“What the !@#%* is this!” - A Comprehensive Doom 64-based Analysis and Call to Action

[Revenant100]

Greetings, everyone! As I'm sure you all already know, the most hotly debated topic in the Dooming world these days is the name of the new weapon introduced in Doom 64. For near two decades now, it has been widely accepted that this device is dubbed the "Unmaker", despite no acceptance and clear confusion from the community's eldest community pillars in the past. But, has this complacently-accepted truth all along been... a long proliferated lie?

 

To answer this question, we need to get back to what really matters, and that's the facts! The question now isn't "what is the new Doom 64 weapon called?" The question at hand is "what was the new Doom 64 weapon called?" And to do this, I went back to where it all began: 1997!

 

After decades of research, I've collated my findings into one comprehensive 30-page compendium documenting all the cited and verified contemporary 1997 (and some pre-December 1998) sources I could discover, providing a conclusive analysis to the query on all our minds. The document in full may be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_uRotqVMm7LrduIKfX-FY5J7pOAv-nO7FFV8H_xnKlY/edit?usp=sharing

 

And in light of these unearthed discoveries, I don't wish to speak for the entire community, but I think I speak for the entire community when I immutably declare that Doom 64's new weapon isn't the Unmaker, was never the Unmaker, and will never be the Unmaker. Anyone who has ever called Doom 64's new weapon the "Unmaker" is a genuine, bona fide, electrified hack fraud!

 

With these findings clearly published, it's time embark on stage two of this crusade: the call to action! Join me, my fellow Doom brethren! These despicable graven lies have corrupted our knowledge for far too long! We have the power to undo the mistakes of the past! We shall be the light that casts away the shadows of these deceptions unto the darkness forever! And by that, I mean we have to change the name of this article: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Unmaker

[Linguica]

In re: the "Unmaykr", id Software has said on many occasions that the new Doom games are a sort of love letter to the franchise as a whole in all its incarnations. The Doom community is an undeniable part of Doom's DNA, and if the Doom community came up with a term for an otherwise unnamed weapon, that is precisely the sort of thing they intend to bring into the fold, as it were. There was also an ill-received promotional comic book that ended up becoming quite important to the new games if you want to argue about fraudulent sources. As a matter of fact I made up a fake protip that has been officialized, am I a hack fraud???

[Revenant100]

3 minutes ago, Linguica said:

the Doom community came up with a term for an otherwise unnamed weapon

If that's the case, then why is the "Icon of Sin" only termed as "Final boss" here? https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Final_boss

 

Shirley, these two instances are analogous beyond compare, and we actually have more documented official designations for Doom 64's new weapon than Doom 2's face-in-the-wall. Why should one article expressly ostracize one community name (the one that's arguably far more common) yet fully extol another community name? In fact, how much of the proliferation of the "Unmaker" title can be traced back to the article itself? Is this not a vicious cycle? Perpetuating a theory with no basis to the fans who in turn bolster the theory back into the very thing that perpetuated it?

 

8 minutes ago, Linguica said:

As a matter of fact I made up a fake protip that has been officialized, am I a hack fraud???

The only hack frauds in this scenario are the ones who believed a ZDoom screenshot to be a genuine magazine-scanned PROTIP. And history has proven many.

[Quasar]

Calls had to be made. I heavily suggest waiting until March 20 and remembering that it's id Software, not old game rags from 1997, that ultimately decide what to call stuff in the franchise.

[Gez]

We have no idea what the "unmaykr" is supposed to be. Other than an absolutely terrible name.

 

That said I'm totally open to moving most of the "Unmaker" content to an "Alien laser" page, leaving only the stuff about the Doom bible and a mention that the name is often applied to the alien laser.

[Quasar]

2 minutes ago, Gez said:

We have no idea what the "unmaykr" is supposed to be. Other than an absolutely terrible name.

 

That said I'm totally open to moving most of the "Unmaker" content to an "Alien laser" page, leaving only the stuff about the Doom bible and a mention that the name is often applied to the alien laser.

The article already bends over backwards, both in the lead text and in an entire section dedicated to the issue, to explain this stuff. I don't see the need and especially not right now, with this particular timing.

