Totally underrated (Claustrophobia 1024)

I can't believe how underrated/underlooked is Claustrophobia 1024 1 and 2. I can't even find people mentioning it, or people putting it in any top list. None of them is on the community's top 100 lists by anyone. This surprised me quite a bit, it was one of the first megawads I played and I felt really surprised by it's looks, even thought the maps are obviously short-sized, they are appealing to look at, at some points, even more than the original Congestion 1024. (Which I find inferior). It's like a hidden gem, none of them were even nominated for any Cacowards, or are even mentioned on the Cacoward stubs.




What do you think happened? Did you know about this wad before this post? 

Never thought it was underrated. It has lots of reviews/votes and is mentioned occasionally; when people talk about wads with specific rules that limit your workspace and have to work to a certain extent of your creativity.

My only gripe with Claustraphobia is that, while spectacular, the boss fights are outright impossible without God mode. They also wreck my FPS.

They are both good megawads, and I agree that both of them are even better than the original Congestion 1024 and they're well worth recommending to people. I couldn't tell you why they missed Cacowards when they were first made, as that was a long time ago (probably the same reason anything else is snubbed -- they were good but other stuff was better). They did come up in brainstorming for the Top 25 Missed Cacowards, but were a relatively low priority. There's a ton of fun stuff that hasn't made the awards over the years, but you can't always cover everything, and Claustrophobia wasn't as much of a landmark release as Congestion, since it was copying something that had already been done. I'm always happy to see stuff like this getting a signal boost, though.

Mechadon's involvement in Claustrophobia 1024 was mentioned in the 2009 Mapper of the Year article and Esselfortium even said - in the same article - that it was an award candidate. This may not be the most glamorous solution but I've done the same thing to namedrop stuff that we did not include in the Cacowards.