Doom strategy guides

Does anyone actually have these? I decided to search "Doom" on eBay today and have noticed some Doom/Doom II strategy guides up for sale.

Does anyone have these? What does the inside look like? Do you get like automaps of all the levels (but more detailed than the actual Doom automap)?

Hot damn, I didn't think you'd be around here peach freak :D

I was about to go on a collecting spree with these strategy guides a few years back. From what I've read from people who have many of them, these Doom guides are mainly collector's items. While I'm not sure of their exact contents, they have what you can essentially find online.

I do have an old SNES Doom guide by Robert Waring, I believe. While nice to look through a couple of times, it's quite evidently guilty of copy-paste, taking random excerpts from other sources (which explains why it sounds more like a guide for PC Doom). However, it's pretty useful at-hand when playing the game (especially, ex, Limbo). It has good map layouts of the levels and, IIRC, descriptions of the weapons, items and monsters.

haha, you from GameFAQs? Is that your GameFAQs username?

Don't remind me of Limbo. I had SNES Doom before PC Doom and it took me many many tries to find that goddamn Red Key. I didn't know there were multiple paths to take in that maze since they kind of blended in.

Prior to that, Mt. Erebus was as bad. Couldn't find the Blue Key at ALL and none of the guides online (at the time) provided any help. I got around this problem by finding the secret exit by mistake. I jumped into that blue box and hit the switch, not expecting it to be a secret exit. I thought it would just lower the box around me so I would be freed.

That's a pretty fair assumption to any beginner.

I only read gamefaqs board threads. I don't post there, but would have if it wasn't for their staff. That's a whole other story.

Yeah, I first played Limbo on SNES Doom as well. That's where I discovered you retain most things after dying/restart the level.

Well, we're off-track here...

I have copies of the Doom Battlebook, The Official Doom Survivor's Strategies and Secrets guide, and the Official Doom II Strategy Guide. I can take a few pictures of the insides if you want.

Nowadays the Doom Wiki is probably a far superior resource to anything these have to offer though.

I have Robert E. Waring's Totally Unauthorized Guide To DooM II. There was a bonus disk included with an editor, I believe. The guide has tips on monsters, items, weapons, as well as Ultra-Violence walkthroughs of each level (automaps included), plus info on secrets and cheats, a tutorial on how to use the "editor" included, and info on multiplayer as well as worldwide DooM players (though I don't know any of those players).

Didn't realise I had so many -

The Official Doom Survivor's Strategies & Secrets
Doom Battlebook (revised to cover Ultimate Doom)
Doom II: The Official Strategy Guide
Digital Warfare (with companion CD) - multiplayer strategy guide for a bunch of games
3D Action Gamer's Bible (also covers Heretic, Hexen, Quake & Duke 3D)
Totally Unauthorized Guide To Doom II (with companion disk)
Doom: Totally Unauthorized Tips & Secrets
Final Doom: Unauthorized Secrets
Doom II: The Ultimate Survival Guide (free with PC Gamer magazine - Jan 95 issue)

The multi-game guides don't have maps and they vary in quality in the other guides, with the Final Doom maps almost looking like they were drawn free-hand.

I don't have any for Doom, unless you count those two massive mapping guide books. I do have one for Heretic though, and the pictures they use were in the old .pcx black and white format, and if you could even barely make out the thing they were trying to show, you're lucky.

"The Official Doom Survivor's Strategies & Secrets" is a pretty amusing strategy guide. The narrator treats everything so seriously and it comes off pretty cheesy at times.

I have the Sybex 'Survivor's Strategies and Secrets' book for the original Doom, by Johnathan Mendoza, the similar book that was sold as part of the Lost Episodes of Doom package (same imprint, same author), and Prima's official guide for Doom II, by Ed Dille.

The Sybex guides, while lacking color images, are otherwise of rather good quality, and make for pleasant reading material, particularly the first one. It has two maps for every level, one detailing thing placement, and the other detailing an 'ideal' (sometimes code for 'safest') route as well as the connections/placement of switches, triggers, lifts, etc. There are also comprehensive chapters on weapons, items, enemies, etc. Most of the information is quite accurate, although the guide fails to note that the cyberdemon and spiderdemon are immune to splash damage, and thus its calculations on how many rockets it takes to kill them are way off. The book for the Lost Episodes isn't quite as good, because it dispenses with the item/monster placement map and moves to a less clear system for the route/trigger map (and the maps have more mistakes or omissions), and it almost completely recycles the pre-walkthrough chapters from the first book. On the other hand, it does include some commentary on each map from Klie and Carter, the two guys who actually made the maps in the Lost Episodes.

The Doom II book is, typical for Prima, a mite half-assed. It lacks color and most of its images are small, blurry, etc. Most of its item/monster/etc. briefings don't tell you much more than the game's manual does. It does use mostly clear and accurate maps, with a 'point of interest' system, although things are muddled a bit from time to time by dint of Dille getting east confused with west and north confused with south. It does offer a surprisingly in-depth section on playing in co-op--unit formations, tactics, etc.--suggesting that Dille was quite the co-op fan. He also mostly-consistently roleplays the voice of one or more marine drill instructors will delivering the text.

All that aside, Fraggle is absolutely right, in that the modern wiki or other online sources are liable to have more complete/accurate information, but these old books can be interesting in other ways. For example, the writing in all three of these I've mentioned gives you a window into how much situations that even a very average modern player wouldn't bat an eyelash at used to intimidate players back around Doom's release--Mendoza speaks of each Baron of Hell like you've got to spend the entire level dreading him, and the sheer number of scenarios in Doom II that Dille strongly suggests the player outright flee in terror from is really quite telling.