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

[RottingZombie]

12 or 13 ~1994, on our family's gateway 486 with PC speaker sound :( Full story (to the best of my recollection)  is in my profile if anyone wants to read.

[Rubilacxe]

A shareware copy of Doom 1 came with the retail release of Wolfenstein 3D that my dad bought in 1993. I was 7!

[Optimus]

Maybe I was 14 or 15. Can't be before 13 because I was 13 in 1993.

I remember by 16 I was trying to learn to use tools like Deu or Dmgraph, Dmaud, etc.

Surprised some people have played it when 4 or 7. In that age, I must have being playing on a ZX Spectrum, but I was too small to even understand what's going on, I was assisted in mashing the fire button like a baby, while my father was pressing direction keys to control the vehicle in moon patrol (my earliest "gaming" memories").

[WoofDg79]

I was 5 when DooM was released, and I used to watch my dad play it 'cause I was too young to be allowed. Watching him play DooM was one of my favorite things, and I watched him all the time.

 

I don't remember exactly when I was finally allowed to play DooM but I was under 10. DooM has basically been a part of my life for as long as I can remember haha.

[Hellektronic]

I honestly think I was too young to remember, I was born in '92 and grew up around my brother playing the shareware version. Not to mention the tons of Doom-clones that inevitably saturated the era, hah.

 

“Ah you think Doom is your ally? You merely adopted the Doom. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the Call of Duty until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding!”

[ckejo]

2 years ago, I'm 15 now.

[Doomsday]

I was playing the game since I was seven or eight... I'm 14 now. It would have been 2013 or 2014 I remember getting the game on my Xbox 360 after seeing the SpOoKy ending of The Ultimate DooM.

[beanz]

I was probably like 12 or 13 when I first tried it, but I didn't really get it at first and dropped it fairly quickly. I picked it back up like a year later in high school and was hooked. I remember bringing a flashdrive with me to class with all the main Doom IWADs and either ZDoom or Zandronum and playing it whenever I got some free time in the few computer classes I took. I swear I played through Ultimate Doom 4 or 5 times in that trimester alone. We would try and play LAN DM but there was only a couple of other kids that wanted to play. That was like 5 years ago.

[Soundblock]

22

Edited August 24, 2020 by Soundblock : math

[goggles stan]

i played doom 2 a bit on my xbox 360 back when i was like 10 or 11 but i only really starting to get into doom a few months ago before my fifteenth birthday

[DynamiteKaitorn]

Since I mostly started playing DooM around 2012 I'd be around 14 years old.

[Pixel Fiend]

29

[HQDefault]

I'm one of those weird zoomers that got into classic Doom super late.

 

I first played it through DOSBOX in 2015 (So I would've been 15 years old) on a laptop while my family was on a roadtrip. I wanted something that I could play that I wouldn't need a mouse for, and for whatever reason I wasn't feeling anything on my DS, so I decided to install The Ultimate Doom and play that because the classic control scheme didn't even use a mouse.

[Old-Doomguy]

I was probably around 8-9 when I started playing Doom. But I didn't play it for long because I started with Duke3d and Quake in 1996 when I was 10. Then when I became a teenager 1999 I discovered girls and guitars and mopeds, so that was more interesting for me. 

 

So I didn't stop playing games but I played mostly ps2 until 2004. Then I started playing Doom classic again in early 2020!

[M_W]

I was eighteen when I started playing. I was a console kid and my parents were pretty savvy to the ESRB ratings (because, you know, they are capable of looking at a box and reading the words on it). So I've only been playing for around ten years or so.

[Pokemanic33]

Pretty sure I was like twelve, downloaded the WADs from some (probably sketchy) website and used them for years (hell, I still haven't gotten around to actually buying Heretic or Hexxen, not that I've played them in years anyway). I could only play GZDoom with Brutal Doom, freelook, jumping and crouching, the works; anything less was boring and overly primitive. Fast forward seven years and I couldn't imagine using any of these things (although I have a few mods to make things look a bit better like Smooth Doom and HQ music and sounds), and I've set up my graphical settings to make the game actually look like it's supposed to (at least as much as is possible in GZDoom).

