The Top 100 Memorable Doom Maps of All Time

[Not Jabba]

The Cacowards are pretty cool, you're thinking to yourself. If only there were even more that could have been done to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Doom!

 

Here you go, Doom lovers: The Top 100 Memorable Doom Maps of All Time. Enjoy!

 

This is definitely not the last you've heard of us. We've got another big feature written but not webified yet, and others in the pipeline. We are super excited to be bringing you all of this in celebration of the game and community we love. Thanks for everything, Doomworld!

[Spie812]

I really approve of that list. A lot of my favorite maps are there and not very much was missed. I don't really disagree with any of the picks, at least not the ones I recognized. I'm not a huge fan of Misri Halek, but I can definitely see why it would be number 1. I was actually thinking while reading the list, "Where the heck is Misri Halek?" until the end.

 

An excellent write up and I'm looking forward to whatever else you guys have cooked up.

[Doom64hunter]

"Void" is still one of my favourite maps of all time and I'm glad to see it on this list. (again)

[Denim Destroyer]

My favorite thing about this list it that it helps contribute to my never ending backlog.

[Da Werecat]

Serves me the fuck right to be an eternal runner-up after being so lazy in the last couple of years.

[yakfak]

great write-ups, a lot of my fave maps appear

map #74 is very suspicious though giggle

[Havoc Crow]

Reading through this list was like:

"man, what a pity that [map x] won't get onto the-- oh wait there it is"

[Suitepee]

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who enjoyed Toxic Touch from Alien Vendetta.

[Salt-Man Z]

It's funny, going in I knew Misri Halek had to be there somewhere, and really hoped that Deus Vult I would be. So of course they came in #1-2.

[Havoc Crow]

I was surprised to see "For We Are Many", I liked the map but always thought it was underappreciated/obscure.

[Johnatone]

8 hours ago, Doom64hunter said:

"Void" is still one of my favourite maps of all time and I'm glad to see it on this list. (again)

I second this. Cyb also made another of my favorite and most memorable wads: Massmouth 2.

 

Great list though; I'm looking forward to revisiting and discovering a lot of these maps now that I have more free time on my hands.

[SaladBadger]

okay that was honestly a really nice list. Quite a few releases I've not heard of in it, and I like how the concept is an evolution of the top 100 WADs without just being a rehash of that. a very nice thing to have for the 25th birthday

[pavera]

Congrats to everyone mentioned on this list, it is well deserved!

 

[NuMetalManiak]

Full-fledged List Analysis: Top 100 Memorable Doom Maps of All Time

Spoiler

100. Wow: Wow indeed

99. Black Rain: Large-as-fuck adventure map, but still fun nonetheless

98. Runaway Train: I don't remember if I played it or not to be honest.

97. Grove: Very twisting. Actually I didn't like this one.

96. Formalhaut: Doing the secrets for THT: Threnody for the wiki really wore me the fuck out. But this one and MAP08 definitely did a number on me.

95. Entryway: Hahahaha the troller launcher

94. Toxicity: yeah I still don't like this map though.

93. Netherworld Citadel: Gotta admit I was shocked to see someone beat me to not only the secrets for this one, but a full-fledged walkthrough. Damn. Also this level is good.

92. Void and Rainbow: Haven't played it.

91. Ancient Navajo Wolf Warp: Hello Ancient Aliens.

90. Transduction: One of the rare moments in Doom mapping where more than two mappers actually manage to make one map something fantastic. This one for a vanilla map did surprisingly well.

89. Miasma: is good.

88. Dark Dome: It's significantly easier than Post Mortem, but more fun all the same.

87. Impossible: A New Reality: Really fucking glad this one got in.

86. Run Buddy: Another one that I can easily remember despite playing it only twice. That's the thing with memorable wads.

85. Songs of the Damned: I actually haven't played this one.

84. Crumbling Necropolis: lel very funny but I know Surreptitious Ichor is better.

83. Invasion II: The Upper Decks: Is this one in Maximum Doom? I'm currently rummaging through the shitpile right now and I want to know if this is in the set.

82. The Beginning and the End: Tormentor is one best at lots of things. Haven't played this though.

81. Magnus: hey Ribbiks I thought you hated the BFG why is one in this map. uwu

80. Starport: Now I read ahead, and this is the only Hellbound map here. Kinda sad because I can think of at least five really memorable levels here (for me at least, MAP07 and the way the forest was designed was a slight inspiration for some maps I made).

