Dad play(ed) Doom

When I read articles in Wadazine or posts here, I’m struck by the number of new young doomers who saw their relatives play Doom; often their father, sometimes their brother, rarely mothers or sisters.

I’m old enough to be adult when Doom came out (I bought it later because I hadn’t enough money to buy a computer). My children too see me play Doom, now they call Doom "dad’s game" (I even have Flynn’s head in gkrellm and my wallpaper is an image from Doom³).

What about you?

My little sister is thinking of trying DOOM out. Should I let her play it? What do you think?

I was one of the kids watching my dad, brother and uncle play Wolf3D and Doom in the early to mid 90s. In a few short years I was at the point where I was downloading wads from GeoCities and by 2000 I was searching almost religiously for online multiplayer Doom and mapping tools that my child brain could comprehend (I found a couple but could never use them properly).

Since then, I’ve had times here and there where my interest in playing and modding Doom waned a bit.. but I was destined to be a big time Doom fan to my core from very early childhood. The funny thing is it felt like everyone else moved on, but I just never could.

When I was six, in 2000, my parents bought me a PS1. Some time later I've got balls of steel Duke Nukem Total Meltdown. And I was mesmerized by this game (even without knowing that DN3D on PSX is not good port). I discussed games with my parents from time to time. And while talking about Duke Nukem games dad said that when I was born there was released a game called "Doom", and he played it in office on break time. (Later I'll know that he even played it with my mom in deathmatch). Well, he said about an intense gameplay with cool monsters and weapons. He also said about IDDQD cheat and that main hero will have glowing eyes after typing it. The funny thing the last fact made me wondering about such strange feature. I've said that I would like to play this game, and he bought it on Christmas. A PS1 version of Doom was also a very different version from PC, but I'll know about it only when I've got a PC in my use.

Some time later, for my next birthday my mom bought me the Final Doom for PS1.

Well, as far as I know my both parents played Doom.

I was born close to the turn of the millennium, so by the time I was old enough to actually play computer games, Doom and Doom 2 were already "old games". But even so, everyone in my family played it back in those days, even my mom and sister (my sister in particular was much better than the rest of us at it; she figured out how to get the plasma gun in map 05 of doom 2 and was the first one to get to the Icon of Sin without cheats), and my dad would always let us watch him play in his office when he was taking a break.

We didn't get the registered version of Doom until about 2008, so to say we were behind on the times would be an understatement. I played through The Shores of Hell and Inferno and was like, "Whoa, this is what I was missing out on this entire time!". By that point though my family was more into console games (we had a gamecube and Wii, and Rockband was the latest hotness), so the overall interest in Doom waned a bit, and school for me and my siblings was starting to get just a little more serious.

Now thanks to the Master and Maximum levels, I'd always known that Doom modding existed. Vaguely. In an abstract sense. But it wasn't until ~2011 (I think) that through some Youtube videos, I discovered Doombuilder for making custom levels, and later XWE and Zdoom for more intensive modding stuff. My older brother gave it a crack, but he didn't get into it as much as I did (and to be fair, I didn't get into it *that* much myself). I played with modding doom off and on over the years, which brings me to today and my more serious efforts now. Much like Doomkid, it kinda feels like I'm the only one left who still has an interest in Doom, but such is life I guess.

I was born in 1995, and started playing Doom in 2013 or so because I'd heard a lot about it. I only learned later that my Dad had played it in the 90's, but my impression is that he played it for a few minutes total; he's never really been into games, and most of his time spent gaming has been in recent years with modern stuff like Skyrim or Fallout 4. He seems to think my affinity for this game is bizarre.

My parents are familiar enough with it, seeing as how we have a copy of Doom 2 on CD, and my brother would have been a little baby back when Doom 2 was still being sold in its native DOS form at stores.

Not sure how much they know about Doom, it seems my mother thinks you're fighting against aliens, which I guess is technically true, even if some are inhabiting human bodies.

My father and brothers were the ones who got me into doom, I saw them play and today I am the one who is more involved in the game, I thank them for that

12 hours ago, ducon said:

When I read articles in Wadazine or posts here, I’m struck by the number of new young doomers who saw their relatives play Doom; often their father, sometimes their brother, rarely mothers or sisters.

