What was the first Megawad (custom level pack) you ever played in your life and how you got it?

[Hisymak]

I got Doom2 in the second half of 90s. For very long time (it was basically all my childhood) I played nothing but vanilla Doom2 levels, and I finished all Doom2 about 50 times (first on easy difficulty, later with harder difficulties, with cheats and in many possible ways). Indeed I got bored by replaying the same maps over and over and wanted to play some new maps, but I simply did not know custom maps and megawads even existed. The reason was I was still a kid, and back then (late 90s/early 2000s) internet was still not a common thing so I was not confrontated with custom levels in any way.

The things changed in about 2006 for two main reasons: We got a new PC which could not play Vanilla DOS version of Doom properly, and we got a fast and permanent internet connection. I was a teenager that time, so I started being interested in more stuff like source ports to be able to play Doom properly (Doomsday was the first port I used before I sticked with (G)Zdoom) and most importantly, I got initiatively curious about custom levels! So I just searched for some.

At first I searched for some new levels for Heretic, because Heretic was my first 3D game I owned before Doom and was more interested in it. I remember the first custom level pack I downloaded and played was Hell's Surface (probably this one: https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/Hells-Surface)

For Doom2, if I remember correctly, my first megawad I played was TNT: Evilution. I know this is an official megawad, but still, it was something completely new to me and I really wished I knew about such thing much earlier in my life.

The second, and the first fully custom Doom megawad I played in my life was Alien Vendetta. I did not download it myself, but my brother was playing some Skulltag and downloaded lot of different WADs for online gaming. I just traversed through the folder tried to play some WADs, and AV.WAD caught my attention. I progressed throught that, but the difficulty level was too high to my taste, but still, I played through all this thing, some levels taking me lot of nerves and patience. At least I got some early experience with really hard WAD which came in handy for further playing.

 

EDIT: Apart from posting name of WAD itself, I'd like to hear also some history or circumstances how and why you got to play that WAD? Or at least which year it was?

Edited March 3, 2020 by Hisymak

[Job]

I think it was Strain, Memento Mori or Alien Vendetta. 

[Morpheus666]

Does FreeDoom count?

[Pechudin]

    Well, I got introduced to DooM in 2016 via Brutal DooM, so it would have to be the Hell On Earth Starter Pack. Nowadays I am more into style of DooM closer to the original (mainly because my laptop kinda chugs with BD and the like, which should be remedied soon). Also, lul at your tag, "Nice Member".

 

Oh damn, I also just got it. Was it really only 69 posts since I joined?

[seed]

Requiem, Suspended in Dusk, or Memento Mori, but I can't remember which one was it...

[Arbys550]

Scythe2. I downloaded it because it was on some youtube video of hardest wads ever and I wanted to see what it was like. I remember save-scumming on ITYTD. Nowadays I can beat all the maps on UV with no saves. It's nice to think how far I have come as a doomer (Scythe 2 is nowhere near one of the hardest wads ever by the way, that youtube video was wrong).

[cambreaKer]

probably wolfendoom and i think i downloaded it off moddb

[Maximum Matt]

Momento motherfuckin Mori.

[DJVCardMaster]

Requien but only the first levels and I left it.

[DRM-MAN]

Scythe, it was rough start. 

[idbeholdME]

Honestly not sure.

 

Maybe Plutonia 2 but can't say exactly. I got into custom WADs when I downloaded a big bunch of them and then just started playing them. But can't remember which one I played through first.

 

I got them all from here: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/

[Lorenz0]

After I beat the iwads I was looking for youtube videos of people playing Doom and I found BigMacDavis who recorded Scythe aside from the iwads, so I took interest and started playing Scythe as well.

 

The next two which I played on co-op were Tribute (by Zalewa) and Valiant.

[SirJuicyLemon]

I guess TNT: Evilution?

Apart from that, when I was a kid, the main things that I played as megawads were total conversions. I used to love silly/fun TC like Batman Doom, Nintendo Doom, Lego Doom or the Simpsons Doom. But I guess the main worthy TC/Megawad that I can recall was HACX.

 

I remember that it was one of the first games that I've ever installed, and it was kind of weird to install at the time. Wasn't as easy and handy as today, it had a weird, but cool installer. And when I finally could play it, wow, it was amazing.

[Andromeda]

Eternal Doom.

[joepallai]

The first megawad I ever played was The Lost Episodes of Doom.   I found the book at Lechmere and bought it along with another shovelware disc.   

[Uncle 80]

First megawad I got was Memento Mori II, after a few single levels. Got it from browsing hmtl pages a la "Johnny's Best Doom Wads" using Yahoo in Netscape Navigator. Downloaded it (without permission) at my highschool computer lab, got it home by using ARJ to spilt the zip file across 5 x 1.44mb floppy disks. Didn't find out about ftp.cdrom.com until several years later.

 

edit: And speaking of Memento Mori II, I'm still waiting for the promised Memento Mori III : The Quake Encounter. Get to it, guys.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Uncle 80

[Jayextee]

I said in my review of Realm of Chaos that it was my first megaWAD. Late '90s, and I'd finally got a PC that could run the one game I wanted to play and build levels for; Quake.

