Final Doom Title

Does anyone know why Final Doom was named Final Doom? Was it planned to be the last Doom game at the time?

No, it was the final CLASSIC Doom, because they wanted to do Quake and only John Carmack (of the original team, maybe Adrian.) was there at id. Also, Doom 3 wasn't even concieved until 1999.

Superluigieth1 said:

No, it was the final CLASSIC Doom, because they wanted to do Quake and only John Carmack (of the original team, maybe Adrian.) was there at id. Also, Doom 3 wasn't even concieved until 1999.

Incorrect. Final DOOM wasn't even done nor really paid much attention to by id, as it was just licensed as a franchise "add on" for DOOM II, which was done by a couple different teams with close relations to id (teamTNT/casali bros., etc). It was never to be the "final", in classic, or any other form.

Quake [AKA Quake: The fight for justice] originally started out planned to be more like a daikatana-type game, but as development and internal arguments grew, the game lost direction, and most of the team considered just making that into DOOM 3, due to characters, art, levels all being out of whack with original design and still ended up looking more like DOOM than anything else. It wasn't until the last minute they decided to revert on their decision, slap "Quake" as the official name, toss in a slipgate story haphazardly (hoping for the best), and release it... as they did not want to come off as a "one trick pony" by doing another DOOM. Fortunately, it (for the most part) worked and was a success, but not after a lot of internal strife and fallout from the stressed development team.

Buckshot said:

Incorrect. Final DOOM wasn't even done nor really paid much attention to by id, as it was just licensed as a franchise "add on" for DOOM II, which was done by a couple different teams with close relations to id (teamTNT/casali bros., etc). It was never to be the "final", in classic, or any other form.

Quake [AKA Quake: The fight for justice] originally started out planned to be more like a daikatana-type game, but as development and internal arguments grew, the game lost direction, and most of the team considered just making that into DOOM 3, due to characters, art, levels all being out of whack with original design and still ended up looking more like DOOM than anything else. It wasn't until the last minute they decided to revert on their decision, slap "Quake" as the official name, toss in a slipgate story haphazardly (hoping for the best), and release it... as they did not want to come off as a "one trick pony" by doing another DOOM. Fortunately, it (for the most part) worked and was a success, but not after a lot of internal strife and fallout from the stressed development team.

Thank you. I did no research when I commented it.

Somewhat unrelated, but related to Final Doom, I remember when it came out I was excited at the prospect of "cartridges for weapons" and "inert projectiles" because I thought they were features listed on the box art. To this day I still find that text confusing.

And Romero was still at Id, he brokered the Final Doom / TNT deal with TeamTNT. He was still there for Quake, too. The exodus really only started after Quake.

The back of the original Final Doom box says was "This is it. The end. The final chapter of the Doom series. (...) It's time to finish what you started", which makes me think it was meant to be the last Doom... but not the last Doom for all time, but rather the last of the Doom games based on this engine.

And indeed it was.

As for the "cartridges for weapons" thing - I suppose they intended the game box to look like an ammo crate.


Reference: http://www.mobygames.com/game/final-doom/cover-art/gameCoverId,3966/

From what I remembered from all that stuff on the internet, after the success of Doom 2, id began their Quake project around 1995, but released The Ultimate Doom and Master Levels For Doom 2 in the process. At the same time, Romero noticed TNT Evilution and made a deal with Team TNT to have it in an official expansion pack which they accepted, hence Evilution became half of Final Doom. While all that was happening, Dario and Milo Casali, who were still members of Team TNT at the time, made a set of levels which impressed American McGee along with the rest of id and that made them commission the Casalis to create an original 32-level wad that is The Plutonia Experiment and the other half of Final Doom.

We all know Doom 64 was the true final classic doom :p