Did you find Doom scary when it first came out?

[TheGreenZap]

A little. The monster noises before I could actually see them creeped me out a bit back then.

[Van Daemon]

Hell yeah and I first saw Saturn/PSX Doom so, imagine 

[Doom-X-Machina]

Yes. It still is.

[Doomkid]

I was probably about 4 when I first laid eyes on Shareware Doom, the game was incredible but didn’t scare me at all, the music was really enjoyable especially. The only time it got slightly creepy was the iconic Bruiser Bros fight, but my dad or older brother were always with me when I was playing anything this young, and I don’t recall finding it anything other than amazing.

 

By the time I was about 6 my brother downloaded Doom 2 for me. Nothing about it scared me and again I loved the music, I remember dancing around to certain songs I was so young.. (For a while I had no music, just a PC speaker.. can’t remember why, I’m guessing my dad was in the process of upgrading so I was playing using an old backup PC).

 

After seeing how much I loved it, within a year my dad had showed me how to download wads. For my 7th birthday, he got me the Ultimate Doom, and that’s where the first real scares came in, with the hung Barons in E2M8 making me uncomfortable, and the Sweet Little Dead Bunny ending absolutely terrifying me. I was only 7 though, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most people found it unsettling at the very least their first time around.

 

(By the time I was 9 I was making my own wads and had been pretty much desensitised to pixelated gore, lol. Wonder what the psychological impact was there.. oh well!)

 

 

[Silhouette 03]

The arch-vile maze in plutonia still scares the life out of me, even if I know how to handle the bastards by now. The horrible noises they make don't exactly help. 

[DooM Bear]

Yep definitely!

 

Although it was the level design that scared me the most as a kid. 

 

As others have said, the lighting effects (flickering lights or rooms where the lights would turn off) was a big part of it but also was scared of the props and textures like the hanging bodies, pentagrams and satanic stuff everywhere!

 

While I am slightly too young to have seen the “satanic ritual murder spree” media craze (or maybe Australia just dodged that particular phase of media hysteria) and I didn’t really have a reference as to what I was looking at, the textures made me feel uneasy like something bad would happen just from looking at them!

 

On the other hand, I always thought the monsters looked cool or cute UwU

[Marisa the Magician]

Boy let me tell ya, I was just a young kid, and I was TERRIFIED of those two barons in shareware doom. It took me a long time to actually beat the whole episode. I played on keyboard only, even, so it was hard.

[Retro Dino]

I played SIGIL when I was 20, and it has some scary moments in it. The darkness and lights flickering really get me, and then you turn around and there's a demon or some shit. 

[DavitW]

Yeah, but I was about 9 years old at the time. After playing it once I realized it wasn't very scary and enjoyed it.

[BlueThunder]

Playing alone at night as a kid it would make me jump when a monster would pop out of no where.

[Dexiaz]

To be honest, I've shit bricks when I saw John Romero's head on stick on Map30. And after that seeing the BossHead (Monster Cast Roll) makes the situation creepier.

[Chezza]

I remember as a toddler I saw my Dad and Uncles play Wolfenstein 3D and I got scared of seeing the bloody face of the character when wounded.

 

However I don't remember being scared in Doom, allthough I would have been older. Granted the Cyberdemon intimidated me.

 

If anything Doom gave me a bit of morbid curiosity in the vast Hellish dimension, wanting to see what freaky sights and demons it had to show as I delve deeper.

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Chezza

[Jello]

13 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I was probably about 4 when I first laid eyes on Shareware Doom, the game was incredible but didn’t scare me at all, the music was really enjoyable especially. The only time it got slightly creepy was the iconic Bruiser Bros fight, but my dad or older brother were always with me when I was playing anything this young, and I don’t recall finding it anything other than amazing.

 

By the time I was about 6 my brother downloaded Doom 2 for me. Nothing about it scared me and again I loved the music, I remember dancing around to certain songs I was so young.. (For a while I had no music, just a PC speaker.. can’t remember why, I’m guessing my dad was in the process of upgrading so I was playing using an old backup PC).

 

After seeing how much I loved it, within a year my dad had showed me how to download wads. For my 7th birthday, he got me the Ultimate Doom, and that’s where the first real scares came in, with the hung Barons in E2M8 making me uncomfortable, and the Sweet Little Dead Bunny ending absolutely terrifying me. I was only 7 though, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most people found it unsettling at the very least their first time around.