79. The Mouth of Madness: All of Going Down is memorable and it is the greatest slaughterset ever.

78. Mission Imp.ossible (part 1): I actually don't like Action Doom.

77. Town of the Dead: Hey guys did you know that this map has no hitscanners?

76. Ticket to Eternity: "The stunning finale" you mean, stunning penultimate map. It's awesome of course, but I'd reserve the finale for TVDV's unique IoS.

75. Spooky Sunken Ship: I don't recall if this was in the demo of Golden Souls 2 (that's the only one I've played)

74. Sheer Poison: gotta play this some time

73. Monster Hunter Ltd Part 1: Only played that one, it was okay, but didn't play the second one.

72. For We Are Many: Out of curiousity, was there an Icon of Sin in this level? I watched some demos regarding it and I swear I heard Icon of Sin's spawn noises, but when I played there weren't any signs of an IoS.

71. Arcanum: I don't really like Square all that much, and I haven't played this one.

70. Doom City: Respect da classiks dawg.
69. Hazmat Hazama: Is there any particular reason why this is #69? o_o

68. Hobb's End Horror: Oh my fuck, I was NOT EXPECTING THIS ONE. I really really love this level to death, it's so serene with the music, and it's got little combat until the obvious pinky rush, and who doesn't love a good pinky rush? Easily my favorite of Hellcore 2.0's levels and a great pick for this list.

67. Undervilla: ECH, fuck the mancubi behind those stupid walls.

66. Skagway: 40oz is an elite mapper and this explains why. His magnum opus with Super Jaime for sure

65. Candlecove: Precipice would've honestly been my pick.

64. Eagle's Nest: Every map in DVII is memorable of course.

63. Dead.wire: Haven't played this.

62. Time Gate: Don't be so biased against MAP31, geezus.

61. Maskim Xul: Haven't played this

60. Sanctuary of Filth: Oh yes, this one had a motherload of secrets and I got them all. Also one of the very few maps to use the E4M6 tag in a different way.

59. Afterlife: The setpiece slaughter level to predate all the setpiece slaughter levels.

58. City of the Damned: Apocalpyse: GREAT LEVEL. Very large, very Blood-oriented, got plenty of concepts, and while I couldn't get much of story out of it, it was certainly haunting. Bonus points for the moon shelter gimmick, which likely got everyone the first few times.

57. Arcadia Demade: The writeup here is fantastic.

56. Toxic Touch: Malde sure knew how to create both gameplay and design in many of his maps. He will definitely be missed.

55. My Fav: So much weird shit in this level but it all works out nicely.

54. Citadel at the Edge of Eternity: Only recently have I managed to beat this gargantuan motherfuck. It's probably on the more "infamous" side of memorable because it's one of the most confusing levels ever made with Maximum Doom-like progression. With its sheer girth and progression it's memorable.

53. Shadow Port: Well it's a good start.

52. Phocas Island 2: This definitely felt like it's own little game, a fantastic puzzle-style thing which I admittingly cannot do without a walkthrough. It's worth it though.

51. Alpha Scorpii Monument: This level is anything but peaceful given its enemies inside.

50. Dissolution: That crane sure is memorable.

49. Happy Time Circus II: Haven't played this, I wonder where shitbag is these days though.

48. The Ruins: Always have felt Earth as one of the more underrated wads ever. It gets flak for some lame combat decisions and annoying corridors, but this first map sure lured many players in to Ritenour's design.

47. Jade Earth: I've played maps longer than this though (see 54)

46. The Landing Pads and Atmospheric Processor: Hmm, I only played Aliens TC once, but the writeups here have jogged my memory. I do remember the lack of enemies quite well to pervade the sense of dread now.

45. Afterlife II: Always wanted to ask Erik if he's a diehard JRPG fan given his music choices. Especially in One Bloody Night which had several Breath of Fire tunes.

44. Warp of Time: Warp of Time takes Killer Colours and brings it up to eleven, basically. Nothing really else needs to be said, it's fantastic.

43. Putrefier: I think I played this once only, it's nice.

42. Festering Wicked Helix Sectors: Although it looks like the PRCP map that I FUCKING HATE SO MUCH, it's pretty well done. The helix fight ends up being too much for my taste of course, but that's what makes it memorable. That and stewboy midi.