[Gerardo194]

50 minutes ago, Quasar said:

Calls had to be made. I heavily suggest waiting until March 20 and remembering that it's id Software, not old game rags from 1997, that ultimately decide what to call stuff in the franchise.

Hmmm, could it be possible id Software will name that weapon as Unmaker just because the Doom Community calls it like that, just like the Doom Guy name??

Well, I used to call it Unmaker but after finding info if it was its name, which I had no results... I ended up calling it Laser Gun.

 

@Revenant100 what's that demon form that French magazine?? Does it belong to that magazine or was it made as a fake Doom 64 demon?? Does exist the possibility to make it in 3D for my missing Doom 64 monsters project?

[Revenant100]

This demon looks like it's just a piece of unrelated artwork that was put in to fill space on the page. I haven't seen any magazine article use any promotional Doom 64 artwork other than the same model renders we've seen before.

[Gerardo194]

I see... Hehehe

I just read the link to the thread and the thread's guy  called the Mother Demon: "Armageddon" Where did he come with that name??

[Gez]

There's a small mention saying "Dessin © Pi XX" so I'm guessing that was some indeed fully unrelated, and the artist is credited as a pseudonym that I haven't been able to find traces of on the Internet, but it's possibly wordplay for the real name "Pivin".

[Wereknight]

2 hours ago, Linguica said:

id Software has said on many occasions that the new Doom games are a sort of love letter to the franchise as a whole in all its incarnations.

Not enough of D3 if you'd ask me...

 

[Cacodemon345]

Unmaykr?

 

That pronounciation is wildly similar to Unmaker.

[Redneckerz]

I mean, this is a similar tale as to why Doom's protagonist is called Doomguy by fans instead of Buddy Dacote and does not have an official name.

[GrogLoopy]

gotta admit, it's still a better name for the weapon than "Alien Laser"

[ZeroTheEro]

unmaker 4 lyfe

[Solmyr]

Ignorance is bliss, maybe i'm brainwashed but i preffer the hackfraud fake name, than the "actual" names. "Alien Laser" sounds like something out of X-COM UFO Defense rather than something from Doom.

[Jon]

On 1/31/2020 at 3:59 PM, Revenant100 said:

the community's eldest community pillars

 

@fraggle kindly pointed this out to me. This is a rather unexpected (and probably undeserved) honourific, thanks!

[VGA]

I'm going to call it Laser from now on. Just Laser.

 

It is a very underwhelming weapon when not upgraded, worse than the plasma rifle I think (?). Maybe it is more economical in terms of ammo but it doesn't do enough damage.

[warman2012]

Whether or not this weapon was intended to be the Unmaker does not really matter at this point when the community so fondly refers to the weapon as such. Generally, the idea should be known that when a good majority of the community refers to this weapon as the Unmaker, it probably came from an obscure interview or article that several people gave credence to on forums like this one and the name stuck. One has to admit, the way the Unmaker was originally described as being a hell weapon made of Demon Bones (according to the Unmaker page in Doom Wiki), fits the Doom 64 description of the weapon, hence why its known as such today.

 

The devs at ID/Zenimax have decided to honor the community and lore of the original games by using easter eggs and other mentions of the community in Doom Eternal. So in the end, if the name Doomguy is canon, the name Unmaker is canon.

 

 

 

I rest my case.

[VGA]

It is not canon until it is called the Unmaker on an official piece of lore.

[Revenant100]

8 hours ago, warman2012 said:

it probably came from an obscure interview or article that several people gave credence to on forums like this one and the name stuck.

Do you have a single fact to back that up? The driving force behind this endeavor is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and in the 20+ years of history I've scanned over, I have not found a single one that referred to Doom 64's new weapon as the "Unmaker".

 

The theory you're suggesting is fine to believe. You're not the first to propose it. But unless someone can manifest this missing link, it should otherwise be clear that the long held foundation of Doom 64's Unmaker name is, in fact, based entirely on hearsay and hack fraudery. Which, again, is fine, but hack fraudery is hack fraudery and should be recognized as such.