 

Thinking about it, Doom has probably had a distinct impact on my taste and preferences in media. In recent years I've become very picky about authenticity and accuracy in rereleases and the like, and I owe that to two things: learning about the Star Wars Special Editions, and learning about all of the Doom source ports. Funnily enough, I came into contact with both around the same time in my life.

[Eric Claus]

It's been a long time but probably about 5 or 6.  Played on an old 386 that I think was a Packard Bell or something.

[Gerardo194]

14

[Noloko]

Maybe around 5, my dad introduced me to Doom and I have been hooked ever since.

[THEBaratusII]

I started playing Doom in the age of 6, my mother showed it to me on the Xbox 360, and found out the name of the game while my father was browsing through his achievements. Afterwards I went to CNET's "Download.com" website and downloaded Doom 95 shareware, and it was a life-changer ever since.

[Kokoro Hane]

I started playing DOOM when I was about 8-ish. Remember being kinda scared of this game, but still enjoyed playing it. To be fair, the game can still scare me, but considering the concept it should lol. 

[BerserkerNoir]

10 years old, my First Experience was with Doom 64.

 

[The Lone Wolf]

I met with DooM 1 and DooM clones on internet at 2003(from one of those old dos game websites). As you can guess, games like DooM were scary for a little kid such as me. I thought DooM was a horror game when I first met with it. I told about the game to my friends and cousins. We decided to play together but we had one computer at our home. So, we tried to play one by one but it was a bit scary for us. Then we started to play as pairs like "One uses WASD to move, other one uses arrow keys and space to aim and shoot." After, 5 years I got into the ID Software games, especially with Quake 1. If you ask me how I found DooM. Every afternoon, me and my father were playing ATARI games on computer with MAME, MS-DOS etc.. He showed me where and how to download dos games from internet without installing viruses to computer.

[Clippy]

It was the year 2000 or something when I was in grade 9

 

Oh we did during computer class was play Doom in our Network

[DSC]

One I remember well happened the first time I played Circle Of Death. When I first got to the arch-vile, I had no idead how to deal with him, or how he even managed to damage me in the first place. The walkthrough I was following didn't mention how to avoid him. I probably spent around 5-10 minutes just getting my behind burnt to a crisp over and over before finally realizing it.

[omx32x]

first time i saw an arch i just ran away from him and i think i didnt kill a single arch on my first playtrough because of that i was scared of them :(

[roadworx]

when i was first starting out, i almost exclusively used the super shotgun lmao

[Stupid Bunny]

On E1M4 I got startled by a piggy and shot it point blank with a rocket launcher

 

50 minutes ago, omalefico32x said:

first time i saw an arch i just ran away from him and i think i didnt kill a single arch on my first playtrough because of that i was scared of them :(

 

That's exactly what I did playing E1M8 the first time, when the Barons emerged I bravely ran all the way back down the corridor until I could get my composure back

[Kyka]

Funny mistakes that I made:

 

1) NOT SAVING REGULARLY. You know that horrible moment when you, say, die on e1m7, but you were so immersed that you haven't saved since like e1m4. Yeah. Good times.

 

 

2) The first time I ever met the cyberdemon:

 

Of the four exits from the central start area on e2m8, of course I chose the one with the cyberdemon in that quadrant of the map. He just appeared in the doorway, with the huge open area beyond. I feel like we just stood there and, like had a moment. Our eyes met from across a definitely-not-crowded room. I was certainly too stunned and scared to move. Of course he then proceeded to turn me into charred red paste, while I stood there, immobile. I honestly didn't even shoot at him. I can still remember that first rocket coming at me. Too fast to react. Feeling that horror of being trapped in a room with the only way out blocked by this gargantuan thing.

 

I don't remember whether I tried that level again that night. Probably I had to replay the preceeding levels, because I had forgotten to save since e2m1 or somesuch. There wasn't autosave at the start of levels like there is now.

 

I have a bunch of silly awkward stories, but that will do for now.

[roadworx]

ohhh my god i just remembered, when i first played doom 1, i pretty much only used the shotgun. including for barons and cyberdemons.

 

i was a dumb 12y/o lol