I’m old enough to be adult when Doom came out (I bought it later because I hadn’t enough money to buy a computer). My children too see me play Doom, now they call Doom "dad’s game" (I even have Flynn’s head in gkrellm and my wallpaper is an image from Doom³).

 

What about you?

This may just be the first time someone has referred to the Doom Guy as Flynn [Taggart] in normal conversation lol.

Funny thing about Doom. Though I grew up way after it (born in 1999) somehow I had never heard of it, at all. I had heard of Half-Life, remember when Call of Duty was at its zenith around 2009-2010. I had played games from the 90s too, some of my fondest childhood memories are of Ocarina of Time and the original 3 Super Mario Bros (the remaster for SNES which was re-released for Wii on its 25th birthday). Yet I had never heard of Doom. Actually, come to think of it, I think I do vaguely remember the 2009 Wolfenstein when it released, but other than the crystal skull on the artwork cover I had no idea what it was.

Fast forward to first year in college, and after many years as a fan of Star Wars Battlefront 1 and 2 (the Pandemic ones from '04 and 05) I finally decided to try out some of the other Star Wars titles in the back catalogue on GOG.com. Enter Dark Forces. This thing blew me away, the "3D (2.5)" engine, the complex and engaging level design, great story, the midi Star Wars tunes (in emulated OPL-3), 10 or so interesting and cool weapons, the photo-realistic sprites of the E-11 Stormtrooper rifle--and Dark Forces 2/Jedi Knight's FMVs being like real movies with actual actors also blew me away, something I had never heard of in a game (and those FMVs are better than most, hold up really well). Suffice it to say, I really liked Dark Forces (and all its JK sequels), and I've probably since dropped hundreds of hours into it on several replays. However, the reviews that placed DF in top 10 90s shooters lists also named another curious title, a Doom clone, something DF was highlighted notably as being not. So I gave The Ultimate Doom a purchase, and the rest was history.

Lots of newer Doom fans started with the 2016 reboot, but even though I think that had been out for 2 years by that point it was the original which made me a Doom fan, and I think the legacy of Doom and Doom II is simply untouchable, even the great new Doom Eternal can't lay a finger on them when it comes to how endlessly replayable the originals are.

I definitely tried many times to get my brothers to try Doom. One of them played a few levels but didn't care much, the other not even that. I guess I have a reputation of sorts for preferring stuff from the late 20th century. Music, movies, tv from 70s, 80s, 90s really appeals to me too, not so much to them.

I starting playing the game in deathmatch with my uncle back in the 90's, we played a lot of E1M1 and MAP01 in those days (first to 101 frags, the memories :D). Occasionally my mother would join as well but she wasn't much of a Doom player, that came later with Half-Life where she became a serious menace !! These days, I occasionally play Doom with my single digit son, recently we played the multiplayer maps from Sigil but he prefers Fortnite since that is quite popular with his friends and on school . . .

Since Doom was already eight years old at the time of my birth, and twice that the first time I laid hands on a mouse and keyboard for gaming purposes, one could say it was "well before my time" in terms of cultural relevence. It was, however, one of the first games that I ever knew of, thanks to my dad. He's not a gamer by any means: his interaction with Doom in '96 was his first and only exposure to the medium, but he told stories of it nevertheless.

As a young child, I was fascinated by his descriptions of "Lightning Men" (archviles) and "Minotaur Demons" (cybers). He even considered pirating the game for me when I was nine-ish, but my mother intervened, since at that stage she had yet to come to terms with first-person violence in video games (mass murder in Empire Earth was A-okay though, due to the degree of abstraction). In an alternate timeline, y'all (or those of you who were around at the time) may have had to put up with my chronically daft teen self around the time I started to frequent forums. Really dodged a bullet there, you did. Adult me is bad enough, heh.

