How you discovered the Doom series? / Your first time playing Doom?

The very first time I encountered Doom was due to its review in a prominent Polish gaming magazine of the times. The review was 1 page long and featured on the back cover of the issue. It was February 1994. Not so long ago I managed to find a PDF scan of the magazine. Here's the picture of the review:



You can see three figures of "100%" in the lower right corner. These were marks for graphics, sound and gameplay respectively. Additionally, if a game was particularly good, the reviewer could give a bonus "super" mark for a given category and Doom received "super" in all three, as you can see (diagonal, yellow writing).

Back then, I had only played Wolfenstein 3D as far as FPS games were concerned, so despite Doom's great notes I didn't take interest in it. Without actually seeing the game it was hard for me to understand the technological leap that took place. I went on shooting nazis, but then I met a friend in school who owned Doom and told me about it. I remember two things particularly: he told me about multiple crushing vertical walls in one of the maps (he was referring to E2M2), which got me interested because Wolfenstein 3D had no such elements, and about the death sequence. He told me that once you got killed the camera would "fall to the ground" and look as if your hero really died in that position. Compared to Wolfenstein 3D I considered it the epitome of realism, that's why I remembered it so well (in Wolfenstein 3D, you would just get a freeze frame showing your killer and the screen would go completely red).

Those old reviews and game commercials in magazines are fun to read, even after decades. You can sense the excitement of the reporter. I don't speak polish so I couldn't read it but I was speaken in general manner concerning game reviews back in the old days.

I'm going to throw out the shamebait here - I actually first saw it on an episode of Family Guy, during a special intro satirizing the Simpsons.

I was curious as to -what- it was, and I looked it up. Some time later, here I am, wrecking things with the Brutal Doom v19 mod and jamming out to the loudest music I can. Several years takes you a good ways.

Waffenak said:

Those old reviews and game commercials in magazines are fun to read, even after decades. You can sense the excitement of the reporter. I don't speak polish so I couldn't read it but I was speaken in general manner concerning game reviews back in the old days.

I love them as well. Currently I'm trying to find all info about Doom in Polish magazines: reviews, walkthroughs, custom WAD contests, etc.

If any of you can upload scans of good quality from magazines written in English I would be more than happy to read them. I wonder what the foreign reviews of the time were saying.

Jimothy said:

I'm going to throw out the shamebait here - I actually first saw it on an episode of Family Guy, during a special intro satirizing the Simpsons.

You should be ashamed indeed... because the intro satirizes the "Naked Gun" series, not the Simpsons (even though Homer does appear at the end) ;)

I saw a friend playing it while at his work place in spring of 1994. I personally didn't get into the series until December of 1995 when I got it for the Playstation. As such, I was completely put off by the music of the PC version when I finally did play it. It seemed so "wrong" to have midi-rock playing in such a dire setting.

Dragonsbrethren said:

I know I downloaded a "shareware" version around 2000 that was actually the full game. Some random abandonware site, they offered the real Doom95 shareware, Doom 2 DOS "shareware", and DoomEd for an editor.

I found this site in 2005 where it claims Doom2 to be shareware too, oddly. Maybe this was copied from that site.

In the fall of 1994 I was in 9th grade in Highschool and 14 years old. The school had just received a bunch of new computers, one of which ended up in the library. I would go to the library at lunch sometimes to get homework over with so I could play shitty games after school.

I began to notice the same 4 guys in grades above me huddled around the computer everyday, always hogging and taking turns playing some game with only the keyboard. I watched them play it for a few days until I asked one of them what it was and he said, "Doom."

What a name for a game, I waited late one day to use the computer and had no idea how to navigate it and was completely overwelmed. Bought the shareware and could not use it until my father replaced DR-DOS with MS-DOS 6.22 on our 486-SX25 with Soundblaster 16 ct2230.

I played Doom every morning before school and after school for months. My grades plummeted but Doom always came first since then.

drifter20k said:

My grades plummeted but Doom always came first since then.

Lol!

There was this shareware games CD I had in the early 2000s. It had several of games which would later become my favorites, including Descent 1 and 2, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Wacky Racers, and others.

Doom was certainly not a game I would be allowed to have played by this time, because my mother was very strict against the notion of me playing a game where I am a person shooting guns, not to mention games with satanic imagery everywhere.

Actually she still is, but she trusts me to be smart enough to discern virtual from reality.

Not that I hadn't been playing other games before then; I had been playing DOS games since I was around 4 (1996), but never played or heard of Doom until then.