 

8 hours ago, warman2012 said:

if the name Doomguy is canon

There are two key differences between "Doomguy" and "Unmaker" that don't make them comparable:

1. Doom's protagonist explicitly never had a name (Source), so "Doomguy" is an informal but sensibly-formed nickname created by the community out of necessity. He's the guy from Doom. Doomguy. Makes sense, and in the absence of an official title, it stuck. We can trace back use of this name to within mere months (if not sooner) of the original 1993 shareware release. Doom 64's new weapon, on the other hand, is a different story. The weapon does have an official designation: "Alien Laser" or some derivative (at minimum, it's a "Laser", which is self-evident from what it does, looks like, sounds like, etc). And we have clear evidence that the community did abide by this name at the beginning, as the above research has shown. However, due to lackadaisical practices and general apathy towards Doom 64, wires obviously became crossed at some point, and someone felt that appropriating one of the Doom Bible's (released over a year after the N64 game) lost concepts for a console game on a then-dead console that no one's going to play on PC or any other platform outside of emulation for another 20 years was a more interesting avenue to take.
    
2. The developers at id have adopted the nickname "Doomguy". And I don't mean the people today that work on Doom 2016 and Eternal. I mean the original id group that pushed out the shareware release in 1993. I'm far too lazy to start investigating the genesis of the "Doomguy" title, but here's an example of Romero in 2014 and Carmack using it. Conversely, when it comes to Doom 64, we have yet to find once instance in over two decades of someone at Midway ever using the name "Unmaker". In fact, the one acknowledgment we do have from an actual Midway developer soundly dispels the myth that the weapon was ever considered as the Doom Bible's scrapped weapon.

 

Also note that Eternal is inexplicably writing out the name as two words: "Doom Guy". It appears they're deliberately going out of the way to not use the actual community title. Maybe they're worried about copyrights, but it's certainly not the "Doomguy" name that the community has long adopted.

 

Also note that, in formal writings, Doom's protagonist is not termed as "Doomguy". See the URL of this link: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom's_protagonist

 

And since I found these, here's the first idgames archive readme to contain the term "Doomguy". Also, here's the first surviving Doomworld post in which some guy (I shall dub him "Doomworldguy") uses the term "Doomguy".

Edited February 4, 2020 by Revenant100

[warman2012]

30 minutes ago, Revenant100 said:

Do you have a single fact to back that up? The driving force behind this endeavor is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and in the 20+ years of history I've scanned over, I have not found a single one that referred to Doom 64's new weapon as the "Unmaker".

 

 

No, I do not, sadly, or I'd placed a link to that source. Though I have to admit, why even get so worked up over a minor detail about a weapon in a game of the Doom series that until now (from my own experiences) most people never even heard of or cared about? Its a weapon, it goes pew pew and kills shit. Isn't that what counts?

 

[VGA]

Huh?! Doomworld is *exactly* the right forum for discussing such minor issues in great detail and with a scientific approach. You don't care? Then don't post in this thread about a Doom 64 weapon's canonical name.

[Cacodemon345]

It's gonna remain Unmaker (as the correct interpretation of the Hellish English name "Unmaykr") from now.

[Maggle]

Using "Hack Fraudery" to come-up with a catchy fan-community nickname is perfectly justified when the devs never named it something that wasn't generic and silly like "Alien Laser", or the even more laughable "Boss". LMAO. You're required to call the Mother Demon "Boss" from now on. If you don't, you're a hack fraud.

 

I don't make the rules.

 

Actually, scratch all that. Making fan-nicknames is perfectly justified, full stop. Why wouldn't it be? You can call the "Alien Laser" whatever you want. Call it "Purple Dildo Walrus" if you'd like, I don't care.

[doomsucksass]

1 hour ago, Maggle said:

Using "Hack Fraudery" to come-up with a catchy fan-community nickname is perfectly justified when the devs never named it something that wasn't generic and silly like "Alien Laser", or the even more laughable "Boss". LMAO. You're required to call the Mother Demon "Boss" from now on. If you don't, you're a hack fraud.

 

I don't make the rules.

