An old Polish article from '94

Here's an old article introducing Doom II, from "Secret Service", no. 17. It was probably the most popular Polish gaming magazine back then. I attached a screenshot and my translation.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v345/wojtunio/ss17300dpi.jpg

Now this is a delight for those keen on blood and murder, heartily supporting the motto WE ARE ALL DOOMED! While developing a brand new Doom-like game series, ID software published DOOM 2: HELL ON EARTH. The game is based on the same, though slightly enhanced, engine as DOOM. One can also notice some new graphics, as well as a much higher level of overall difficulty.

Algorithm differences are imperceptible – DOOM 2 means just thirty new, groovy boards to play. Particularly exciting is a board featuring an abandoned city, while the final episodes are a real masterpiece. In the last level you must kill off tonnes of flesh vomiting fire and it is extremely hard. But then... a nice touch for WOLFENSTEIN devotees: a typical "Wolf" board adapted to DOOM.

A new weapon has been introduced: a very efficient double barrel useful for widespread attacks – you can kill even five buddies with a single shot. Another change is a wider choice of goodies to kill. There are small and medium spiders, heavy machine gun holding dudes, skeletons, fatsos with rocket launchers, flame throwers plus a few more creatures.

By playing these new boards one can notice great care put into their creation. The level designers put really much effort into making the levels more and more difficult and extraordinary. In DOOM 2 you must learn to jump over pits, a feature rarely seen before. There are also high, super narrow ledges on which you must walk with great caution. The game is much harder than its predecessor, fortunately all the cheat codes still work, key combos which give you ammo, etc. The programmers included but one restriction: with the cheat codes you cannot finish the last board.

I do not own this magazine.

The screenshots are interesting. Lost Souls in map02? Tiny Cyberdemon?

boris said:

Tiny Cyberdemon?

I thought that was just a perspective thing until I looked closer. Interesting.

"The programmers included but one restriction: with the cheat codes you cannot finish the last board" sounds interesting too. Probably just a misunderstanding though.

I find it vaguely interesting that the closest translation for the Polish word they used is "board" rather than "map", "level", "zone", or "world". That makes it sound so table-top. :)

boris said:

The screenshots are interesting. Lost Souls in map02? Tiny Cyberdemon?

Arachnotrons embedded in a wall? I think they've just layered additional enemies to make the screenshots look busier. It's not a secret beta version of Doom 2 with the Cybermidget enemy.

Woah, you sent me back to the past, vdgg!
DAT SS LAYOUT

I take it youre Polish, then. I guess there aren't so few of us in the Doom community as I thought there would be. We're just hiding!

Memfis said:

"The programmers included but one restriction: with the cheat codes you cannot finish the last board" sounds interesting too. Probably just a misunderstanding though.

I remember that statement being repeated in all Polish computer magazines of that era.
I wonder who started it.

Gez said:

Arachnotrons embedded in a wall? I think they've just layered additional enemies to make the screenshots look busier. It's not a secret beta version of Doom 2 with the Cybermidget enemy.

Yeah, you can clearly see all the the lost souls are made from the same frame.

Funny, SS never really tried to photoshop (probably paintshop or corel-draw, at that time) their screenshots.

There are small and medium spiders...

LOL. You gotta be really high to call the Mastermind 'medium' .

So where's the big spiders then?

boris, DoomUK, Gez, [PROTOTYPE] said:
[Various inaccuracies]

Wow, you're really good, I didn't spot even half of them. About spiders, this is obviously a mistake. If "small" and "medium" spiders were new enemies, than the guy must've been thinking there were two types of arachnotrons.

OK, so my question: which level is the demon-chainsawing screenshot from? I've no idea.

Memfis said:

"The programmers included but one restriction: with the cheat codes you cannot finish the last board" sounds interesting too. Probably just a misunderstanding though.

Believe it or not, I was convinced it was true. For all these years, I didn't use cheat codes too much (prefered lowering difficulty settings), also I hated, hate and will hate MAP30, so it was never important to me.

Gez said:

I find it vaguely interesting that the closest translation for the Polish word they used is "board" rather than "map", "level", "zone", or "world". That makes it sound so table-top. :)

If I was to translate them word by word, I should've written "board designers" instead of "level designers". Crazy but true.

ellmo said:

Woah, you sent me back to the past, vdgg!
DAT SS LAYOUT
I take it youre Polish, then. I guess there aren't so few of us in the Doom community as I thought there would be. We're just hiding!

