that game - I even made $200 by having ten of my maps featured on the official expansion pack! - but unfortunately, Doom modding proved to be somewhat more challenging and I could never quite get my head around it. The popularity of modding Doom helped pave the way for modern PC games such as Skyrim today infinitely expandable games that you can potentially play forever.