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

[GarrettChan]

Cacodemons gave me nightmare.

[jeroa]

Just now, Murdoch said:

sorry Ralph :(

did Ralph revocer?

[Murdoch]

3 minutes ago, jeroa said:

did Ralph revocer?

 

For a time yes but sadly one day at the beach sometime after he suddenly collapsed and died. Dad suspected he had something wrong internally that was minor at first but didn't heal and got worse.

[Eurisko]

I remember playing DOOM for the first time on PS1 back in '97 , I always remember the music and finding the chaingun outside on E1M2.

Don't know why that sticks in my head so much.

[Rosh Fragger]

Doom 2 was my very first doom game as a kid. When I first started out, I didn't know I could "run" using the Shift key. And so I remember getting stuck on Map02 for quite a long time, never making through the window. :P

[seed]

Mancubi and Shawn's Got The Shotgun making me shit bricks, and never getting past MAP08 in Doom 2.

 

I played the game way back when I was only 6yrs old on a Win98 machine, it was the most realistic game I played at the time as I have largely grown up with NES games, so comparing that level of visual and audio fidelity with what I've played before then, well, the result was not surprising at all. I wonder what difficulty I chose at the time though, as that's something I really can't remember, but I very much doubt it was anything other than ITYTD/HNTR.

 

As about the MIDI, I found it sounding very evil at the time, and I am fairly confident that what I had in that Win98 machine was not a Soundblaster card, because I distinctly remember this track sounding heavy and thick, nothing like how it sounds on such a card. It was probably a Gravis Ultrasound card or something similar. How it sounds in this video is pretty close.

[Doom_Dude]

I was still using a Commodore 64, so I wasn't all that aware of Doom being a thing and I was playing stuff like Pool of Radiance and Azure Bonds and various Microprose war games like Stealth Fighter and stuff. Then my bro bought a Pentium 166 when Windows 95 was hot stuff, sometime in late 1995. I messed with his comp when he wasn't using it. I wasn't even aware that the Doom shareware was on there. Then one day, I went to see what my bro was up to and he was playing Doom.

 

I remember being completely enthralled by the game and was confused how to open doors at first. Later on I discovered the manual was on the comp. I ended up staying up until 1am that first time playing Doom. One of the first things I tried was punching a barrel to see if I could move it. lol.  Like RomDump said, trying to get that soulsphere in the Command Center was a challenge. Seeing that first Pinky demon, I was all... wtf is that thing and what does it do? It wasn't long after that we got the full game. Then shortly after my brother brought home Doom 2. I remember sometime in 96 being in a Radio Shack and spotting Final Doom (a few weeks later found Strife not even knowing anything about it) and talking to the dude when I was paying for it about any other Doom games and he said something like, 'yeah man, it's called Quake'. In a Staples store I found a copy of The Doom Hacker's Guide in a bargain bin for a few bucks, so that got me up and running with DoomCad...... I remember telling my brother there was something called Quake by id Software. Not sure where he found it but he showed up with it one day... but that's another story. haha.

[pop13lolol]

i was like 10 maybe 11 12 years old when my brothers friend showed us doom and also showed us project brutality. i thought that it was the coolest thing ever and i loved playing it on my brothers laptop when he was not using it. crazy though i never fully beat doom 1 and 2 till this year XD. its crazy with me discovering doom then with all these crazy mods for it when theirs people here that remember playing it with keyboard controls and dos graphics.

Edited April 2, 2020 by pop13lolol

[Lila Feuer]

"This is more violent than Hexen."

[Andromeda]

First time I played Doom I was 5 years old after my uncle had given me a CD containing the shareware versions of 20 games of the 90's. (The ones I can distinctly remember are Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, SkyRoads, Nitemare 3D, Ken's Labyrinth, The Catacomb Abyss, Corridor 7: Alien Invasion and Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold. The others either didn't run on my PC or were pretty boring.) I remember loading up Doom for the first time and not being impressed with the graphics, as the player view was somewhat "foggy" compared to the crisp clear view that Wolfenstein 3D provided. However, I got stuck on the last level of Wolfenstein 3D, as I was unable to kill the boss due to not knowing how to strafe. I proceeded to try Doom again, and found it to be much better than Wolfenstein 3D, beating the bruiser brothers with ease on the easiest difficulty setting.