Yeah, I'm kind of obsessed with protecting my real self, you can call it hiding. The first time I revealed which country I was from was for idoom contest when Mr.Twister asked me, as he was putting flags near the nicks. The first time I revealed my age was a month ago, I think.

Polish DW users I know of: Zalewa (designs good maps), Belial (one of the best speedrunners, now retired), you (from your profile) and Scypek2 I believe...

Now I'm looking for three more articles from the past:

1) Probably by Jacek Grabowski, in ENTER magazine, introducing Wolfenstein. What's funny is that ENTER was not for gamers, it was a regular computer magazine with some Mac vs PC rants (back then maybe 1% of computers in Poland were Macs) and linguistic rants(!!) I remember from Grabowski's article "those blue ones are meant to be SS soldiers I guess, and those white ones are from traffic police".

2) Introducing Doom II, I thought it was in SS, but after obtaining this scan I have to say it was somewhere else, Top Secret or Gambler being the most probable sources. It included very funny names of monsters + another inaccuracy in which I believed for a long time "one of the changes compared to Doom I is that shotgun guys are more deadly now".

3) This is almost impossible to find, as I can hardly remember anything. A level-by-level review of Inferno (and probably Shores of Hell, too). Might be from Computer Studio? I remember Slough of Despair described as "one of the hardest maps" due to very low ammo.

Heh this makes me wish I hadn't thrown away the sacred 1994 Doom & Doom II review by PC Master magazine....hopefully retromaniax.gr will save the day.

Maes said:

Heh this makes me wish I hadn't thrown away the sacred 1994 Doom & Doom II review by PC Master magazine....hopefully retromaniax.gr will save the day.

Give me the link if you find it, please.

[PROTOTYPE] said:
Give me the link if you find it, please.

If I do I will translate it and share it with all of DW, don't worry (it's in Greek, and it was a quite long review, too!). If I recall correctly, it was also made at the time where PC Master magazine was actually split into two sub-magazines: PC Master for the "serious" stuff, and "PC Games" for, well, games.

BTW, it's the famous Issue 57, which I mentioned in my now infamous Maes's EXTREME Final Doom Rage straight from 1996! ;-)

These blast from the past are fun to read and examine

vdgg said:

OK, so my question: which level is the demon-chainsawing screenshot from? I've no idea.

It's probably map19, sector 60, south east from the courtyard.

ellmo said:

I remember that statement being repeated in all Polish computer magazines of that era.
I wonder who started it.

Maybe because the player can be telefragged?

ellmo said:

Funny, SS never really tried to photoshop (probably paintshop or corel-draw, at that time) their screenshots.

I'm pretty sure that shot with the single imp in map24 is some stock shot, I've seen it a couple times on other places. So maybe they didn't take them on their own.

Loving all that IDDQD and IDKFA going on in those shots.

I hate it when people save their scans as low-res, lossy .jpg garbage like this was 1996 or something. Nice article nonetheless.

Gez said:

Arachnotrons embedded in a wall? I think they've just layered additional enemies to make the screenshots look busier. It's not a secret beta version of Doom 2 with the Cybermidget enemy.

Heh, a Cybermidget fill-in for the Revenant in an early alpha/beta wouldn't surprise me, considering Revs use Cyberdemon sounds and rockets if you load Doom 2 in the 1.5 and 1.6 betas.

Strain actually had a mini-cyberdemon enemy, which had higher-pitced, off-tune mechanical sounds.

Gez said:

I find it vaguely interesting that the closest translation for the Polish word they used is "board" rather than "map", "level", "zone", or "world". That makes it sound so table-top. :)

All my friends from the north east US said "board" instead of "level."

qoncept said:

All my friends from the north east US said "board" instead of "level."

Does anyone miss the very 80-ish "stage", "scene" or "zone"?

vdgg said:

Polish DW users I know of: Zalewa, Belial, you and Scypek2

I know two more :>

vdgg said:

Now I'm looking for three more articles from the past:
(...)

I can't really say I recall any of those. I must've been eight when they were out. I'll drop you a like should I ever come across anything like this.

