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

I don't really recall my early days of playing it, I was more into Descent and Descent 2. But one thing I do remember is that I thought finding the secret exit on e1m3 was nearly impossible.

I also recall reading the backstories for TNT Evilution and the Plutonia Experiment many years ago, and wanting to play them, but having no idea where to find them.

The most distinct early memory of me playing Doom in 1994, at the age of eleven or twelve, is when I played E2M2 for the first time. I was afraid of going anywhere into the crate maze, there were so much imps snorting somewhere and shotgun zombies breathing heavily somewhere. I finally gathered all the courage I could muster, stepped into the maze... and got so jump-scared by an imp ambush that I ran away. (and I do mean that I ran away, and not the DoomGuy controlled by me up until then).

(There's another memory of being creeped out in E2M4, but that's another memory, and only one was allowed).

Running the Doom without Autoexec.bat loaded and without sounds, because the RAM wouldn't be able to manage it. It means running doom needed brand new restart of the PC.

So I'm a gen z and got a vr last year for my birthday, I hooked up a link to my pc and got doom vr working on my vr. I got in the game and still did not have any of the doom wads so I played freedoom 2 and that was when I fell in love with the game. I eventually bought the games on my pc than discovered source ports and so much more.

The year is 2001. I'm 12 and a friend of mine asks me if I know about a old game called doom, he shows me the Playstation 1 port. At first, I'm not impressed, I just think that it's an old game that looks pretty bad compared to the games I've played on the PS2, but then he lets me try, and I was never the same again.

First impression was what was I typed earlier. But I started to love the game anyways.

My first memories of doom are me playing Attack.was on the PSX version of final doom.

The weapons in particular left a big impression on me, like the plasma gun and super shotgun. I believe i was around 3 or 4 years old at the time.

I recall all the hype in the PG gaming magazines in mid/late 1993 and I probably first got hold of shareware 720K disks in Jan 1994 (Didn't actually get hold of the full game until a couple of years later when Ultimate Doom came out on CD).

I remember buggering about with autoexec.bat and config.sys files files to squeeze better performance out of my DX2/66 - something like this:

God that looks so OLD!

It was the first time I needed to update my PC kit - added more RAM IIRC, from 4MB to 8MB - yes, megabytes not gigabytes...

I was 25 at the time. Bloody hell...

My first memory of doom was in December 1993. I played it at a friends house on his computer. It was so good I didn’t want to come away from it. I was hooked on the first go. 

Now fast forward to July 1995 and I had the shareware version of Doom v1.666 on a CD. Loved it. Wanted to make some wad files. I had DEU but it wouldn’t work with the shareware version. Damn !! 

Then in September I had the ultimate doom and my first doom level cd called Doom Toolkit featuring levels for doom 1 & 2. Great times.

Doom is a beautiful game. Loved it then, still love it now.  
 

I remember being introduced to Doom II by a colleague right around the time it came out. I had just lost someone dear to me in a car accident and wasn’t taking it well, and my colleague suggested I play Doom II to get my mind off things. 
 

While Doom II didn’t take my anguish away at the time, it at least numbed the pain because it was so captivating of an experience I could take my mind off of things, and it ultimately became one of my favorite games of all time. 
 

Don’t let anyone fool you; Doom and Doom II were leaps ahead of anything else that existed at that time in video games. It was such a massive ripple that we still feel the aftermath to this day. It wasn’t just some other game, it was THE game. 

I first played it at friend's house when I was 8. I remember finding the carpet in Hanger to be quite eye-catching, as well as the fact that you could glance outside. I'd played Turok: Dinosaur Hunter at this point, but the ledges surrounding your path in general seemed quite artificial, with the sound effects being what helped to win me over on that game. I'd never read anything about future military bases up to this point, so the idea of a darkened computer bank, like the one you first encounter those grunty, grunty former humans on ITYTD was such a sight. The later maps in E1 basically reinforced the idea that this was a place worth exploring. And the first baron encounter......way to ram the danger factor home by placing them in red cubes John! And Phobos Anomaly was just such a striking setting all around.

My first Doom was in computer club: i started it, i loaded someone else's save (it was The Pit), and i was not able to figure out what to do in this game.

In 94' I only had the shareware (limited distribution in the UK) so my first memories at 8 were of Episode 1 exclusively.  I remember fearing the maze in Central Processing (damn those pinkies) and those Barons when they came out really shocked me.

I also wondered why ID spelt Armour incorrectly :)

I kept on dying on e2m4, and I was so proud when I beat it.

My first entryway to Doom was during 2016 when the new revival for the game was coming out or was released. There would be ads for it by Playstation but the quality was so bad that all I could see was yellow, red, and some monster I couldn't see very well (It was a Hell Knight), only thing I could understand clearly was the title of the game: DOOM. Fastforward to 2017, when I wanted to go back and check out a certain British Minecraft youtuber I used to watch cuz you know. He was playing a trollface adventure game or something and basically one of the puzzles took place in Doom, it was a Cacodemon in a hallway. I found it peculiar though because I could of sworn I'd seen the Cacodemon's image before, and then the British guy name-dropped Doom and then I connected it with that 2016 game.