41. Chord 3: I played it once, and it's one of those levels which doesn't need lots of monsters to be dangerous.

40. Dolor: Good pick. Honestly I want to consider all of Counterattack's levels to be memorable, but playing them all had me so lost that I can't even remember any of them! Except this arena map. Yeah, I still did the secrets for Counterattack, pretty hard to make writeups for all of the many secrets. Bring me your next secret hunting challenge, why don't ya.

39. Vrack 3: I only played Vrack2b, :<

38. ZDoom Community Project 2: Here's another big project I have yet to play :<

37. Disturbia: That makes three :<

36. Leave Your Sol Behind: In my eyes, the best AA level, loads of settings make this one completely worthwhile and it has another fantastic midi.

35. Null Space: Void space levels are cool.

34. Doxylamine Moon: So this is the Sacrament MAP02 version instead of the Overdose. Now that I think of it, this version is better than Overdose.

33. You Shall Not Pass!: FUCK YES. I love this one.

32. Toxin Refinery: I still have yet to play KDiZD.

31. Run From It: At least the hint's in the title. But who would've thought it would be this tantalizing? At least Erik has a sense of difficulty settings.

30. Equinox MAP13: If only 100% kills were possible here.

29. The Given: Haven't played it.

28. <|>: No mention of the kids section. KIDS DON'T PLAY DOOM HAHAHAHA

27. God Machine: The dehacked work into making the keens into invulnerable resurrectors definitely shines. Also telefragging cybies with candles.

26. 1010011010: Overrated music track, interesting slaughter level with only FIVE types of monsters in it. Neat.

25. Phylex: Top Floor: Don't remember this one, actually.

24. Tough Skin River: Basically the culmination of the set, having a pretty good arena fight and other good stuff.

23. Hatred: Visionary as Requiem is, the combat here still manages to be one of the harder levels I've played to this day.

22. Blizzard Conditions: Haven't played Winter's Fury

21. Mr. X: I'm noticing that a lot of these maps are usually not praised for combat alone, some of which have very marginal combat. Is this okay?

20. Arch-Violence: Honestly this level dragged on for too long and it wore me out.

19. Beneath a Festering Moon: That fucking screenshot is giving me Grandia 2 flashbacks for some reason.

18. Interstellar Sickness/Shaman's Device: If it weren't for these two levels, CC4 would've honestly felt good and not great at best.

17. Pale Monument: NO ARCH-VILE SLAUGHTERMAP WOO

16. Wild Bleu Yonder: Again, haven't played this.

15. The Shrine: It's definitely the most modest out of the ED4 maps. I prefer Rex's hub to this though. At least it's not like Chris's big ass levels that just spawn enemies in sporadic places at inopportune times, and it has some challenging viles to tackle.

14. The Mancubian Candidate: I figured out the concept on this one on my first try, hahahaha

13. Comatose: Would've been a great map if it didn't lag so much for me.

12. Thunderpeak Powerplant/Termination: FUCK YES, awesome level. Then again, I actually prefer Blackrock. Vader could've released that one standalone too, considering I don't like much of ZPack's E3 anyways.

11. Go Fuck Yourself: This map actually isn't that hard.

10. Doomsday of UAC: While playing through Maximum Doom I revisited this little gem. Innovative for 1994 and probably the one thing people remember from that year that wasn't complete shit.

9. Darkdome: First map that really makes automap marker usage memorable.

8. Twilight Massacre: Personally I would've liked it more if it allowed for more weapons besides BFG. It's a really easy map of course.

7. The Sky May Be: UtterSpartan's video told me basically all I need to know about it. It's a huge sector, running on a completely different source port for some reason, yeah, it's memorable in a joke way.

6. Void: Void definitely belongs in the top 10. Nothing else to say.

5. Culture Shock: Gameplay here is honestly not that good though. I prefer MAP16.

4. Nuts: dundundun dundundun dundundun dundundun dundundun OH LET THE SUN BEAT DOWN UPON MY FACE, okay I'll stop.

3. The Mucus Flow: A good chunk of Darkwave's Speed of Doom maps, Miasma, and plenty more definitely took inspiration from this. I think I tried to take inspiration from it too. It's also a weird case of a starvation map. I love how hard it is. Also the revelation that you can crush the hitscanner teleporters in a secret is interesting in itself.

2. Deus Vult: Yeah, I couldn't run the main map. But who cares, it's a guy who shares my birthday who's first map killed.

1. Misri Halek: Give Malde his respect guys, he never would make a map like this ever again, which is unfortunate. As overrated as it is, it's inspirational, and the best linear map I can honestly think of.

