What if Doom was only released on consoles?

I made a thread a while back about what if doom had terrible gameplay instead of being a masterpiece. This was a reply.

Maes said:

UP NEXT: What if Doom had only been released on consoles?

Anyways I'm a jerk and took his sarcasm seriously. So here you go.
The main points I'm pondering are:

Would consoles be more popular than they already are?
How would a community based around customization form, if at all?
If the said community got hold of the game, would it be released on computers then?
Would the game engine be different due to the higher console abilities at the time?

Of course, there can be other questions.

What may be said next:
UP NEXT: What if Doom was released 5 years later?

It wouldn't have lasted this long.

UP NEXT: What if Doom was the aliens? John puts on his spacesuit, and the radio crackles:"No, John! You are hurt!" And the spacesuit was the facehuggers.

Professor Sir said:

Would consoles be more popular than they already are?

Not really. FPSes will always feel like a "foreign" genre on consoles, due to the clunky controls, and FPS would lose to 3PS (like Tomb Raider, Fade To Black etc.) pretty soon. Plus, consoles drew their strength from other game genres (mostly action/sports titles).

Professor Sir said:

How would a community based around customization form, if at all?

If it would form at all, that would be perhaps with a decade or more of delay, if the 32X and PSX customization/resource ripping projects are anything to go by. Doom wouldn't have had its legendary status, for one, and there wouldn't be 20 years worth of modding tools and fan-made levels to fuel it.

Professor Sir said:

If the said community got hold of the game, would it be released on computers then?

If id released the SC in 1997 like they did, maybe. But without the big sensation caused around it, Doom would be just like another ROTT or Descent by then: certainly, some people would swear by them, but it would not be a recognizable culture icon anymore/

Professor Sir said:

Would the game engine be different due to the higher console abilities at the time?

Higher how? The PSX had 3D-accelerated visuals, yes, but otherwise had to make a lot of compromises in level design, game engine speed etc. and other ports were in general even worse. The classic Doom gameplay and immersion, as we came to know it on the PC, wouldn't have materialized.

Professor Sir said:

Of course, there can be other questions.

TL; DR: it would probably be yet another "next gen" game like Crash Bandicoot or Rosco McQueen on the PSX. Do these names tell you anything today? No? Well, there you got it.

Q: Would consoles be more popular than they already are?
A: Unlikely. PC allowed the game to sweep the world (shareware and piracy was a huge factor) while consoles would limit its exposure to regions where consoles were popular already. It'd end up as a minor hit uncomparable with the once omnipresent cultural icon from our universe. Maybe sales would soar temporarily, but any ripples from the butterfly effect lasting 20 years would be damaging, possibly making the entire gaming industry less popular than here.

Q: How would a community based around customization form, if at all?
A: It wouldn't. Consoles are thoroughly anti-custom content, it hurts business. Aren't modifications for old console games mere hacks? Mods would be limited to crap like hexediting all armor helmets into cyberdemons. Maybe if Consoledoom retained the ability to load PWADs (to feed people commercial data discs), ORIGWAD would still come to exist and that'd be it.

Q: If the said community got hold of the game, would it be released on computers then?
A: You mean like playing a Doom ROM in some emulator? How awesome would that be! If that means the source code, it'd probably spark a PC port project that'd move through buggy RCs at glacial pace.

Q: Would the game engine be different due to the higher console abilities at the time?
A: What kind of bizarro reality is this? Argh, genitals on people's foreheads!

Professor Sir said:

How would a community based around customization form, if at all?

Well games like Sonic and Mario have level editors for them (even if only practical for ROMs), so if Console-only Doom were such a hit I have to imagine that similar tools would eventually pop up for it. However Doom's support for custom content was explicitly included by design, so I can't imagine that console game modding would be as easy as even Vanilla doom modding, much less source port features.

plums said:

Well games like Sonic and Mario have level editors for them (even if only practical for ROMs)

It's made a lot easier these days than directly editing the ROM. In the case of Sonic games, there are several very well documented, well commented and well organized disassemblies that are already set up to easily recompile right out of the box. Of course, this wouldn't have happened if the game wasn't immensely popular, as it had to survive in popularity long enough for there to be people around with modern tools to feasibly do this, and to dedicate such time and effort into it.

