fraggle Posted June 11, 2019 It's fair to say that almost everyone has heard the story by now of how John Romero became the boss brain for Doom II MAP30. Just to recap, here's the story as it's told in Masters of Doom: Quote Late one night in September 1994, Romero sat at his computer, tweaking the final sounds for Doom II. With the game near completion, he took it upon himself to polish the audio effects for the final enemy or "boss" of the game, called the Icon of Sin. To win the game, the player had to shoot the Icon - a hideous beast that spit out cubes that could spawn into other monsters - between the eyes. Romero ran around in a special mode that allowed him to, for purposes of testing the game, pass through walls - effectively going behind the images the player would see in the game. He had just passed behind a wall in back of the Icon of Sin when he stopped cold. Did I just see my own face? Shrugging it off, he went on with his work, thinking maybe he had been there too long. But then, as he ran behind the beast again, he thought he saw his face once more. How weird, he thought, slowly creeping back. And then, to his shock, he saw it: a digital copy of his head, decapitated and bloody, writhing on a stick. "No fucking way!" he said. Romero raced his character back around and fired a shot at the Icon of Sin, then followed the trajectory of the rocket: it sailed through the beast, through a back wall, into the hidden chamber, and smack into Romero's head - which would twitch in agony. Romero got the joke. The player thought he was winning the game by shooting the beast, but in fact he was shooting Romero. Romero was the Icon of Sin. The next morning, word spread around the office that Romero had found the Easter egg and left one of his own. Adrian and Kevin booted up the final scene of the game and began firing off the rockets at the beast. All the while, they heard demonic sounds - like a backward track of a Judas Priest song - coming from the hidden room. The words were indistinguishable but, when reversed, perfectly clear: "To win the game," the voice bellowed, "you must kill me, John Romero." With another blast of the rocket, the Icon of Sin was dead. Romero had his head added into the game without his cooperation. Where, then, did the picture of his head come from? From a magazine scan: "Not the exact pic" but from that photo shoot. Well, I found the image. This is a one page article from Wired magazine, July 1994. Whether it's correct that this photo shoot was taken for Businessweek is unclear. Businessweek published their article in August 1994 while Wired's article appeared a month earlier in their July issue. Shots reused from a single photoshoot? It's hard to tell. While I was able to get hold of a copy of Wired, there are far fewer second hand copies of Businessweek on eBay. Here's a comparison shot for the skeptics: The photo has some weird purple lighting going on. I'm not sure if the Wired editors added this themselves or if it's part of the original shoot. However, it might explain why these multiple Romero head captures exist - perhaps the result of some struggles with Fuzzy Pumper Palette Shop to try to cancel out the tint effect. Some of these look like they have a similar purple tint. I'm uploading a huge (10MB) hi-res scan of the page to the idgames archive under the name bbrn_src.zip in case anyone wants a really high quality version. 49 Share this post Link to post
Dark Pulse Posted June 11, 2019 (edited) That shadows are identical between the high-rez shot and the Fuzzy Pumper Palette Shop grabs of it, too. It don't look purple, but you can tell it's the exact same shadows on his face. (Some of them even remain in the final Boss Brain sprite if you squint, mostly the stuff over the right half of Romero's face/cheek.) 2 Share this post Link to post
Pegleg Posted June 11, 2019 The picture has the same pout to the lips, the same little curl to the hair on his forehead. That sure seems like the picture to me. I remember hearing somewhere that it was taken from his iD employee badge--which always seemed odd to me that that would be the picture on his badge. This actually makes more sense. 1 Share this post Link to post
Doomkid Posted June 12, 2019 They did a good job of removing the purple splotch by making his whole head pink! Really interesting find, I love random nuggets of Doom history like this. 4 Share this post Link to post
Reisal Posted June 12, 2019 Where did the other frame come from, I wonder? The one when you shoot the head and he trembles in pain? 2 Share this post Link to post
Dark Pulse Posted June 12, 2019 11 hours ago, Glaice said: Where did the other frame come from, I wonder? The one when you shoot the head and he trembles in pain? Pretty sure that was hand-drawn by Jules or Kevin Cloud. 0 Share this post Link to post
Linguica Posted June 12, 2019 On 6/10/2019 at 6:50 PM, Pegleg said: I remember hearing somewhere that it was taken from his iD employee badge You think a company with like 10 employees bothered making employee badges? 11 Share this post Link to post
unerxai Posted June 12, 2019 John "drink my knob" Romero Seriously this is an awesome find. 3 Share this post Link to post
Buckshot Posted June 12, 2019 I don't know about you, but that Mancubus is all smiles... 2 Share this post Link to post
Maximum Matt Posted June 13, 2019 And is that a bunny rabbit in the bottom-right corner of the big pic?!? 0 Share this post Link to post
Space Marinara Posted June 13, 2019 I think it's a snooker/pool ball casting a shadow 1 Share this post Link to post
Maximum Matt Posted June 17, 2019 Yeah, that's what they WANT you to think. But seriously, the pic and article is obviously from before Doom II came out so..... spoiler alert on the enemies?! 1 Share this post Link to post
Romero Posted June 17, 2019 OMG "drink my knob" had me laughing. Yes, I mis-remembered the magazine – this is the one, not BusinessWeek. That's some other photo I will dig up at some point. I've kept a lot of magazines from that time. I also have a stack of printed Wolfenstein 3D press from 1992 that you can't find online. Also, it's a pool table we had, not a snooker table. We had no company badges, ever. My face was definitely hand-edited after being Fuzzy Pumped. 53 Share this post Link to post
Fuzzball Posted June 17, 2019 (edited) Hey John what would you say were the hardest things to get converted with the program? Colourwise, or pattern wise~ 0 Share this post Link to post
Buckshot Posted June 17, 2019 52 minutes ago, Romero said: We had no company badges, ever. I mean when you're forever immortalized as a head on a stick, one must assume that's all the facial recognition needed to get access to pretty much anywhere. 😁 5 Share this post Link to post
ReaperAA Posted June 17, 2019 56 minutes ago, Romero said: OMG "drink my knob" had me laughing. Hi Romero. Since you still seem to remember that incident, would you kindly share the result of the match between you and Eric Yick Leung. This was your original reply to him in 1994: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.games.doom/bNwvmpIFJ3A (sorry I couldn't stop my temptation to ask this 😂) 6 Share this post Link to post
Reisal Posted June 18, 2019 A wild Romero appears again to indulge us with some tidbits of information! 2 Share this post Link to post
pcorf Posted June 18, 2019 12 hours ago, Romero said: My quote is in this photo! 5 Share this post Link to post