After further research I found out about Doom and it was love at first sight pretty much. I liked demonology type stuff, and I liked Sci-fi. So, then I got Doom 2016 by accidently tricking my mother into thinking the game was for him (as if it were some donation or something, I just requested to buy the game and she accepted so I thought she actually had the money for two games). Then I went home and played it and I got addicted so there's that, but this is about the original games.

A bit later on I got Doom 2 for the Xbox 360 because the PlayStation belonged to my brother anyways. Also, the internet was rubbish at that period in time so there was a point where all I could play was Doom 2 and Call of Duty Black Ops campaign. I had specifically got Doom 2 because during my research I'd accepted the statement that Doom 2 was Doom 1 but bigger and better with all the new monsters and the Super shotgun. In conclusion, it was Pretty cool because it came with NRFTL.

I remember that I used to always wonder and think about what an Evil Eye does, or if the grotesques on the marble walls represent anything, or whether Fireblu is solid or not, or what the wall of faces felt like if I touched them. This is also my introduction to Heavy Metal and its other subgenres and such, as well as a bunch of other stuff. This was when I was still into Minecraft and Nintendo, it was my first M rated game.

In short, this game basically looked at me, shook his head, and put hair on my balls.

I happen to be like three years old or something so my introduction was a bit unorthodox. At this point in my life I had at least heard of Doom and its impact on the world but had never really played or watched much gameplay of it. This was until I found the Flash version of the game which included the shareware episode. I cant rememeber if it had mouse support (it probably didn't) but I do remember being confused by the fact that the use key was the spacebar. The first time I played it I remember getting lost in the first room of E1M1. A few years later I had actually bought Doom on Steam and had a bit more experience to navigate that pesky linear room. While I was in school one day, I decided to kill some time and revisit the Flash version. I distinctly remember being in E1M4 when a girl walked up to my desk and asked me something while I was shooting an imp, which at that point I paused the game and looked towards her. I assume she had never seen Doom before as her first instinct was to ask what the hell I was playing. Did anyone else get introduced through the Flash version? I don't think I've ever seen it discussed here.

IDDQD

Also, thinking that filling your body with liquid gold would make you invincible.

My mind always goes back to 1999 before realizing that it was around 2001 when i discovered Doom and its shareware episode.

I remembered the end level boss but moreover the absolutely based music at the time. Because of it, Doom is a rather fond memory of mines.

The soundtrack joins a few others who were stuck in my mind; Jazz JackRabbit 2 and the often forgotten Terminal Velocity.

So next year its 20 years for me. Its kind of shocking that by 2001 you already had NuDoomers and Oldskoolers who were there in 93 and where stuff like Skulltag, ZDaemon, and ZDoomGL already existed.

I think I was 7 when I first played Doom. I remember encountering the cyberdemon and thinking it was a baron of hell. (Now, now, remember how crappy the game looked back in the day.) I thought, "Psh, this is easy. I'll just blast him with my BFG like I always do." Because I was a chronic IDKFAer, which was the only cheat I knew. I soon realized it wasn't in my head; that alert sound was a bit deeper, and I had to figure out how to kill this jacked baron that can kill me in just 3 or 4 hits (I'm Too Young to Die, of course).

I remember episode 2 being more enjoyable back then, but it isn't as much now for some reason.

playing the flash version in newgrounds and thinking that it was an original game made by someone in newgrounds

I got to playing Doom for the first time later than Heretic. So my first impression was, that the game was pretty much similar to Heretic (some player's sounds, controls, menu, engine...).

When I was really young and began playing Doom E1 on my own, I remember thinking the dead marines you see around the place were enemies that my dad or brother had killed previously. (This must have been one of my very first times playing Doom independently since I apparently still didn't quite get how saving the game worked)

the first time i ever played doom was the BFG edition.

I still remember the first time I saw it when I was 13 or 14, watching over my friend's shoulder after going to his place to, err.... "acquire" the full version of Wolfenstein 3D (I paid for it later, twice in fact cause I am a good boy). I was excited to get it but he was like "Hey check out this new game!" and it was quite awe-inspiring.

I didn't get around to playing a ton of the originals until college, but I remember watching my stepdad play PS1 Doom games when I was 6 or 7 and being fascinated by them. I don't remember if I actually played them or not though - which I can't see why not, that crazy fucker let me watch Evil Dead like a year or two later. 

1997. 12 years old. I do remember vividly the first time that I got Doom on the SNES. However, I had to rent that cartridge many times because it was really rare at that time. Yup, never managed to get that cartridge by myself...

So, the first time I've played the game, I got rekt most of the time but I got better over time. Of course, I can't forget the music...

My HS friend and I were at his gf's house and he was running around in various levels throwing cheat codes left and right and he warped to E2M8 and was like "check it out, it's the cyberdemon!". I was standing about 5 feet back and of course everything was in 320x200 boulderpixel vision and moving very fast, so somehow I came away with the idea that the cyberdemon was like a really tall Doomguy, and had a Doomguy helmet on just like the one on the title screen.

Needless to say I was instantly enthralled.

I remember playing Doom shareware on my cousin's computer years ago. I don't remember the exact level but I do remember seeing the E1 sky, some dark corridors and some blue carpeting of some kind and being mesmorized at how much more realistic everything looked compared to Wolfenstein 3D.

Doom 64's first map.

Saw my dad play Doom 3 and be amazed by its look. At that time I was 7 years old and I really wanted to try it.