I love talking about the nuances of Doom and all, but do we really need to go into discussions of "what if the game wasn't nearly as good as it was," in whatever form it takes? The general answer would always be that it wouldn't have made the impact that it did. How the industry at large would fare after that is simply unknowable and subject to rampant speculation. There's not many places the discussion can go besides telling made up stories.

Yeah some console games get a fair few mods...the old Streets Of Rage games get some good mods done for them...and it isn't all just playing as Mr X or something.

If you go on soronline.net you'll see both fan games and modded games and find tools to make your own.

So Doom might yet still stand a chance as a cult icon with a dedicated modded scene should we be living in that reality.

Of course these games have different engines....so that might change things. But as plums said, even old school Sonic and Mario get their mods. And a fan made PC version just may happen, be it in a gamemaking program, or be a total conversion mod of another game.

It wouldn't be as popular indeed, I agree with this...but it could still be fairly well liked.

Sodaholic said:
I love talking about the nuances of Doom and all, but do we really need to go into discussions of "what if the game wasn't nearly as good as it was," in whatever form it takes? The general answer would always be that it wouldn't have made the impact that it did. How the industry at large would fare after that is simply unknowable and subject to rampant speculation. There's not many places the discussion can go besides telling made up stories. [/B]

Yeah, all guess work aye? But still fun to talk about alternate possibilities I think.

Maes said:

stuff

Yup, agreed on all points.

It would have diminished the status of doom in one way, but it
would still have been some form of shock and awe.

other 2.5D shooters would have beaten them to the spot on pc... like duke, blood, etc. so they would have had double the fame.

Most of it's already been said, but really the thing that bears saying again is: NO PWADS. This alone isn't the only factor in Doom's success (lots of other games have level editors that barely anyone's bothered to make releases with) but it's certainly added to its lasting power. Yes, ROM hacks exist nowadays, but those have only developed once the systems in question can be emulated somewhat reliably, and though the romhacking scene has matured a lot since then, many of the early attempts tended to be of the "hurr, let's add penises and swastikas everywhere, lulz" variety* rather than serious level editing.

Also, one has to wonder what sort of bizarro timeline would have to lead up to this situation, anyway. id Software was already firmly PC oriented at this point (and before then, John Carmack and John Romero were both fans of the Apple II, IIRC.) What would become Commander Keen started out as an experiment in porting Mario FROM console TO PC, which they pitched to Nintendo but Nintendo wasn't interested. If Doom were to have been a console-only game, Wolfenstein 3D probably would've been too, and we all know what happened with console Wolf. id might not've been successful enough to even consider making Doom in the first place. Or maybe a console-oriented id would've stuck with the Commander Keen franchise, since that's the sort of game the consoles of the time did well.

* Not that Doom modding hasn't occasionally gone this route, anyway.

The only console version of Doom that measured up to the original on it's own two feet was Doom 64, and that went in a very different artistic direction. It benefitted from the virtue of all new art assets, new music, and not trying to replicate the original Doom layouts on hardware that couldn't handle it.

All the other versions were either cut down, buggy, unoptimized, or a combination of the three. PSX Doom's suffered framerate issues, the 3DO version was nigh unplayable, the 32X has a pitiful set of levels and Godawful music, the SNES version was incredibly chopped down and forced you to play on the higher difficulty to actually play the whole game - basically making it impossible.

It wasn't until Xbox/360, a glorified self-contained PC, that we saw a proper port of Doom on a "console."

Also, it's debatable if we would have ever seen Duke Nukem if not for the insane success of Doom on PC. It was what inspired the folks at 3D Realms, and Ken Silverman who made the BUILD engine because of Doom, to take the Duke franchise in that direction. The result of which would be no horror or asian flavors of 3D FPS (Blood and Shadow Warrior.) Which in turn could have affected the direction and inspiration of dozens of other developers and games designed in the years that followed.

The thing is with Doom 64 is that it is not a Doom port..that's why it is so different. It's it's own game with new story. So they had better room for make it work well. It wasn't a copy of the original Doom.

The only console port I played was the PSX one which wasn't that bad...it dropped a bit in framerate but otherwise it was fine. The look, the new sounds (which admittedly 64 did later use) and new music gave Doom a new feeling which I liked. When I was growing up I actually didn't know about the PC original on the account of not having a computer or knowing anyone that did...so to me at least when I was younger, the PSX was the original incarnation and I loved it....so even without a PC original, it would still have had a little cult following anyway....of course not being as popular but everything has it's fans. Gaming would be different yes, but for better or for worse? Who knows, as we don't live in that reality.