Heck, I played both Quake and Half Life far before I even touched Doom.

All I remember of Doom from my childhood was being scared as hell the entire time & only getting about half way through the first episode... I had it for the 3DO &, as a kid, you tend to ignore how poorly a game may play & just play it. Eventually, we either A) lost it, or B) sold it; I then went back to playing Wolfenstein on the 3DO. As fun & not scary as that game was, I don't think I got very far in it either. Ah, the good old 3DO...

Patrol1985 said:

I love them as well. Currently I'm trying to find all info about Doom in Polish magazines: reviews, walkthroughs, custom WAD contests, etc.

Hehe, a couple years back I went and translated a bunch of Polish Doom reviews for a guy who was writing a book about Doom. I still have these on a disk somewhere, though I'm not sure if I haven't deleted the scans.

What's your first Doom memory/when did you first hear about Doom?

Watching my uncle play Heretic on a black-and-white monitor, back in 1996 I think--I was 5 years old back then. (All video games look several times more magical when you're a kindergartener; sometimes I wish I could see them through my kiddie self's eyes again.) Some time later my dad got Doom 2 for the first time. I was intrigued and tried it out; I made it through most of "Entryway"... but when I got to the imp cage, I was transfixed with fear. Aah, there's a toothy thing on my screen, and it's attacking me, and I cannot do anything! Later that day I told my Dad that I'd never be playing this scary game again.

Whenever it came out on SNES, that was when I first played it. I was probably 8 or so. It didn't scare me though, mainly because the SNES port is one giant pixel. But the music sounds freakin' badass on that console, gotta love the SNES "overdrive guitar" sound.

i posted this here on doom's 15th anniversary:

i saw doom in early 1994 for the first time, on a friend's brand new 486. i was blown away, as the game was exactly how i imagined an improved wolf3d. i think the 3rd demo was on mt. erebus, i liked the hellish style best, and the bunch of enemies on that map looked like a never ending horde for me then (luckily, hell revealed was still a few years away ;) )

my first deathmatch ever was on e3m2. i and 2 others loaded a random map as we didn't know them anyway. playing as indigo, i found the rocket launcher in a recess and chose to camp here until green got in too, i fired and we both died. not a brilliant start...

perhaps i should have spent less time playing doom, but i grew fond of this game like of no other.

to be precise, i was playing spear of destiny in 1993 when some guy told me that the company that made this game was working on an even better one. i imagined it could have "graphics everywhere" as i called it (well, textured ceilings and floors instead of wolf3d's plain dark ones) and moar gunz, so it would be better.

but when i saw it in january or february 1994 on that murderous pc it exceeded all my expectations. what a difference, when people today say "these graphics suck!" but for me they looked real then. did we have more imagination when we saw actual things in these graphics?

i walked around e1m1: holy shit, it had a pool of water, barrels that exploded, and perhaps i could even get outside that building! romero was indeed a great level designer.

i had beaten wolf3d, i just had this tactic of peeking inside a room, retreating and gunning down the soldiers who followed me. this didn't quite work while standing in the acid, while the 2 imps were throwing fireballs at me.

iirc one of the most difficult fights was on e1m5 at the yellow door, those demons and the imps coming out of their closets trapped me every time... annoying when you don't run, strafe, or find a rocket launcher.

the cyberdemon of course was sheer terror, one hit and i'm splattered! i posted somewhere else how i retreated as far as possible firing plasma (and not seeing his rockets) and hiding behind the pillars. his introduction worked exactly as planned: i knew how difficult the barons had been, now there were some baron corpses hanging from a wall, who the hell can do that?

the spiderboss was pretty much the opposite of this. but the hellish style of ep. 3 impressed me the most. it was what i considered doom to be about : one marine fights hell. it had that cool satanic imagery, pentagrams, inverted crosses, skull piles, blood pools etc. still the best depiction of hell in a game, imo. the weirdest was the "souls wall" with animated faces on e3m3. it's a pity that most developers are going for realism today and there's little interest for this sci-fi setting.

Pirx said:

...The weirdest was the "souls wall" with animated faces on E3M3. it's a pity that most developers are going for realism today and there's little interest for this sci-fi setting.

By the "souls wall" do you mean that awesome "trapped-souls'-faces-as-I-like-to-call-them" wall? In other words...

SP_FACE1?

I love that texture! I can't decide whether it looks better as a still, normal wall texture, its classic scrolling appearance or its warping appearance with ZDoom texture warping. :)

Hmm, my first memory is probably my dad playing Alien Vendetta and not letting me watch, because "I'll get nightmares" and it was about 10pm...

