What was your first exposure to doom, (not via the shareware doom game)

[tamara mochaccina]

Used to play it with ma dad when it got released for the SNES

 

Was bigg fun, but once I turned around 15 we decided to sell the console

 

Then I watched Civvie-11's Pro Doom series around November of last year, picked up the DOSBox version on Steam and here we are

[Mystic 256]

When I was 11 back in 2007 I think, My cool dad showed me the game on the windows xp computer we used to have in the dining room and he let me play it, the level it was on was e2m1.

I remember playing it and it being the funnest game ever and getting to e2m2 and dying a lot but still having fun, and I got hooked on the game and played the other episodes too, i remember being spooked by the barons and especially the cyberdemon at first, they were hard to defeat back then.

My Dad later bought me some doom anniversary CD that had Doom, Doom 2, and Final Doom on it and it was one of the best gifts I ever got.

I later learned what doom wads and source ports were from looking online and trying those out too and then first experimenting trying to make a doom wad in 2009 I learned quite fast how to make doors, teleporters, midtextures, lifts, deep water, 3d floors, even basic ACS, and few other things though I never managed to make a full complete level until 2015ish when I made my first complete level "Base Octave"

[SlayerOGames666]

Cool Stuff, yall!

[TheNoob_Gamer]

My story will be a little bit different due to my country's gaming preferences and me being a modern gamer.

Spoiler

 

...Back in late 2016, I was on the hunt of seeking something better to do.

Then somehow I stumbled across Doom 4. 

Then Doom 1.

Was initially puzzled by both of them (I thought "Doom 4 is the same as Doom 1 only with better graphics").

Eventually decided to buy Doom 1 on Steam.

Then again somehow about source ports.

Install Doomsday, using the outdated af keyboard-only controls and thought to myself as badass and cool.

Then went on to GZDoom because Doomsday ran like shit.

Discovered mods.

Discovered maps.

Discovered Cacowards and DW.

Created a DW account and asked for some DS shit.

Stuck with ZDoom family, gameplay mods and Doom 1 for 4 months or so.

Grabbed Doom 2.

Discovered PRBoom+.

Discovered the real Doomwiki.

Start using DW more regularly.

And here I am.

 

TLDR: Doom 4 helped me get into Doom as a whole.

[Breezeep]

I remember playing the xbox 360 port of Doom 2. I never really finished the main game, same goes to No Rest for the Living.

[Magicana]

>What was your first exposure to doom, (not via the shareware doom game)

 

My first exposure to Doom was via the Shareware Doom game.

[SlayerOGames666]

1 minute ago, Magicana said:

>What was your first exposure to doom, (not via the shareware doom game)

 

My first exposure to Doom was via the Shareware Doom game.

Thanks For Playing!™

[Nnja]

I sort of always knew it existed but my introduction to FPS was Unreal, so I was a little late and a little spoiled by visuals. By the time I'd moved on from UT99, Halo was out, then Half-Life 2 and Doom never got a look in.

 

Doom 3 coming out brought my attention properly to the series and a bunch of memes about Doom running on TI calculators (had a Casio) and the 5th Gen iPod (had a 4th) got me curious so I installed it and played through E1-E3. I remember enjoying it then but I came back to it a year or so ago and properly got into the game, the developer stories, the engine etc.

[DRM-MAN]

Played doom 2 first when i was 15 back in 1995, later one of my friends introduced me to the ultimate doom that's when i started to love this series.

You can try to guess how many wads i played then i was hooked after the wads, unfortunately i lost interest when i hit college but thankfully found the old floppys in one of my boxes, later in 2011 i found skulltag *shudders* played the shit out of doom 1&2 so much fun.

 

NOTE I use gzdoom now.

[Taurus Daggerknight]

When my brother and I were kids, we played lots of Marathon 2: Durandel, some Wolfenstien 3D, Descent 2, and later, Jedi Knight. One of our aunts brothers mentioned this mysterious thing called Doom that he had played in college. When asked what it was like, he'd just say "Like Marathon, but much better.". 

 

True words. 

 

Not sure how or when we got it, but we did snag a copy of Doom 2 along the way. No sound though, don't remember why that was. Heck, I remember we thought we were fighting aliens in it for a long while, until specific mention of demons kept coming up. 