I also don't really know how bad these other ports are, I haven't played them or even had the consoles they came on...yup, never even owned a SNES.

Of those bunch the PSX favored the best, but it still had some frame-rate issues when too many monsters were active. Final Doom on PSX (which ironically would probably never had existed if not for Doom on PC, and the community of modders at the time) had some really horrible choppy framerates.

As far as the N64 version being different: Yeah, as I said, that's one of it's strong points. It's harder to compare it to the original, because it's got a fresh coat of paint tailor made for the platform it was on. The combination of new music, fresh art assets, completely new level designs, no slow down at all, and soft filtering to eliminate the pixelation made it look very polished and new(Even though arguably the core gameplay is entirely unchanged.)

I can't speak for the 3DO or 32X versions, as I only ever saw them in action, but the 3DO suffered very visible slowdown.

The SNES version, which I owned, was pretty terrible. The only thing it really had going for it was the SNES sound chip for the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_paAM9bhBNI

All the enemies were single-direction facing, there were no floor or ceiling textures, and it was quite slow, giving you the instinctive need to push really hard on the controller to try and go faster.

Though, one thing it has over the 32X version is it actually has the bosses in it. Yeah. The 32X version lacked bosses.

Professor Sir said:

Would the game engine be different due to the higher console abilities at the time?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAAAHHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAHAHA

Get a load of this guy.

Console Dooms have lower framerates, lower level of details, lower amount of textures and sprites, lower everything.

Only the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 ports had some new features to compensate a bit for the PC stuff they lost.


If Doom had been a console-only game, it would have been designed radically differently, so as to play more to the console's strengths; so it pretty much wouldn't have been Doom. There of course wouldn't have been any modder, which means that many of the people who got a start in the game industry thanks to their Doom modding days would have had to pursue some other career instead. The title would nowadays be remembered as fondly as Bazooka Blitzkrieg or Plok. Bethesda Softworks would have struck the PC FPS goldmine with its Terminator games.

I would still sit from time to time in front of my atari jaguar, playing that utracool shooting game, only a handful of people can remember of.

cybdmn said:

I would still sit from time to time in front of my atari jaguar, playing that utracool shooting game, only a handful of people can remember of.

Change Atari Jaguar to PSX and you''re telling my tale. (oo-er?)

Except that a game like Doom would still be popular today. It's a fantastic game and every time I play it the game might as well put up a message saying "You''re Winner!", even if you die miserably to a handgunner shooting you in the back while you run away.

I hear a lot about the console versions having content cut. While this might seem like a problem for those who played the PC version first, I still say one thing: Show me something that was cut that I should actually care about. Obviously losing the Arch-Vile was a big thing, but I am not entirely sure we needed a super-fast, super-tough adversary who could cause maximum damage while bringing Hell Knights back from the dead... it looks a bit silly having one OP monster when most of the others are easily defeated.

As for losing a crap-looking "ghoul room" in Pandemonium, or a bizarre crusher room in House of Pain, or a few empty nukage corridors in Command Centre... well, all the X-Files episodes I saw cut the scenes where Mulder brushed his teeth and decided which seat of the car he should take, and I also never got to see Scully shopping for Dracula's tea bags (tampons), or Skinner complaining that he went prematurely bald... but I'm not going to ring Chris Carter and complain.

MajorRawne said:

Show me something that was cut that I should actually care about.

You shouldn't care about anything. If you personally like PSX port and all of its changes - good for you.

Modding is one of the reasons Doom took off in the first place. And while it's possible that a modding community for console Doom releases could've formed years later, I highly doubt anyone would've given enough of a shit about Doom to put in the effort. Modding made Doom popular, and is why the Doom community is so strong today. Take that away, and what are you left with? I'm not saying Doom is bad on its own, but it would've been stale and boring without user-generated content, and would've been quickly overpassed by newer games, IMO.

If Doom was a console game, it would have ended up in all those unloved gem game thread thingies on some Quake forum.

Jimi said:

UP NEXT: What if Doom was the aliens? John puts on his spacesuit, and the radio crackles:"No, John! You are hurt!" And the spacesuit was the facehuggers.