However, a guy I knew handed me a CD with a whole fuckton of DOOM stuff on it; among which a copy of WadEd v1.71 and Realm of Chaos -- the latter's somewhat rough-around-the-edges nature combined with the former made me think "holy shit, people make these things!" and after a few experiments and finding my feet, the whole 'make levels for Quake' thing was but a memory. I still haven't ever; finding myself playing the maps that occurred after finishing my E1M1 (i.e. the default DOOM maps) and having a lot of fun with them, more than I expected, started an addiction that has clearly stood the test of time.

[QuotePilgrim]

Doom the Way id Did. That is the first one I played in its entirety, at least. I may have played some of the maps in The Joy of Mapping #6 and DUMP Episode 3 before that, I can't quite remember.

 

I became aware of it from developing an interest in mapping shortly after finishing the first game last year (had played some of it in 2016 in DOSBox, but gave up on Halls of the Damned, I think); I came across this tutorial on making a map with SLADE, which mentions Antroid's playthrough of Doom II the Way id Did. I watched that in its entirety before I even started playing Doom II.

[apollyon094]

I started by playing Mock 2: The Speed of Stupid and other jokewads, then started playing Doom 1 and 2.

[DuckReconMajor]

Lol I found an old post where I said the only megawads I'd bothered to complete were Mock 2 and 64.wad

 

I guess at some point I went on to play Scythe because playing it recently a lot of it was familiar. Also apparently I godmoded through Speed of Doom at some point and was an a-hole about it in a thread that got Post Hell'd.

 

I think honestly the first megawads for me were probably co-op ones on ZDaemon like Invasion UAC

[Coincident]

Well since you mentioned only "custom level packs" - I will exclude Plutonia, TNT, and the master levels, since they are kinda "official level packs".

That being said, the first custom megawad that I played (after those) was either Alien Vendetta or Plutonia 2. Can't remember which one I tried first.
At the time it was on gzdoom, and probably with brutal doom... or was it Smooth Doom? Can't remember exactly.

[Graf Zahl]

When I started with Doom there were no megawads. If you were lucky you could get 9 level episodes - the first one I played was Cleimos, the second Sudtic.

The first actual megawad (i.e. 20 levels or more) was Cleimos 2, I got all those from a shovelware CD, this was in 1994 - 1996 before I had my first internet access.

 

 

[Pegleg]

The Lost Episodes of Doom.

 

I don't remember the exact details (it was 25 years ago), but I got the megawad (along with the book it came with) from a friend who was done with them. I still have the book on a shelf at my parents' house and I actually flipped through it when I was visiting them last year. I particularly like the short bits where Chris Klie and Bob Carter talk about the design processes involved in making the various maps.

 

Back in the 90's, I didn't go online to Compuserve (or similar places) or any BBSes to talk about Doom or download pwads. I may have downloaded a few here and there from online sites (over a 14.4k or 28.8k dial-up modem), but I wasn't involved in any sort of online Doom scene. In fact, the pwads I did play were mostly from one of the D!Zone CD's that I borrowed from a friend. So, the fact that I played any megawads (other than the iwads) before returning to Doom and Doom 2 in the last few years (I had a hiatus from Doom from 2001 - 2016) is an amazing stroke of luck.

[Egg Boy]

Scythe. This answer is probably super common.

[Fuzzball]

Something on zdaemon probably, given that was my entry into the Doom world after SRB2- I can't remember exactly which but I have fond memories of things like 1337, coopbuildm and random sets I can't remember

[Gez]

Aliens TC, from a shovelware CD.

[Yugiboy85]

Dunno if it was the first first, but, it was amongst the first ones for sure: 2002Ado

That megawad was awesome tbh, what I liked most about it was the music that came with it (all original) and, the level design was also very good. 

[666shooter]

I saw a review of some mods about two years ago on Steam, reading about Eviternity, and saw a video of one of the maps for Struggle: Antaresian Legacy. I thought those dual pistols looked awesome, and that ended up being the first megawad I played after the IWADs. A bit of a rough start maybe, but its still one of my very favorities for its beautiful design style and intense, though very fairly balanced, combat design.

[Capellan]

Knee Deep in the DEU was an episode replacement for OG Doom.  It came with the DEU5.2 download that a friend brought over.  It was the first non-IWAD content I encountered.

 

Memento Mori was the first Doom 2 megawad I played.  I saw it announced on the Doom Usenet group, and went and got it from ftp.cdrom.com

[Doomkid]

An old forgotten relic called Doomed 2 Die (dmd2die.wad) https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/0563c5a85578b1639d58feaba3c9375b

 

Not only was it the first megawad that I played, but the first custom Doom content I’d ever seen. My dad was showing me how to most effectively search the web for custom wads, and that was the first thing we came across. It would have been 1998 (the wad was updated at some point in 2000 apparently). It’s one of those crusty old compilation packs, a la heroes.wad.

 

Here was it’s old website: https://web.archive.org/web/20060220072254/http://www.linux.sh/doom.shtml

 

I love when 90’s wad authors would put “1996 COPYRIGHT” notices on their hand-made sites for packs of compiled levels.. Earlier times!