[ZealknightMR]

When I was young kid, my dad took me and my brother to a local machine shop, to show us where he works through the day. He showed us his computer he used to upload his work related files. He also had Doom installed on his computer there. When he showed us this game, the computer didn't have a sound card. It play sound effects that just came off has beeps and laser-like sound effects. I remember being blown away by this, because it so vastly different to other video games that I was used to play. I played Nintendo games before I even learned about Doom. It was the first game to me that played in a 3D fashion, even though Doom is not truly 3D.

 

Next year, my dad bought a computer and installed Doom in it. This time, I would hear the proper sound effects that every Doomer would recall to their grave. it would also be my first time hearing Doom's famous MIDI music, all in OPL3 fashion.

 

a few years later, my dad learned about playing custom levels, which we all know as WADS. The though of extra levels being created by folks around the world made me really excited, especially when I learned that there exists WADS out there with custom music, sprites, and textures.

 

That's my origin story of how I became a Doom fan.

[Asking4Id]

My extended family played Doom 1 on their 90s pc, but my immediate family never had it.

[HAK3180]

A friend of my father had installed The Ultimate Doom on our house PC in about 1997 if my memory serves me correctly. I remember being disappointed that he misremembered the god mode cheat as "IDQQD." This was my first exposure to Doom at all. It wasn't until much later I found out Doom 2 was before E4.

[unerxai]

I played the shareware in 1995 I believe and didn't play the full version 'till 2000. So I played the shit out of E1. I wish I played the full version earlier 'cause I would've been way more excited than I was playing it in 2000.

[Sgurk Von Spankraght]

In 1995, My nephew had DooM 2 running on a pc and me as an Super Nes kid was blown away. I had to have this!

[ZeMystic]

My first experience was the Doom demo on XBLA.

 

Later found an entire disc including final doom, ultimate doom, and doom 2. In the collector's edition box, the doom trilogy one. Didn't see the doom 3 demo however.

[Summer Deep]

First Doom experience was the SNES version (original Doom 1, three episodes). It wasn't that great, and the worst thing was that you couldn't save, even at the end of a level, so you had to play the whole episode through in one session, or shut down the console and start again from scratch.

 

A couple of months later, bought a Playstation 1 and played the combined Ultimate Doom & Doom 2 disc, then got the rather truncated version of Final Doom.

 

Lost touch after that, got back into gaming around 2013 and soon after made my first acquaintance with Doom on the PC. So it was all sourceports by then, never had the original DOS-based Windows 95 experience.

[ZALGO]

When I was around 6 years old, I was shopping with Dad for items I don't recall.

 

I usually go into the video games isle on Best Buy or Walmart whenever we shop there to simply look at the physical covers of the games (Dad was stingy with grabbing games and would only get some for himself). Personal favorites were Diablo 2 and Doom 3.

 

Doom 3's Hell Knight just looked legit terrifying to me, and that fear lead to a great interest in the series. I would look at the various enemy designs on google images and the history of the series itself. Eventually found a way to play the shareware Doom 1 and became a quick fan of the series because of it.

[stinkfist]

I was like 4 or 5, Doom 64. My dad told me I was Ash from Army of Darkness (cause of shotgun and chainsaw) which was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Played levels 1-6 and could never get passed 6 until I turned like 10.  Only then I slowly and truly experienced doom 64 to the fullest on a crt tv in the dark. 

[Pegleg]

Well, if you exclude the shareware (I don't know why you would, but be that as it may), then my first experience with Doom was when a friend of mine gave me his copy of the full version of Doom sometime later in 1994. I'm pretty sure that was version 1.666.

[Hcoop111]

first time was on my uncles pc...back then he did alot of modding and technical pc stuff ...repairs...you name it he did it...i went on his pc found this doom game he made double clicked and omg lol it was doom beavis and butthead but he made it with his voice and his own custom skins etc.... all i have to say is ...now when i think back... it was a sad but funny wad....anyway that was the first time lol

[Antroid]

I don't remember how I became aware Doom was a thing at all and what sort of game it was, but I'm pretty sure my first biggest step was reading an article about the SNES Doom port in our Russian gaming magazine, "The Great Dragon".