I found this more funny than you probably expected it to be.

MajorRawne said:

Show me something that was cut that I should actually care about. Obviously losing the Arch-Vile was a big thing, but I am not entirely sure we needed a super-fast, super-tough adversary who could cause maximum damage while bringing Hell Knights back from the dead... it looks a bit silly having one OP monster when most of the others are easily defeated.

As for losing a crap-looking "ghoul room" in Pandemonium, or a bizarre crusher room in House of Pain, or a few empty nukage corridors in Command Centre... well, all the X-Files episodes I saw cut the scenes where Mulder brushed his teeth and decided which seat of the car he should take, and I also never got to see Scully shopping for Dracula's tea bags (tampons), or Skinner complaining that he went prematurely bald... but I'm not going to ring Chris Carter and complain.

Wow, that was kind of desperate and sad.

Not really....they cut some monsters and rooms that aren't massively important but otherwise it's the same game.

But they only did that because it was a port...like mentioned before if it was out first on console then it would have been designed differently instead of being a scaled down version.

But if in some odd alternate reality it was made on consoles first, like it appears in our world...it would still have it's fan base and small dedicated modding team. It wouldn't be as huge, but it would still be well received by some. It might have given rise to those console games (as they don't have to think about cutting archy because he doesn't exist) the possibility to even come up with alternate monsters to place there....rather than go "cut it, leave it blank...just put a crappy transparent demon there" they could have been creative and made something else to fill it in.

But of course, different ports have different things cut...so you have to think about which console port being made first, would effect it all how?

It's nice having everything the PC version has...but it's not game breaking not to have them. I know this because I grew up not even knowing about the PC release and I was loving my PSX Doom.

Xegethra said:

Not really....they cut some monsters and rooms that aren't massively important but otherwise it's the same game.

Well, it's kinda okay to rationalize that cut content wasn't that important, but it's a little funny to see someone rationalizing that cuts are actually the shit and the game is so much better now. :)

Well yeah hah that's a bit backwards.

More in a lot of cases is better indeed....but yeah, the game is still good without them as the PSX port plays pretty tightly.

Arch-vile isn't super-tough. Kind of a glass cannon, really. They're easily neutralized if you have the rocket launcher or plasma rifle. The SSG will also do the trick nicely if you have some cover.

And it's really one of the most interesting monsters in the game.

dew said:

Wow, that was kind of desperate and sad.

That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me all day!

The main difference between the PC and PSX port is, the player character is tougher on the PlayStation. He derives more health from bonuses (the benefits of a healthy gut) and he never "really needs" a medikit :D

Yeah the Arch Vile isn't the hardest thing to defeat, I guess they really didn't wanna try stressing out the PSX with his double frame count or something like that so they axed him from the game.

He was a whole new creature when I saw him in the PC version...didn't know what to expect.

I was always on consoles when growing up, we were too cheap for a computer and I was still a bit out of the loop enough to not know of ports, and versions with cut content....so playing the PC version for the first time felt weird to me...all the sounds and sights were new and some of the enemies I had never seen before. I then learned the PSX version was a scaled down conversion. Then I learnt of the other console ports....I didn't know Doom was as big as it was having only played it on PSX and not really knowing many other people who played it.

But even having found the PC original to be a fully enjoyable experience, I still think that having such familiarity with the PSX port it is still a fully playable game and as far as I knew, it was a full game....felt like it, played like it to me. Now I know better but even so I can still say the stuff they cut...at least in that version, didn't completely ruin the game as some might say it has.

So if the PSX port in that universe was the first and only version of Doom, it would still have done pretty well....not as well, but well.

MajorRawne said:

Except that a game like Doom would still be popular today.

Yes, but while the psx was a very successful game console, the jaguar wasn't. None of the consoles which had one of the first generation of console ports was successful, not the jaguar, not the 3do or the sega 32x. The snes was, but the version of doom for this is a bad joke.

The SNES version only exists because Doom was popular enough in the first place to compel some unaffiliated developers to do basically what Id did before with Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement. SNES Doom isn't a port, it's a clone using the same assets, but not derived from the source code at all, since they didn't have the source code when they made it.

Jimi said:
[B"No, John! You are hurt!"[/B]

John Hurt? :D

But yeah, had Doom been console-exclusive, it would be more or less forgotten by this point. I certainly wouldn't still be playing it.