 

I did forget all about Doom until some years later when I found Eternal Doom. One thing led to another and soon I found source-ports, Doomwiki and Doomworld, becoming a long-time lurker here until I decided to join the fray in August last year. The rest, as they say, is history...

[Vermil]

I don't remember much other than being scared of the maze on E1M4.

[ReaperAA]

My first experience is pretty much similar to seed's (mentioned above).

[Diego Ignelzi]

It was 2005 I was spending time on an old PC that had been given to my father. That's when I find Doom 1 installed on the pc. My first impression was of astonishment. I remember that the realism of the shotgun caught my attention, also the faces that the marine made when he got a new weapon and when they hurt him, it was the most interesting game that I had played. I failed to finish the first episode of Doom. But the memory of this game remained in my head until 2011 that I could have my first pc.

[purist]

I think I was playing the Jaguar version in a department store. I was in the E1M4 maze and when a demon ran at me I shot it point blank, not realising how the rocket launcher worked, and died instantly.

 

Not the best first impression but good enough that I asked for a Jaguar for Xmas that year.

[Jetx_121]

3 hours ago, seed said:

As about the MIDI, I found it sounding very evil at the time, and I am fairly confident that what I had in that Win98 machine was not a Soundblaster card, because I distinctly remember this track sounding heavy and thick, nothing like how it sounds on such a card. It was probably a Gravis Ultrasound card or something similar. How it sounds in this video is pretty close.

 

I had a similar experience with the MIDI(heavy but mostly thick and a little slow compared to the original game) when I played the Xbox 360 port in 2015 or 2016 for the first time.

the MIDI in the xbox 360 version of ultimate doom and doom 2 sounds similar to the video.

 

also the xbox 360 port was my first time playing ultimate doom , doom 2 and doom 3(bfg edition)

 

This is how it sounds in Xbox 360.

 

[Rare Hatchiama]

My dad was versing my uncle in a deathmatch over the phone line on a 56k modem.  I recall hearing the old man scream and curse when my uncle killed him.

[Toilet_Wine_Connoisseur]

I was 10 and had the shareware episode (along with HExen) on a computer my parents got from a relative.

 

I had no idea what shareware was, as I was mostly a console gamer at that age and thought I had to 100% every level to unlock more episodes. I played it so much trying to do everything I could to unlock E2 and E3. Sometimes I would sit in the menu and try to imagine how cool the other episodes were. 

[HLRaven]

I think i played DooM in 2014, (yes i know i am not that much of a og player)

 

I started hearing about brutal doom and i got interested because of how the enemies died (I love ragdolls and good death animations), so after trying to figure out how to get the wads, get gzdoom, get that and do that and failing alot because i was young and stupid i played it, and quite alot. I had fun, then i wanted to try out the vanilla doom since by then i had a huge fascination about good old games. And thats when my obsession with doom grew.

 

Heres what i remember:

 

First enemy killed: Imp

First mod that wasn't brutal doom or project brutality: Project MSX

First wad that wasn't Extermination day: Scythe

[Havoc Crow]

On 6/24/2016 at 12:33 PM, JudgeDeadd said:

Back when I was a very young kid. I ran around Entryway a bit, then I reached the imp cage and nearly died of fright because there was a horrific MONSTER on my screen. I think I hadn't had glasses yet back then (I'm short-sighted) so I couldn't even clearly see what it was, and I didn't know how to quit the game either.

[FractalBeast]

Doom came out on the butt end of the demonic panic, so the first time I heard about Doom, it was in church. People talking about this new violent videogame that wasn't just about killing people, animals or monsters, but was just straight up about worshipping Satan. Kids were actually talking about demons crawling out of your monitor straight into your brain. Whoo-wie.

 

And then I ended up playing it in secret at a friend from church. Hahahaha, that motherfucker is doing some missionary work in the bush-bush now. Should have kept at it playing Doom.