 

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I did have a SNES, so some time later we bought Doom and that was my first experience with it. I don't think I beat it before my parents bought me a PC which came with Turok 2, that being my second FPS game ever and my first PC game ever, but I did beat Doom first on the SNES, long before I had internet access and probably before I even got my hands on any of those pirated 90s games CDs we had circulating between the kids.

 

I played the first episode on the lowest difficulty, and (because of that, I think) it ended without a text screen, just dumping you back into the title screen, which was one of my childhood's biggest mysteries and gave episode 1 the mystique that the others just didn't have, because I replayed it over and over trying to find some secret or just reach E1M8 again and do something differently or survive the dark trap or something. Episode 3 was inaccessible on anything below UV and Nightmare and I couldn't even beat Hell Keep on UV most of the time, and when I did Slough would quickly finish me off. Note that for some reason when I died I just turned the game off, I considered it a final thing and never just replayed the level despite the SNES port not taking your weapons away, so it was always super tense. To beat the game fully I had to play through episode 2 on the third difficulty, and that would let me into Inferno on a difficulty lower than I could enter it form the menu on. So kid me, bad at games, with the SNES doom's extra challenging controls and physics, had to marathon eps 2 and 3 in one sitting.

 

I think that really played a huge part in how I see Doom today and how I play similar FPS games. I tend not to save unless the game is super BS around every corner, and Doom to me is more of a survival horror like RE7 than a fast-paced action game.

[Chow Yun Thin]

My first exposure to Doom was when my family bought our first computer at CompUSA. While my parents and aunt haggled over what to buy, I wandered around and saw a cardboard display of a Cyberdemon, with copies of Doom II nestled within. I did get a taste of it (and Marathon) on the display computers, but I didn't get an actual copy until several years later at the same store.

[Dr. Toboggan]

I knew of it growing up and assumed it was a respectable pioneer but probably really boring and dated. Bought it 3 weeks ago for like a dollar to give it a shot, fell in love immediately. I assumed wrong all these years.

[soner du]

My first exposure to Doom was on the week the shareware was available, I was aged 21.

As a fan of Wolfenstein 3D, I was eagerly waiting for its (kind of) sequel !

I'm not sure when I played the full game... probably a few months after it came out.

 

We were quite a few guys playing Wolf3D, Doom, Syndicate... at night in the college's computer room...

[Tartlman]

I started by seeing a video of someone who put some overwatch character's mech in doom. Then i went and watched some ICARUSLIV3S doom mod madness videos in the recommendations, and then so on, and so on, and here we are.

[cambreaKer]

i can't quite remember, it was probably some old youtube video in 2010

[Wrathoxic]

Found a flash port way back whenever.

[pcorf]

SNES Doom in 1995 before I had a PC. Playing on easy skill (E1), killing all monsters and searching the entire map for secrets humping every single wall.

[Dubbag]

Since you asked here's my long ass story of how I got into Doom. It was early spring 1999. I was 7 years old. Up until that point, the only video games I had ever known about really were Mario, Gex and Rampage, Banjo Kazooie and the like. Cartoony fun games. I used to go to the local Blockbuster every week on Fridays when my father got paid. I would look at the N64 games selection because that's what I had at the time instead of a PS1. Anyways, it was one of those days when the store didn't really have anything in stock that I really wanted and everything that looked good to me was already checked out. Then I saw this on the shelf...

"What the Hell is that I wondered" (no pun intended). That looks scary but badass at the same time. Might have been the colors of the box or something IDK. I tap my father's arm and point at it and say "That  one!" My father being a stern Catholic looked at me and with a confused tone said "That's the one you want?" I said "Yup!" He's like "Ok.....I guess". The rest of the night was a scary walk through a nightmarescape I had never been aware of existing. These sounds, atmospheric environments, and those....terrifying creatures all presented from a the intimate view of first-person, (I had never seen an FPS in my life until that point). Most of all these things in particular are what sparked my imagination and love for this game the most...