As the '10s rolled around, though, my interest in the game faded to nothing. RTS, 4X and the occasional foray into World of Warcraft dominated my PC gaming diet, supplemeted by a vast array of old Flash games (inc. an online game-maker called Sploder, the first hint of my desire to create custom levels). On the console front, I only ever had access to a PS2 (high-end consumer goods like consoles were and still are quite expensive in SA), which limited my selection somewhat. My staples were Jak 2 & 3, various Ratchet & Clank games and a few miscellaneous odds and ends, like Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon, which was one of my all-time favourites.

I'll admit that I developed a degree of disdain for FPS games around this time, denigrating the genre as "fodder for the masses", in comparison to my "elite" appreciation for strategy games. After being exposed to BF2 at a friend's house, though, my perception started to change. Early Call of Duty games thus entered into my gaming diet, demonstrating to me the immersive potential of the first-person perspective.

Doom only re-entered my awareness once again in early 2020, via Karl Jobst's speedrunning videos on the subject. To be clear, I have never had much of an interest in speedrunning, but Jobst's content is enjoyable and interesting even to a layperson like myself. Something about the game's retro aesthetics stirred old, nostalgic memories of, strangely enough, Star Wars: Droidworks, an ancient edutainment game from the late '90s that I used to play obsessively as a child. Something about E1's brown, pixellated halls reminded me of the Sandcrawler sandbox level I used to play over and over again.

Thus, I decided to acquire Ultimate Doom, thinking that it would make for a good few hours of entertainment, much like the CoD games I'd played before. This, it turns out, was a grave miscalculation. I had no clue that, when I booted UD for the first time, my entire library of games, over one-hundred strong and collected over the course of a decade, would be rendered obsolete in mere hours.

Obession runs in the family, it would seem. I have been told that my father got through many a mouse-pad during his one and only encounter with the game. According to anecdote, he played from dawn till dusk for weeks, eyes bloodshot, index finger cramped from exertion. Pfft, amateur. At this point, I could arm-wrestle a body-builder with my index finger, so many demons have I slain in the past year and a half. By the time I'm done with this damn game, I'll be able to KO alpha male gorillas with that finger.

So, that's my history with Doom in a nutshell. Truly, an unexpected turn of events, in hindsight. Such is life, I suppose.

Side note: amusingly, my dad also mentioned that zombies would beat eachother to death with severed limbs or something to that effect. I think he may have been confusing Quake and Doom there, but I know little of the former, so cannot be sure.

Me and my Dad both used to play Doom and Quake when they came out, my sister played doom on her mac.

I have fond memories of accidently overriding my Dad's Doom saved games and getting pretty bollocked. lol 

Yup, my old man was a Doomer once upon a time too. I watched him play a lot of the old shooters when I was very young and he had me play the shareware version of Doom when I was just 6 years old. I think Doom might've been the very first video game I ever played when I think about it. 

My dad never really liked games in general. I only recall him playing Desert Strike for the Mega Drive because it reminded him of his military days, and he only played once or twice. He even bought the cartridge himself which surprised me at the time. When we got our first PC in late 1995 he didn't really care much either so it was just me and my older brother, who knew how to install it and was the first one playing Doom at home.

My dad never played the original Doom games, but when i was 7 or so, my we used to play Doom 3 together a lot, he picked it up whenever i couldn't beat certain area or solve a puzzle (or got too scared). We mostly just bickered about what the right way to do certain thing was until i looked up some gameplay on youtube. I actually learned a good deal of english trying to find the combination codes for the lockers. Same thing with the PC Medal of Honor games but less PDA reading to do.

I got my younger siblings to try some Doom games but none of them sticked with it.

18 hours ago, Teo Slayer said:

My little sister is thinking of trying DOOM out. Should I let her play it? What do you think?

There was an enemy guide on Steam where some girl described Doom monsters giving them "cute animal demons" names lol. But don't try to find it in English.

Myself, I've never even seen Doom before I started playing it recently. But none of the people IRL I showed it to seemed to like it. They must lack that affinity for oldschool pixels.

I do not know if my father knew that I played DooM but I never had the chance to show him about it one way or another, if I remember at least.

But my brother, meanwhile, did play DooM 64 with me long time ago, or I think it was DooM 2 on an application called DooM95? I do not remember well.