 

Actually, scratch all that. Making fan-nicknames is perfectly justified, full stop. Why wouldn't it be? You can call the "Alien Laser" whatever you want. Call it "Purple Dildo Walrus" if you'd like, I don't care.

You are a Hack Fraud.

[Doomkid]

I suppose you could say Revenant100's discovery was the unmaking of the Unmaker :)

 

*gets hit with tomatoes and brutally murdered*

[SiFi270]

Saw you making a fuss about the "Doom Guy with a spa ce" thing over on twitter, but from what I can tell, the first remotely official use of the name did the same.

[Revenant100]

Ackchyually, we can trace the first official id Software-sanctioned use of the two-worded "Doom Guy" name back to 1997. You can see "Doom Guy" appear here in Page 5 of Issue 3 of the hit comic Dank and Scud, and this Dank and Scud comic officially appeared in the Sega Saturn port of Quake and in the official Quake 64 strategy guide, and of course Saturn Quake and Quake 64 are official ports of the first entry in id Software's official Quake series. This pre-dates Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3's "Doom Guy" by roughly four years.

 

Nonetheless, Dank and Scud, the Quake console ports, and Tony Hawk are all inconsequential third party productions.

 

This is in contrast to Eternal which is being developed by id themselves and introducing a wanton continuity error with their own previous title:

I'm sure a swift and official response from a member of id and/or an authorized Bethesda and/or ZeniMax representative will clear all this right up, though. But let's not let this egregious canonical error on id's part here distract us from the real matter at hand, which is that people are calling Doom 64's new weapon by the wrong name!

Edited February 4, 2020 by Revenant100

[Quasar]

BTW regarding "Final boss" - the name of that article was a compromise reached after several wiki "wars" over what it should be called between the various co-canonical names for it - "Icon of Sin" if going by the name of the level, and the name eventually chosen for it in later games (Doom II RPG, Doom (2016)); "Baphomet" according to both Final Doom's manual and to Romero and Sandy Petersen themselves; demon-spitter and Gatekeeper in the Final Doom story screens; "Boss" if going by sounds; "Face" if going by textures. "Final boss" just describes what it is rather than being a canonical name in this case.

 

For the Unmaker there was never a similar argument until as of late, long after the article had existed for the better part of 15 years. At the time objections first arose a  compromise was reached to simply A. adjust the lead of the article to make it abundantly clear that the name is currently non-canonical and is give *by analogy* with a concept from the Doom Bible, and B. to add a full section with extensive references to all the equally dubious names it has been given in paraphernalia such as game magazine articles and strategy guides. To be clear, even "official" strategy guides are treated as a much lower tier of canonicity/authority on the wiki - we assume, in absence of any evidence to the contrary, that id's oversight of these projects was minimal. It's quite likely the rights were sold to the highest bidder and that was the last they bothered to think about it. The low quality of some of the books would indeed suggest as much.

 

We have a good half-dozen eligible names if we're to dip down to that level of authority:

• laser rifle
• alien laser
• alien gun
• superlaser
• laser gun
• demon laser

It can't be named *all* of these things (except via redirects, some of which should definitely be created). Thus far the only reason I'd have to treat alien laser with higher priority is that Tim Heydelaar mentioned it in his post here on DWF - a post in which he still expressed some uncertainty, both with regard to the name and to whether or not the Doom Bible might have influenced the weapon's concept.

 

In my opinion it's highly likely that something like "alien laser" or "laser gun" was indeed the development name of the weapon inside Midway; however, there is probably a good reason the game itself never uses it - it's lame. "Alien" in particular doesn't fit with the demonic nature of the weapon. "Laser gun" is just describing what it is without any creativity. Instead, they chose to leave it obscured, with no official name in the game and no name OR depiction at all in the manual. Obviously strategy guides and reviews had to call it something though, and some of those might have sought advice from the developers - others clearly invented their own names whole cloth.

 

It will of course regardless continue to be noted that historically the weapon had no name in the original release, and that these alternative names existed, regardless of whatever it's called in the upcoming re-release (and I will continue to pretend I don't know for sure until March 20).