 

The Pinky in Doom 64. It's design and sounds in that game are utterly the shit of nightmares. The quintessential "monster". A giant jaw with huge teeth and horns with those red glowing eyes running at you in the dark, very quickly for it's size. And those claws... At the same time this beast is like 7 feet tall and 1000 pounds at least.....and you're 7 years old. They may go down easy, but their appearance has always left a deep impact on me. Looking at that thing just has this automatic "whoa! *turn and run* reaction the first time you see it, (at least for me). Anyways, being that young and seeing that monster, coupled with the horrifying sound track at the time and dark lighting scarred me so much so that I have had multiple nightmares of being chased by them. But, somehow that left me entranced with the game, my own fears turned to a morbid curiosity, I must see more! 

 

Well, unfortunately the game's rental period ended and I didn't ever end up getting too far in it (maybe map 4?). I was still a kid after all and the mazes like structures confused me a alot and were difficult for my young underdeveloped brain to navigate. So, guess what a week passes and I rented some other game, I can't remember because Doom 64 was checked out. I couldn't wait for the next Friday to see if Doom was back to check out again. But.. that Tuesday, Eric and Dylan carried out the "Columbine High School Massacre". Parents and news channels everywhere were looking for someone or something to blame since there was no one to take their frustrations out on because Eric and Dylan killed their bitch ass selfs. Many news outlets blamed violent videogames for inciting the boys to carryout the shooting. And since they were avid fans of the game, Doom was front and center for blame and criticism. My parents heard this stuff on the news and I had no idea about it obviously.

The following Friday I ask my father to take me to Blockbuster and see if Doom 64 was back in the store available for rent again. His response was this lie, "You haven't heard? The government has outlawed Doom and taken it off ALL shelves." I cried. And then for about 6 years after that I went for lack of a better term "Doomless". All the while I would bring Doom up with my family and they're reactions would always be very bad. My mother, "I SAID NO DOOM IN THIS HOUSE!" My father "YOU CAN'T PLAY THAT GAME IT'S ILLEGAL! STOP ASKING ABOUT IT!" So I eventually ended up forgetting about it and getting into other games like the "Army Men" series, no surprise considering the fact that both my parents are war veterans.

 

Now the year is 2001. We moved to Fort Knox because my mother had just joined the Army and that's where we ended up being stationed. I met a kid who was my same age and we loved video games. One day he took me upstairs to see his Sega 32X. And there in his machine sat plugged in, "Doom 32X". I didnlt have any knowledge of the classic version and even though 32X sucked I didn't know nor care and was just happy to fire up a Doom game again and experience all those feelings I had had years ago. And it was great. So  you could imagine that I would always sneek over there to play Doom at his house and he would get so tired of it LOL.

2004 rolls around, my mother having comeback from Operation Iraqi Freedom received an honorable discharge and 100% disability for a dried out kneecap from the desert heat and dryness. The town we moved to off-base had a little Mom and Pop used video game shop. I went in there and hundreds of N64,PS1 and NES, SNES games all for like 5 bucks each! TO OWN! FOREVER! and there in a one of the glass displays sat, DOOM 64! 5 DOLLARS! I looked at my dad and said "Can I PLEASE get this game" and to my absolute astonishment he replied "Yeah sure whatever who cares it's just a video game." Almost as if he had forgotten what he was mad about in the first place! LIFE COMPLETE!!!!

 

Played Doom 64 almost everyday for like a year straight and now we hit 2005. I was never able to play Doom 3 cause my computer was too weak and I didn't have an XBOX. However, I wanted to play a different Doom game. So I looked for the classic Doom somewhere and found the Shareware version and played it and fell in love all over again! Even with the PC sound effects. This lead me to try to find a better way of playing it which also lead me to find "Freedoom" which taught me about WADs and sourceports. You should have seen Freedoom back in the day dude. Half the monsters unfinished, the HUD face a completely different guy. It was like 75% done LOL. Half the time you where fighting these black placeholder boxes they had made to be the monster sprites until they finished them. Any ways I'm getting off track.

Well, finally it was time to make my own WADs and my sister purchased me a fresh still packaged disc of Doom 2 95. LOL Doom 95 fuck that shit! I took the WAD into Zdoom played it then took it to Doombuilder and the rest is history! I love Doom always have always will. We are very lucky to have such incredible developers create something so great and valuable to us, let alone release their source code to us as well. My experience with Doom has been a life long journey of change and learning. Nothing (with the exception of my fiance and guitar of course), will ever hold as deep a place in my heart as this game.

Edited January 29, 2020 by Dubbagdarrel