JudgeDeadd said:

Hehe, a couple years back I went and translated a bunch of Polish Doom reviews for a guy who was writing a book about Doom. I still have these on a disk somewhere, though I'm not sure if I haven't deleted the scans.

Nice! Why would this guy need Polish articles of them all? Also, do you happen to be Polish? I'm asking because Polish is a very hard language to learn. Where did you learn it, assuming it's not your mother tongue?

Speaking of old reviews etc. when I clicked "Doom" in my Steam library today, it showed a piece of news referencing an old article from PC Gamer. It was dated May 1994 and it was the first issue of PC Gamer in the USA:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/08/02/may-1994-the-peak-of-pc-gamers-doom-obsession/

Inside you will find links to full-sized scans.

Patrol1985 said:

Nice! Why would this guy need Polish articles of them all? Also, do you happen to be Polish? I'm asking because Polish is a very hard language to learn. Where did you learn it, assuming it's not your mother tongue?

It is my mother tongue, teehee :P

As for why he needed them... well, I truly cannot remember it, but I think he posted a request for old Doom-related materials on some forum, I made an offer to translate some Polish articles, and he accepted. The completed book didn't make any use of them though.

JudgeDeadd said:

It is my mother tongue, teehee :P

The world is small indeed :P

Mine is being awake in bed at two in the morning hearing my dad play when he would come home on break. My father is a retired cop now, but back in 1994 he worked midnights. I remember being woken up at night by the sound of hell nobles and chaingun fire, followed by the doomguy's death howl and my dad yelling out every obscenity in the book at the computer monitor.

Ah, good times and so many nightmares.

This. By the way, can you see the yellow bottom part of the 2nd O in the sign DOOM in front of Cyberdemon's mouth? For many years during my very childhood, I thought that it's the monster's snout and that the red mouth was his eye, and that he looked like a weird bull with head turned to the left.

I'm confused...you thought his snout was in front of his mouth?

The mouth was an eye in my distorted view.

I'm just not seeing it. Haha

Funny as it sounds, I feel like I'm missing out now.

TraceOfSpades said:

I'm just not seeing it. Haha

No wonder. I can't properly see it anymore, either. I was like 3-6 years old back then. But the wrongful imagination of a bull with head turned to the left persisted in my mind until I was like 17. :P

I used to think the cybs nostrils - in the sprite, not the titlepic - were it's eyes. It was only after bumping up the resolution with a source port that I realised they were the blobs on the sides of its head.

durian said:

I used to think the cybs nostrils - in the sprite, not the titlepic - were it's eyes.

I still can't unsee it while fighting Cyberdemons, even though I already know the truth for years. His nostrils ARE his eyes for me. =)

Also, I see the nostrils as eyes even in the TITLEPIC now.

Here's another one. When I was like six (so around 1996-1997), I would want to play DooM II every day. Only once I'd reach the gantlet and maps started to get a creepier aesthetic, I'd always ask my dad if he wanted to watch me play "so he could see how good I am.". Yeah, he fell for that once. That game used to scare the crap out of me, but I wanted to play it so bad that I would just try to get dad to sit next to me while I played.

My earliest memory was playing with my brother, and from that point on he planted the idea of there being giant ant enemies in the game...for years I was a bit more fearful of the game than I should have been, when I questioned why I didn't see them he just told me they were rare. The level with all those Aranchnotrons was the supposed level to have them.

Then, I lost my copy of Doom...had to get a new one...only this new one had a manual and there was no mention of those enemies in it. Too bad he was much older than me and had moved out, I couldn't really do much to get pissed at him. Oh well, I was only a kid anyway.

Then I grew up and had even more memories.

scifista42 said:

Pereidolia

Damn. Now I cannot unsee it. It looks like a fucked-up duck with a big red eye, a downwards-pointing yellow bill and triceratops-like horns (one on the front, two at the sides, only two visible in the pic).




That small darker yellow point just above the cybie's chest...that'd be the "duck"'s nostril. Damn you ><

Maes said:

Damn. Now I cannot unsee it. It looks like a fucked-up duck with a big red eye, a downwards-pointing yellow bill and triceratops-like horns (one on the front, two at the sides, only two visible in the pic).

That small darker yellow point just above the cybie's chest...that'd be the "duck"'s nostril.

Correct description. :)



Compare to the checkpoint icon from Lion King. In my childhood, I've seen a distinct similarity between it and the Cyberdemon's TITLEPIC face.