I was but a wee lad when Doom came out.  Was there to watch my Dad play it.  Wolf3d too.  My Mom would jokingly call him a rooted pot as he played those games after a hard day at the shop.

3 hours ago, game said:

There was an enemy guide on Steam where some girl described Doom monsters giving them "cute animal demons" names lol. But don't try to find it in English.

Dude, she is 14, not 5

10 hours ago, Omniarch said:

I'll admit that I developed a degree of disdain for FPS games around this time

To be fair, I think FPS games took a dive at that time. For a time it was all CoD and multiplayer games. As someone who'd loved FPS games since age 11 when a babysitter first brought Doom II around for me to play on his work laptop, there wasn't much in the genre I enjoyed in the late 2000s and early 2010s

I went far too long under the misapprehension that Doom was dead. I did replay The Plutonia Experiment in late 2013 (I know it was then because I was finishing it while starting my first NaNoWriMo), but it didn't occur to me to look for a community.

I didn't rediscover Doom properly and get involved until I heard that Romero was about to release Sigil. I signed up with DoomWorld just in time for Eviternity.

Eviternity blew my socks off. It was some of the best level design I had ever seen, it was free, and the tools used were free as well. I had to have a bash at it.

Romero brought me back for a look; the Eviternity team roped me into the community.

2 hours ago, Teo Slayer said:

Dude, she is 14, not 5

My 8yo daughter once named the monsters herself when watching me play. She called Cacodemons Gribblers, but that's the only one we remember.

My grandmother is a big DOOM and Dark Souls fan.

My uncle was into Doom and my dad played it some but my dad is and has always been into medieval type stuff so he loved Heretic and Hexen.

When my age was still in single digits my dad and I played through Hexen co-op multiple times on LAN'ed PCs and on N64.

I distinctly remember us finishing Hexen on the N64 right as my uncle and grandparents rolled up in our driveway, bringing with them the latest Babylon 5 episode they taped on their VCR.

Doom was always the weird "Hexen in the future and in space and you're a spaceman" game to me, as such it always held a certain mystique to me as we never owned the game at my house. I never actually played it until it was on Xbox Live Arcade about a decade and a half later.

I know my dad played Doom when it came out, but I was born in 2000 so that's well before my time. What actually got me into it was an interest in these older video games that had kind of been developing as long as I had ever been playing video games. Since I particularly like FPS's I thought that I should play the OG's -- first it was Quake, then Doom -- and it's stuck with me ever since.

I think that my dad and all my uncles played the game when it came out (Maybe one or two years later). I the first time I played the game was through the Snes port in a Xbox emulator when I was like 5 years old, I was very innocent so I didn't know that in the game you travel to hell, and a lot of stages terrified me to death. After my Xbox stopped (Like 5 years ago), I played the shareware game on a games website, and maybe one or two years later I installed GZDoom in my computer and played all four Iwads with the help of BigMacDavis' walkthrough. Nowadays I play cooperative with my brother through LZDoom and Odamex, and we always have a great time together. I've even asked my dad to play with me, but he's a busy man so he often says no.

My Dad played Doom but I'm pretty sure that was only because he wanted to try what I liked. He wasn't very good though - constantly hiding when he shouldn't be, though I know he finished all of Ultimate Doom on UV, he played pretty much how you'd expect an old person to play who didn't really understand computer games.

Well, I was a teenager when DooM came out and I am now the dad...

My kids are fascinated watching me making maps, though neither of them have expressed a desire to actually play. They are Minecraft obsessed... 

3 hours ago, LordEntr0py said:

She called Cacodemons Gribblers

Me and my mates called Pinkies, 'gribblies'.

Maybe there should be a 'cute nicknames for monsters' thread...

my dad tried to play doom when he was curious why his 4 years old played a lot a violent game as doom, he just didnt understood the game.

my older sister tried but she got dizzy with the movement.

my younger sister i think she barely played it

but was my older brother who introduced me in doom, he played in general all the doom games available (i mean he played the PSX one i never got the chance)

12 hours ago, Teo Slayer said:

Dude, she is 14, not 5

my older sister was playing Doom when she was like 7 or 8 lol

I'm sure your sis will be fine