Doom Absolution / Doom 64 2 research

[Quasar]

Here's everything I've been able to find so far, while trying to make sure some kind of gem didn't sneak past us in the wild back in the day. The game was still considered live as of August 1997 in the wake of E3 where it was evidently mentioned but not shown in any form. By the next month it's considered canceled, so this gives a very solid time frame in which to focus.

 

https://archive.org/details/64-extreme-06/page/n5/mode/2up?q=absolution
https://archive.org/details/total-64-07/page/n7/mode/2up?q=midway+absolution
https://archive.org/details/club-nintendo-ano-06-no-08-mexico/page/n67/mode/2up?q=midway+absolution
https://archive.org/details/total-64-14/page/n85/mode/2up?q="doom+64+2"
https://archive.org/details/Game_Informer_Issue_052_August_1997/page/n15/mode/2up?q="doom+absolution"
https://archive.org/details/magazine-64-raspberry-i-buenos-aires/Magazine 64 05/page/n41/mode/2up?q="doom+absolution"
https://www.ign.com/articles/1997/07/11/n-query-6

[Wavy]

Nice finds!

 

Seeing that "N64 cemetery" reminds me: I honestly have mixed feelings on Midway making a Quake port and not Absolution. Don't get me wrong, the Quake 64 port was awesome due to its lighting, atmosphere, and how solid it's to play. It was also one of the cheapest ways of getting a hardware accelerated port of Quake at the time. Though having another entirely new Doom campaign for the N64 and not just a straight port of Quake would've been really cool as well.

 

Eh, that's a topic for its own thread I feel

[Immorpher]

4 hours ago, Wavy said:

Nice finds!

 

Seeing that "N64 cemetery" reminds me: I honestly have mixed feelings on Midway making a Quake port and not Absolution. Don't get me wrong, the Quake 64 port was awesome due to its lighting, atmosphere, and how solid it's to play. It was also one of the cheapest ways of getting a hardware accelerated port of Quake at the time. Though having another entirely new Doom campaign for the N64 and not just a straight port of Quake would've been really cool as well.

Ya I am in a similar boat! I love the new soundtrack and colored lighting of Quake 64. It makes a moody game even moodier. But with that said I think a Doom 64 "2", would have had a longer lasting impression. Given the rumors of its multiplayer focus, and how well Doom 64 already runs on the console, it could have been the smoothest split screen experience on the N64! And by the time of its planned release, it could have had slightly better compiler optimizations and rendering code Nintendo developed, optimizing the multiplayer a bit more.

It's nice what you found @Quasar! I think I only seen the Spanish cancellation before.

[out_of_service]

"Perhaps finally laying the Doom series to rest. May it rest in peace!"

 

2021 wants to have a word with you! lol.

 

Thanks for sharing the links, I love seeing every tidbit relating to Doom 64! I wonder what could have been.

[Murdoch]

15 hours ago, PSXDoomer said:

Perhaps finally laying the Doom series to rest

 

Yeah the writer clearly didn't know modding was a thing.

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, Murdoch said:

Yeah the writer clearly didn't know modding was a thing.

I mean, that's not exactly fair, they're a console gaming mag, talking about consoles where the idea of modding a game was absurd at the time.

 

Anyone and their grandmother knew by 1996-1997 you'd no longer see a Doom-style game on the consoles unless it was coming out right then. 3D was where it was at, and where it went.

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

I mean, that's not exactly fair, they're a console gaming mag, talking about consoles where the idea of modding a game was absurd at the time.

 

Well obviously. Not sure what your point is? It was a simple observation not a negative criticism.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Cancelado culture! Who's the classic character with a "turd-like" head they're talking about? 

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

Who's the classic character with a "turd-like" head they're talking about? 

Donkey Kong is my bet.

 

 

Definitely looks a bit like a turd tail.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

Donkey Kong is my bet.

 

 

Definitely looks a bit like a turd tail.

Nice! I wouldn't have thought of that. Pretty cool riddle compared to most junk printed in magazines and papers that usually just exist to insult the reader's intelligence. On the downside, now I can't unsee this.

[cybdmn]

On 8/10/2021 at 3:55 PM, PSXDoomer said:

"Perhaps finally laying the Doom series to rest. May it rest in peace!"

