How did you first perceive doom?

By this, I mean when you first played doom with no idea whatsoever what the storyline was, how did you first imagine things?

I remember in school, when I was introduced to doom in the 5th grade, I would tell my friend a mishmash of different, retarded stories to suit it.

It started off as aliens teaming up with demons in the base, to aliens attacking to eat the slime, to demons attacking to eat the slime, then they were alien demons, and eventually it ranged from me mixing the revs and archies together saying they were a monster in football armour "blasphemying and pretending to be God [to give purpose for their damnation]" by shooting fire.

It later turned into you were summoned by God to fight off the demons.

Now assuming yours are not as messed up as mine, do share.

Somehow I've always known the story, even when young. I guess it's not hard to put it together.

First experience I remember on the SNES Doom, I always considered them demons from hell attacking some human base. Though I always thought the former humans were actually demon soldiers rather than zombies. The terrible pixelation on the SNES led me to believe the faces were similar to Baraka's facial features in Mortal Kombat X)

I found it a wacky but real 3d Wolf3d clone, where the marine was moving erratically among insane crowds of monsters, myself being unable to control him. That's because it was the attract-mode demo of E1M5 playing :P But it sure looked extremely tough on UV like that. Monsters everywhere!

As a watcher/player without manual input, I was imagining the enemies as generic monsters. I was also considering the otherwise humanoid troopers to be actual monsters as well, who somehow look like people at that resolution. Their monstrous growls couldn't fool anyone that they were once humans.

Once I found the manual I was pleased to know that the monsters in general were devils from hell. It made sense. And I also thought that "former" meant "fake", enforcing my thought they were just humanoid beasts.

Never cared for the story. Still don`t.
What I reacted on, or...really liked was the fact that Doomguy was all alone in these weird places in space, fighting demons.
That aspect still intrigues me!

I pretended to watch the demos and tap the keys like I was playing. I saw the story as guy who goes into hell and kills a ram head.

I'm not sure what I thought it was at first, but it didn't take me long to figure it out after seeing a horned brown creature with red eyes throwing fireballs.

I assumed you played a badass space marine fighting demons from hell. Wasn't far off.

I think I read the story in the manual and didn't think about it much before that so I didn't have a mis-conceptions.

I did make the false assumption that the world/engine was bigger and more complex than it turned out to be once I got into editing.

I remember in E1 pretending all the bad guys were human terrorists rather than demons/zombie because that seemed more fun at the time. Funny really, considering that's lthe direction FPS have taken and I'm not interested in them at all.

I loved death animations. When I was a kid gore was as good as porn would be later.

But I assumed it had epic battles on Mars thanks to the cover.

I believe I read the manual before playing the game. So I always knew the story.

PRIMEVAL said:

Though I always thought the former humans were actually demon soldiers rather than zombies.

They aren't really zombies, they're just possessed, a real zombie wouldn't know how to use a gun.

Heh. I'm not english and I didn't knew the meaning of intermission text. Neither did my father, but when I asked him, he decided to answer me anyway. And his storyline was better. And I thought for a REALLY long time, that doomguy killed the bunny after changing under hell's influence.

I knew it was demons from Hell because I read the instruction manual when I was young. That's also why I never had alternate names from monsters, e.g. Pinky = Pig, because I knew what their real names were.

Seeker_of_Truth said:

That's also why I never had alternate names from monsters, e.g. Pinky = Pig, because I knew what their real names were.

Demon. :p

As a super epic game (with awesome music) from the 90s that people were talking about all over the internet. I had to get it.

Carnage in a semi realistic world.
First game where I didn't have the feel something was shitty or not as intense as it could have been.
The overall experience was mind boggling!

Avoozl said:

They aren't really zombies, they're just possessed, a real zombie wouldn't know how to use a gun.

1 - Show me a real zombie then I might believe you :P
2 - Watch Day of the Dead
3 - The basic Former Human is called the Zombieman, is he not?

PRIMEVAL said:

1 - Show me a real zombie then I might believe you :P
2 - Watch Day of the Dead
3 - The basic Former Human is called the Zombieman, is he not?

1. The concept of zombies makes it obvious that they can't use weapons.
2. I have no way of acquiring that movie atm.
3. Quote from the Doom Wikia: "Inside the Doom source code and in the Doom Bible they are called Possessed humans, and their sprite prefix always contains an abbreviation for "possessed"." Not to mention the instruction manual calls them former humans.

Avoozl said:

1. The concept of zombies makes it obvious that they can't use weapons.
2. I have no way of acquiring that movie atm.
3. Quote from the Doom Wikia: "Inside the Doom source code and in the Doom Bible they are called Possessed humans, and their sprite prefix always contains an abbreviation for "possessed"." Not to mention the instruction manual calls them former humans.

1 - How so? They're reanimated corpses by mystical means, what's preventing them from pulling a trigger?
2 - Then find a way! :P
3 - So, being possessed can still make you a zombie :P

In Return of the Living Dead 2, the zombies use a car.

They also run in some modern games and movies. Like actual sprinting. A stiff, cold, decaying corpse being nimble enough to run...

Even when I started I always knew it was some sort of metal base but I think I may of thought of them as more aliens than demons. Tell you though back then I admired the texture and used so much imagination to see levels, especially in the shareware doom episode.

Avoozl said:

They aren't really zombies, they're just possessed, a real zombie wouldn't know how to use a gun.

Depends on which "school of thought" regarding zombies you believe :-p

Romero-style zombies are unable to run, dumb, etc. but there are other interpretations as well.

Avoozl said:

They aren't really zombies, they're just possessed, a real zombie wouldn't know how to use a gun.

Do you think a specialist or (assuming that religion is for real in Doom) a good priest can exorcise and restore them, had Doomguy not been there to cap them?

Let's go back to the origins: voodoo zombies. They fit the role perfectly.

Even the main marine can become one!

printz said:
Even the main marine can become one!

And then Doomguy was a zombie.

purist said:

Demon. :p

This is true. I was betrayed by my own words...

I understood that it was demons from hell and you needed to take them out. That was about my whole understanding of the story, from the E1 shareware.

What I didn't get as a kid (and also with Quake) was the "badass" feel to the game. Perhaps this was something that sort of crept in over time for everyone, but Doom was so intense and graphically visceral for me as a kid at the time that it really felt like horror. These dark hallways, creepy monster sounds in the distance, and all the implications about hell that my young imagination dreamed up at the time gave it an otherworldly quality. Of course, neither I nor anyone else had ever played anything like it...

Definitely had a lot of Doom dreams/nightmares around that time. But I couldn't stop playing, naturally.