[Austinado]

I remember watching my cousin playing it..i was about 10 years old...when he let me play it i felt alot of power. Much because of the single barrel of the shotgun and the effect when you knock down an imp at the first shot. I think the imp, is perfect as a monster in Doom. So simple...throwing fire balls and scratch near by..

I remember also the atmosphere being so awsome. 

Maybe its the reason, when i discovered that exists a community for so many years, i started to play again, and started to try to do some mapping..learning everything. I take this in my spare time and much enjoy it.

[joepallai]

I remember the hiss of my first cacodemon scaring me and making me nervous (I couldn't see it so I was dreaded whatever was behind the noise).

I remember the endless wailing of the disembodied babies crying in PSX Doom (I played first on the PlayStation even though I knew about the game being for PCs first).

Mostly I remember the horrific roar of the cyberdemon and the constant pounding of its walking scaring the hell out of me and making me play even worse than I normally do.   (Tower of Babel is just brilliant with the setup of the dead barons on the GSTONE walls and then you meet it....)

 

 

[amackert]

"Man, this looks bad-ass, but how do I play it?" - Me trying Doom shareware running on a friend's 386 at roughly two frames per second.

 

"This is amazing! I've never experienced anything like this before!" - Me playing Doom Super NES for the first time, running at roughly five or six frames per second.

 

"*jaw hits floor, no words spoken*" - Me playing Doom II on my Dad's new Pentium-based PC in early 1996, my first real experience with a fast, smooth Doom.

[seed]

There's something else I seem to remember vividly, but it might be a false memory actually.

 

Was there ever a Spectre instead of a Pinky in the final room with the exit switch on MAP03 of Doom 2 on any difficulty setting? I checked it on all difficulty settings recently on 1.7 and I think 1.9, and there's always a Pinky inside, never a Specter.

[Doomkid]

Possibly a false memory, the little grassy area leading to the exit on map03 has those metal boxes that lower, mostly with demons but a spectre is mixed in. Seeing the lonely spectre among all the demons probably stuck in your mind but your memory moved it right to the exit.

 

Back when I first tried to remember and document all my old Doomy memories I had similarly minorly-distorted memories.. I always swore I remembered the swastika in E1M4, but some old family photos revealed beyond any doubt that the first Doom disc I had as a kid was the 1.666 shareware, so it can’t be. There’s a sliver of a chance I saw it before I had my own disc on my uncles computer.. but I doubt it and it’s too random/specific for my dad to recall so I just file it under distorted memories.

[ZeMystic]

I found the disc that came with all the doom games for windows 95, and found that it did not run on my computer. So I googled how to run Doom on modern computers, and somehow ended up with Doomsday as my first ever source port. I remember opening TNT Evilution as my first ever doom wad and played up to Map05. I remember the fuzzy texture filters and the weird texture edits while I looked over the courtyard with a ton of Chaingunners.

[DRM-MAN]

It was doom 2 but i had heard of the first doom from a friend, so i knew about the first one but never played it untill ultimate doom came later in i belive '95.

basiclly entryway was my first experince with doom.

[Dark Pulse]

Honestly, I think I was in fourth grade or so (so 1994). One of my counselors' PCs had the shareware version of Doom on it, and if we were good, he let us play it.

 

I remember doing fairly decently up until E1M4, don't really recall getting much further than that. To be fair, I was like, nine.

 

Some may question the wisdom of letting nine year-olds play Doom, but then I go to work on my school bus and hear ten year-olds discussing GTA5.

 

The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess...

[VikinGDoomeR]

Pinkies, Archviles, and Barons used to scare the hell out of me when I was a kid back in the 90s... Like so scared that as soon as one appears I have to stop the game, turn it off and go hide somewhere. Lol those were the days. Barons still give me a jump scare sometimes if they come out of nowhere and they are way too close. :D

[Szuran]

"This is this legendary game? Ugly. Fun shooting but levels are so confusing. Who am I here anyway and what am I supposed to do? These locations don't make any sense."

 

I played it for the first time around the release of the first Max Payne, which is when I got my first PC, being a teen, and Doom felt completely underwhelming back then. However I place it above 99% of most games now, and surely above any game from the 2000s.