I am however in possesion of one of the most heartwarming books ever written: Totally Unauthorized Guide to Doom II by Robert Warning, 1995

Polish edition by Intersoftland, 1996 with the title changed to
Doom II bez tajemnic (Doom II without secrets)



184 pages about Doom2, the story of Doom1 and Doom2, a list of Doom engine's unique technological features. Later chapters describe every single monster, item, game concept and hazard. It also has a printed map for every single level, with walk-through and secret guide. The final parts are about learning how to edit maps for Doom and how to play via modem (in 1996 in Poland modems were QUITE a rare sight).

It used to have a floppy with some kind of editor (can't recall what it was exactly, for the love of... Doom Construction Kit? Was there ever anything with this name?)

My favourite thing about this books is that it tries so hard to translate every single English word used in Doom2.
e.g. (the second name in parentheses is my literal translation of the... Polish translation)

• Zombie Man (Mutant Zombie)
  
• Shotgun Guy (Strzelec - Shooter)
  
• Heavy Weapon Dude (Silnie Uzbrojony Przystojniaczek - Heavily Armed Handsome) [I am not making this up]
  
• Imp (Kolczasta Paskuda - Spiky Abomination/scoundrel)
  
• Demon (Różowy Demon - Pink Demon) [sic!]
  
• CacoDemon (Zły Duch - Evil Spirit)
  
• Pain Elemental (Cierpiący Żywioł - Elemental in Pain/Suffering Elemental) [that one always cracks me up]
  
• ManCubus (Potwór Szafa - WARDROBE-MONSTER) [swear to God]
  
• Revenant (Zjawa Kościotrup - Skeleton Wraith)
  
• Arch-Vile (Krzywy Nikczemnik - Crooked Wretch) [that shit is poetic, yo]
  

Map names are generally okayish, when it comes to translation, with four minor exceptions, and one epic fail :D

• Poziom 7: Dead Simple (Prosta Śmierć - A Simple Death) [looks like they didn't get it]
  
• Poziom 17: Tenements (Zakazane Obszary - Forbidden Zones) [the fuck?]
  
• Poziom 25: Bloodfalls (Rzeka Krwi - The River of Blood) [meh]
  
• Poziom 29: The Living End (Ostatki Życia - Life's Last Remains) [or something along those lines]
  
• Poziom 30: Icon of Sin (Wielki Szef - THE BIG BOSS) [I don't even...]
  

("Poziom" literally means "Level" in Polish)

The lost souls spammed everywhere look ridiculous. Like... what my 5th grade binder looked like when I first played doom and cut out lil papers I printed with doom monsters on them.

ellmo said:

CacoDemon (Zły Duch - Evil Spirit)

They made a literal translation from the Greek!

ellmo said:

ManCubus (Potwór Szafa - WARDROBE-MONSTER) [swear to God]

AH AH AH AH OH WOW

ellmo said:

ManCubus (Potwór Szafa - WARDROBE-MONSTER)

Ja pierdolę, WTF?

ellmo said:

I am however in possesion of one of the most heartwarming books ever written: Totally Unauthorized Guide to Doom II by Robert Warning, 1995

Never could get that editor to run.

And don't forget that the zombie man description shows the marine sprite.

Only bought it because a similar book about the first Doom that a friend of mine had was quite indepth and accurate, with separate routes plotted for fastest exit and all secrets. This crap just has a vague waypoint list for each map, and I'm sure I remember it being wildly inaccurate in some places.

Uzbrojony przystojniaczek, kolczasta paskuda, krzywy nikczemnik :D masterpiece...

Krzywy Nikczemnik - to chyba jakieś jajca...

ellmo said:

Map names are generally okayish, when it comes to translation, with four minor exceptions, and one epic fail :D

• Poziom 7: Dead Simple (Prosta Śmierć - A Simple Death) [looks like they didn't get it]
  
• Poziom 17: Tenements (Zakazane Obszary - Forbidden Zones) [the fuck?]
  
• Poziom 25: Bloodfalls (Rzeka Krwi - The River of Blood) [meh]
  
• Poziom 29: The Living End (Ostatki Życia - Life's Last Remains) [or something along those lines]
  
• Poziom 30: Icon of Sin (Wielki Szef - THE BIG BOSS) [I don't even...]
  

With the exception of "The big boss" which sounds like US police lingo, the others sound fine, because the author probably wanted to adapt them, not translate everything word by word. But I don't know Polish and I can't say if those names, in Polish, sound alright or awkward.

I must admit I don't know either how to properly translate Dead Simple to Polish...

Śmiertelnie proste, zabójczo proste, etc.

Look at all the people crawling out of the woodwork :P