 

2021 wants to have a word with you! lol.

 

To be fair, for most gamers Doom were dead by 97. Doom 64 get a lot of critic for using "old tech", as a lot games by then like Shadow Warrior for example. What saved Doom64s sales a bit was the fact, that it was released early in the N64 history, a later release of a part 2 might have crashed, considering all the fancy "real 3D" games released by then.

Doom64 was in fact a hidden gem, a undervalued part of the series, and it is kind of even today.

 

The turning point for Doom in general was the source release. With that gamers got modernized ports for DOS, actually usable ports for Windows and for other systems too. And i don't talk about ports to toasters. From there on Doom got a second life, which evolved in Ports for recent consoles, on which it is played by gamers, who wheren't in part even born when Doom was released.

[Immorpher]

2 hours ago, cybdmn said:

To be fair, for most gamers Doom were dead by 97. Doom 64 get a lot of critic for using "old tech", as a lot games by then like Shadow Warrior for example. What saved Doom64s sales a bit was the fact, that it was released early in the N64 history, a later release of a part 2 might have crashed, considering all the fancy "real 3D" games released by then.

I think you are right in general! I have had an idea in my mind that Doom 64 had to be released in 1997 or not at all. By 1998 AAA companies couldn't justify developing new games on that engine with so many newer FPS engines out there. Which is probably why Doom Absolution seemed to be cancelled so quickly.

I think if Doom 64 had a planned release date in 1998 or later, it probably would be based on an engine like Quake or something similar to the Turok engine. With the reduced number of 3D enemies on screen, it probably would have played more like Doom 3.

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, Immorpher said:

I think you are right in general! I have had an idea in my mind that Doom 64 had to be released in 1997 or not at all. By 1998 AAA companies couldn't justify developing new games on that engine with so many newer FPS engines out there. Which is probably why Doom Absolution seemed to be cancelled so quickly.

I think if Doom 64 had a planned release date in 1998 or later, it probably would be based on an engine like Quake or something similar to the Turok engine. With the reduced number of 3D enemies on screen, it probably would have played more like Doom 3.

Doom Absolution was put on life support on March 4th, 1997, and its date of death was August 25th, 1997. Pure and simple.

[Revenant100]

The BradyGames Quake N64 Strategy Guide includes an interview with Doom 64 programmer Aaron Seeler which includes some details relevant to Doom 64 2. Here are scans of both pages of the interview:

 

 

Points of interest:

• Aaron knew he'd be put on Quake 64 at "the end of post Doom 64 submission."
• He recalls starting on Quake 64 in April 1997. Unless there was someone else at Midway who could have been put on the project (and the Doom 64 team was small to begin with), this means that Doom 64 2 was likely largely dead not long after that date (unless it was just being supported by mappers and maybe a few artists, which perhaps it could have).
• He mentions having created a splitscreen deathmatch version of Doom 64 just after it was finished, going on to say Midway didn't want to release it and surmising that "marketing decided it wasn't viable."
• He specifies that Doom 64, the "first product", was the singleplayer concept and that this ill-fated new product was the multiplayer concept.
• He claims Doom 64 did very well commercially for Midway, which isn't unknown or surprising, but it does differ from some later sentiments indicating that the game got dominated in sales by the likes of Goldeneye 64.
• The multiplayer Doom 64 concept only supported two players, not four. However, four players would have been within the Nintendo 64's capabilities.
• Something he's also told later, he says that they figured console deathmatch games wouldn't work because players could always see their opponent's screen, later going on to regret this decision and feeling that Doom 64 should have shipped with multiplayer.
• Amusingly, despite cancelling the multiplayer-focused Doom 64 2, multiplayer in Quake 64 was a late addition as a result of a last second mandate, leading to a delay in the release by a few months. This change presumably occurred when Midway realized that Goldeneye 64 was selling a lot.