 

(By the time I was 9 I was making my own wads and had been pretty much desensitised to pixelated gore, lol. Wonder what the psychological impact was there.. oh well!)

 

 

I'm just imagining a little Frank Zappa dancing around to Doom music.

 

And yeah, I got upset when I saw Daisy the first time. I always loved rabbits when I was a kid, a giant bunny rabbit was my first stuffed toy, that I can recall at least, still have it. So yeah, Daisy's head on a stick really bothered me.

 

@Chezza

Hey, do you guys, uhhhhh, remember the 90's?

 

He wasn't the worst cenobite ever, but he certainly was 90's.

Edited March 24, 2021 by Jello

[spineapple tea]

No.

[Final Verdict]

Hmm, I don't remember being scared of anything in Doom when I played it back in the 90's. I think that was more down to my personality than anything else. A good jump scare can get me sometimes though. 

 

When I was a kid I only remember one section where I felt on edge, E1M2 chainsaw secret. Creeping through those dimly lit hallways as a kid was intense, but it wasn't fear-inducing. Don't get the wrong idea though, it doesn't take away from my enjoyment of Doom. I still appreciate the atmosphere of a spooky level or area and I still get excited when I see a BFG or Megasphere in a map.

 

10 hours ago, Jello said:

 

Hey, do you guys, uhhhhh, remember the 90's?

 

He wasn't the worst cenobite ever, but he certainly was 90's.

 

That's a blast from the past, old disk-head. The first two Hellraiser movies were great though.

 

[Z.Franz]

I first got my hands on doom shareware from a yellow/black CD-ROM full of shareware titles when I was 3 years old.

I used to be terrified of the second level and especially the final one, E1M8. When I was a kid I hyped up the barons in my head so much, that for years I was sure they could withstand 100 rockets each. I was also terrified of the final room you get teleported to in order to finish the episode because I used to play on ITYTD with IDDQD on, and that room took that away from me :D

 

Anyway yes, I sure as hell found doom scary, and I'm kinda saddened to see that aspect has been a little lost in the newer titles.

[Wild Dog]

When i got the shareware on my old 386, didn't find scary, neither i find it now. I just loved to blast demons with the shotgun.

[Tetzlaff]

Not exactly scary, although there were some scary situations. But atmospheric, eerie and mysterious.

 

Didn't perceive it as ridiculous B-movie stuff at all. Doom felt much more serious and darker than comparable games of the time. Wolfenstein 3-D: bright colors, cartoony looking enemies that shouted funny, made-up German lines. Other games I knew at that time included Flood, Emerald Mine, Indiana Jones, Curse of Monkey Island.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Tetzlaff

[Oldschoolgeek32]

I've been playing Doom since 2012ish (I was still young at the time) and it did not scare me in terms of like gameplay-wise but the dark areas definitely scared me a little bit back then...Imagine going inside a dark room expecting nothing then all of a sudden 20 imps starts coming out. Those are definitely the scariest stuff back then

[deleted.]

.

Edited June 12, 2022 by a.a.i.

[Jello]

I do use DSVILACT for my text messages though. I had a default tone, but for some reason I could never hear it and people were complaining that I never responded to their texts. Once I changed it to the Arch-Vile sound I instantly started reacting when I heared it. That sound scares the shit out of me. Even when I have my phone turned almost all the way down that noise still gets my attention immediately.

[Zakken]

I used to be scared of E1M8 because of the big star arena and the Barons being enemies you'd never seen before up until that point. That trap ending was also dread-inducing for obvious reasons. Episode 3 as a whole also scared me a lot as a kid. The game's 320x200 resolution really sprung my fertile imagination at the time and made its general visuals of hellish mountains, marble walls and fleshy environments out to be far more oppressive than they really were.

 

My first experiences with Doom vary from a few years after its release (shareware episode) to a whole decade after it came out (full version), but since I was a kid without a meaningful body count of FPSs to speak of, my initial perspective was probably next to the same as those who were around to play it back in 1993-94.

[Old-Doomguy]

Never scary, but I was mindblown at how good it was and how great it looked. I was under 10yr at the time.

 

I did found it stressful at times, especially when playing without cheats or doing Nightmare. It sure got the BPM up and pumping :D

 

Nowadays when playing, my BPM doesnt really rise but jumpscares can get me sometimes.