 

RUNNERS UP: 5Till L1 Complex is great. Killer Colours may have been overshadowed by Warp of Time but it's fun still. I don't agree with Cleimos 2's Release Me, it's actually quite lame. For CC2 I'm a Zelda nerd so I'd say MAP23 is more memorable than MAP32. Excalibur deserved to be on here, as did Frozen Time and Fuel Devourer. Hello Megiddo 2. Haunting Dreams was how I got into Symphony X. Devil's Den was fucked up and excellent. Oh there's Blackrock.

I love doing this.

[Da Werecat]

I'm glad to see Lainos' epic city maps here.

[bioshockfan90]

Fantastic writeups, this was a blast to read! Excited to see what the team has in store next. 

[Jaws In Space]

 

[NaturalTvventy]

Thanks for the recognition! uac_dead will always be my #1. There’s a lot here I haven’t played, so this is a great a great list to keep me busy for quite a while.

[Linguica]

I replaced the AV20 shot with one I patched together using @jmickle66666666's NASTY level viewer.  Here is a full sized version.

[gaspe]

This was nice. I don't agree with some choices and positions but whatever, a discussion about that would be pointless. It's good that you put even the runners up, which is basically another list of cool maps. I already played or at least knew about almost all of these but I could discover few gems that I missed. I'm very glad that Doxylamine Moon and Comatose are on the list.

[Chopkinsca]

9 hours ago, Suitepee said:

I'm glad to see I wasn't the only one who enjoyed Toxic Touch from Alien Vendetta.

 

Probably one of my favourite maps ever. Kim Andre Malde was an inspiration to me. I'm honored to be on the same page as that map.

 

A great list. Makes me wish I played games still, I'd enjoy going through a lot of these.

[anotak]

I wanna give a shoutout to some levels that were extremely memorable for me over the years that weren't on the list:

Absolutely Killed map01

Ultimate Simplicity map01 & map04

bf_thud! map01

 

also imo planisphere2 and the e1m8 from double impact deserved to be top 100 not runners up!

 

but good list! everything on the list deserves it imo (this is the paradox of criticizing a list)

[Ubik]

Excellent list, and contains a whole bunch of the maps that stick out most in my memory. Personally, of Sunder I remember Hive Mother much more because of its persistent beehive hexagon structure and theme, but Pale Monument was also an excellent choice. 

 

In any case, I have a bunch more PWADs I need to catch up on now!

[Terminus]

This was a great read. I've played most of these and will definitely pick up those that I haven't.

With the exception of some maps that don't really appeal to my gameplay preferences, but yeah!

 

Jade Earth and some of my favorite Ancient Aliens maps were there, with some gems such as Void, Void and Rainbow, Struggle MAP29 and more.

Would love to see more of this kind of thing.

[Gez]

9 minutes ago, Ubik said:

Personally, of Sunder I remember Hive Mother much more because of its persistent beehive hexagon structure and theme, but Pale Monument was also an excellent choice.

The Hag's Finger is the map that comes to my mind when Sunder is mentioned, personally.

[rehelekretep]

its a good sign when you can name 3 different maps from the same wad as extremely memorable

i too was reading through thinking 'where's av20?' and then jeffgoldblum.gif

still my favourite map.

[Red-XIII]

I anxiously read from 100 to 1, with the hope of finding the maps I love, and almost all of them were there. Number 1 was definitely the map I expected, the 3D graphic is super cool, amazing feeling.

Well done to all who made this list and to the mappers!

[Andy Johnsen]

What a fun read, this must have taken quite the effort to compile. I'm sure Kim would have been thrilled to see his legacy map position itself anywhere on a top 100 list at all, so to see it notch the top 10 is quite heartwarming. 

More importantly tho, this list is a great testament to the variety and personality that can be crammed into the game - what an awesome display of memorable bits from 25 years worth of user made content. 

A tremendous effort from the team behind said list, thank you for the grand read - and also to Linguica for the darn neat view shot of Misri Halek, that's a keeper.

Edited December 10, 2018 by Andy Johnsen

[Spie812]

7 hours ago, NuMetalManiak said:

As overrated as it is, it's inspirational, and the best linear map I can honestly think of.

I've never really thought of Misri Halek in that sense. As far as a "leads you in a straight line to the exit" map goes, it really is an excellent map with a lot to offer. I just wish it had fewer damn barons.

[Lizardcommando]

I'm surprised there weren't any maps from Memento Mori 1 or 2, unless I somehow didn't see them in the list since I was reading through this list late last night.