 

I also came across another Doom 64 interview from GameFan Volume 5 Issue 2 with Aaron Seeler and lead artist Sukru Gilman. Link: https://archive.org/details/Gamefan_Vol_5_Issue_02/page/n89/mode/2up

 

Points of interest:

• This interview was pre-release (the issue was February 1997), and here they're already commenting that deathmatch wouldn't work on console because of the shared splitscreen.
• The team was hoping for some hardware interface, namely a connecting lead, that would have facilitated splitting each deathmatch player's viewing area to separate monitors. This is possibly the "necessary equipment for multiplayer programming" they had complained to Nintendo about earlier.
• Regarding the removal of deathmatch, they "tried to take the elements that [they] couldn’t put in for multi-player and add more to single player, so [they] packed more in there." No idea what that means.
• Aaron mentioned the possibility of a Doom 64 sequel being on the 64DD, and I suppose that says a lot about the optimism surrounding the 64DD's plans at the time.

And not strictly related to the ill-fated sequel, but Aaron also mentions in that interview that they were playing around with the idea of implementing evil Doomguy drones in singleplayer to make use of the player sprites that were otherwise going to be wasted in Doom 64 without any multiplayer. An interesting thought.

Edited August 13, 2021 by Revenant100

[Immorpher]

1 hour ago, Revenant100 said:

Aaron mentioned the possibility of a Doom 64 sequel being on the 64DD, and I suppose that says a lot about the optimism surrounding the 64DD's plans at the time.

When I delved into a bunch of magazines from 1997, they were going crazy about the 64DD. I suspected to see more criticism bringing magnetic disk technology back in late 90's, but no, they were hyping it. Magazines also seemed to love the 3DO during the era too.

[Dark Pulse]

2 minutes ago, Immorpher said:

When I delved into a bunch of magazines from 1997, they were going crazy about the 64DD. I suspected to see more criticism bringing magnetic disk technology back in late 90's, but no, they were hyping it. Magazines also seemed to love the 3DO during the era too.

ROM was still expensive. Magnetic media was less so (and optical even less). Gotta remember this was an era where 8-16 MB of game space was considered good-sized for a cartridge-based system like the N64, while 64DD disks promised 64 MB with relative ease.

 

Of course, the irony is it suffered nearly the exact same fate as the Famicom Disk System - the disks started bigger, but ROM technology got cheaper, and in the end most of the games that would have been "too big" to fit on a cartridge just a few years beforehand now easily could, undercutting the disks.

[Kinsie]

The 64DD's biggest issue is that it was massively delayed - It was announced in 1995, before the N64 had even come out, but didn't reach shelves until the end of 1999, a little over a year after the Dreamcast's debut in Japan.

[cybdmn]

10 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

ROM was still expensive. Magnetic media was less so (and optical even less). Gotta remember this was an era where 8-16 MB of game space was considered good-sized for a cartridge-based system like the N64, while 64DD disks promised 64 MB with relative ease.

 

Yes, these kind of technology was considered a good choice as mass memory. There was a planned Zipdrive for the Dreamcast at some point.

[Muusi]

More console Doom but it was canceled? No wonder there's no world peace yet. I hope some development stuff is shown in the future at least. 

[Dark Pulse]

3 hours ago, Muusi said:

More console Doom but it was canceled? No wonder there's no world peace yet. I hope some development stuff is shown in the future at least. 

Pretty sure it never got beyond the planning stages.

[Immorpher]

15 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

Pretty sure it never got beyond the planning stages.

From the DoomWiki's summary of the Doomworld topic Tim Heydelaar commented on, it seems the multiplayer for Doom Absolution was working and they had some levels made: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Absolution

[Dark Pulse]

8 minutes ago, Immorpher said:

From the DoomWiki's summary of the Doomworld topic Tim Heydelaar commented on, it seems the multiplayer for Doom Absolution was working and they had some levels made: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Absolution

Surprised it got that far, but I'd still consider that the planning stages, really. Having a fair number of maps done doesn't mean the planning is anywhere near complete, after all.

[Quasar]

Doom 64 2 was well into development when canceled, according to Tim. This narrative that it was dead before the word go is false and shouldn't be getting advanced any further. Midway had multiple teams; development on Quake for N64 had always been going on and started as soon as Doom 64 was finished, as Aaron Seeler confirms in the above interview. This is why he didn't have the mappers from Doom 64 on that project - they were working on Doom Absolution up until sometime around July '97 (the earliest ref mentioning it is dated to 10 July, but some mags don't notice this until September) when it was canned. Period.

 

This is just like when people post goddamn hottakes about how the System Shock remake must be going to get delayed because Nightdive announces a new KEX Engine title. Different teams completely. Practically a different company right now to be honest. They have NO effect on each other. But armchair gamedevs are a dime a dozen.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Quasar

[Muusi]

5 hours ago, Quasar said:

Doom 64 2 was well into development when canceled, according to Tim. 

My day is ruined. 

[Dark Pulse]

7 hours ago, Quasar said:

Doom 64 2 was well into development when canceled, according to Tim. This narrative that it was dead before the word go is false and shouldn't be getting advanced any further. Midway had multiple teams; development on Quake for N64 had always been going on and started as soon as Doom 64 was finished, as Aaron Seeler confirms in the above interview. This is why he didn't have the mappers from Doom 64 on that project - they were working on Doom Absolution up until sometime around July '97 (the earliest ref mentioning it is dated to 10 July, but some mags don't notice this until September) when it was canned. Period.

 

This is just like when people post goddamn hottakes about how the System Shock remake must be going to get delayed because Nightdive announces a new KEX Engine title. Different teams completely. Practically a different company right now to be honest. They have NO effect on each other. But armchair gamedevs are a dime a dozen.

Yeah, I'm definitely not making the mistake of claiming Midway had only one team. We'd have never gotten stuff like Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey if that were the case, as the N64 port of that was more or less contemporaneous with Doom 64 itself. And that's not even getting into that Midway still had a huge arcade presence around this time as it was still the golden years of Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam was still making waves, in a few years there'd be NFL Blitz, etc.

 

I guess I misused "planning" more or less. To me, if the game design isn't really finalized (and we admittedly have no idea how much it was finalized before the title was dropped), that would still be the planning stages. I'll cede the definition to someone who actually makes software, but there's usually at least a grace period where you know some of the things you want and can work towards implementing them even as other parts of the spec are still being finalized, and I figure that's the point Doom Absolution reached before it was canned.

[out_of_service]

3 hours ago, Muusi said:

My day is ruined. 

Your disappointment is immeasurable.

[Chip]

dude, if one of these days it's announced that they're releasing Absolution in an update for the Doom 64 rerelease, I will die. 

 

That's 100% true. I will just fall to the floor dead. they won't know exactly what killed me, but it will be that announcement. 

[Mattfrie1]

Forget about a Doom 64 sequel, I want to know what happened to MK Mythologies: Liu Kang dammit!

 

Joking aside, it's unfortunately easy to see why Absolution got cancelled. Final Doom on PSX was given neutral reviews by the critics for going back to the well one too many times with an "outdated" engine, so I would imagine that the rather fickle critics of the day would have been lukewarm to a new Doom engine title being released on N64 in early '98. While the new features of Doom 64 were enough to keep the critics satisfied the first time around, I'd imagine if they got used a second time they wouldn't have been so generous. Not an exact one-to-one comparison, but Hexen on the N64 got ravaged by critics for being "the same old" around the same time as Doom 64's release.

[Chip]

17 minutes ago, Mattfrie1 said:

"outdated" engine

I always hate how people place graphics above gameplay. On Quora there was this person that asked why people play DOOM if it looks so bad. Like, is that the only thing that matters to people? Skyrim is an incredible RPG, but it has some pretty mediocre graphics. Most people know that the graphics are like that because the world of Skyrim is huge, but there are still people I'm sure would love the game that don't play it because it looks crappy. Critics always take that into account, as well. When playing a game, the graphics don't have to look realistic for me to have a good time. I want good gameplay. that was one of the many issues with games like Battlefront 2, EA did their best to create incredible graphics that look realistic, but the end product of their game was pretty sub-par. I know gameplay wasn't the only issue with Battlefront 2, but it definitely contributed to its negative reviews. 

 

edit: Sorry for getting off-topic for a sec. 

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, Mattfrie1 said:

Forget about a Doom 64 sequel, I want to know what happened to MK Mythologies: Liu Kang dammit!

Probably best left forgotten. Shaolin Monks was a much better stab at it.