What were the first three PWADs you downloaded?

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Being a sweet summer child who had just beaten Doom 2 and Plutonia, I was first recommended these three:

 

Sunder

 

Sunlust 

 

Plutonia 2

 

And I was very confident, walked into Sunder on Ultra - Violence and got my butt handed to me. I made it through to Map 02 and got slaughtered over and over by that giant murder of Revenants.

 

 

After spending an hour trying to beat Map 02 I quit, and decided to try Sunlust, where, in Map 01 I got destroyed by hitscanners, thinking I should kilp Mancubi and Imps over the Zombies. After that I gave up on wads for a while. 

 

I learned my lesson, and now when any newbie ask for wads to play, I'll tell him Fava Beans, if you liked Doom 1, Demonfear if you liked Doom 2, Eternal Doom if you liked TNT, and Hell Revealed if you thought Plutonia was easy. 

 

I have to say this experience turned me off of modern megawads for a while, which is both a blessing and a curse, because I found my favorite era of mapping was from 1995 to 2005, but I also missed out on lots of good stuff.

 

So anyway, what were the first three you downloaded? Where they good? Bad? Too hard? Too easy? How did they affect you as a doomer?

[Sergeant G]

My first Three PWADs in order:

PLUTONIA 2, PLUTONIA REVISTED COMMUNITY PROJECT, VANGUARD

[BrassKnight]

I don't remember much but I think it was Brutal Doom and Knee Deep in ZDoom. Never finished KDZDoom, I only messed around with cheats. I don't remember the third one, it's been around 4 years since I first started playing.

[Doomkid]

1 hour ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

I learned my lesson, and now when any newbie ask for wads to play, I'll tell him Fava Beans, if you liked Doom 1, Demonfear if you liked Doom 2, Eternal Doom if you liked TNT, and Hell Revealed if you thought Plutonia was easy. 

 

I have to say this experience turned me off of modern megawads for a while, which is both a blessing and a curse, because I found my favorite era of mapping was from 1995 to 2005, but I also missed out on lots of good stuff.

Ahhh, it's a shame you feel this way, but "modern megawads are too hard" is a sentiment I see all the time. The vast majority of my wads are not only on the easier side even on UV, but have thoroughly implemented difficulty levels.

 

I think some people are finally starting to remember that accessibility is a strong selling point - it seems like we're (pretty much) past the era of mappers coming up with subterfuge to excuse the laziness of not implementing difficulty settings. You really should try any wads you're recommended on the easier skills before deciding they're too hard, a good number of wads actually do implement them, I speak from experience on this one!

 

 

Anyway, I know for a fact my first wad was Doomed 2 Die, I'm 99% sure my second one was Hellrun, and my 3rd was DoomCity.. (I'm pretty sure Bermuda and Area 51 were the 4th and 5th.. I found them all within one year and this was 20something years ago, so it's hard to say for sure. I kept finding other wads of course but this was my "first batch".)

 

I was a kid so I was just enthralled by any new maps or content at all, really - especially if there were some custom MIDIs, SFX and graphics. None of them are too hard by modern standards, and compared to most wads floating around on the net in the late 90s, they were all of a somewhat high quality. All were crucial in making me want to learn modding and mapping myself, and shortly after I started doing just that.

[Dexiaz]

4000 Monsters, Scientist 2, SJ Technoworld

[Worriedidiot]

For some reason my first pwads were:

1. Void
2. Crossing Acheron
3. Aliens TC

I played a lot of really old stuff, because when I started playing Doom I didn't know where to look, somehow stumbled upon this: https://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/1994.php and thought to myself "Wow, there's so much stuff in here. I can't wait to play it all". Thank god, I soon snapped back to reality and started to look for something more "modern"

[pcorf]

- Squadron 417

- Memento Mori 2

- Icarus Alien Vanguard

[Demion]

-Requiem

-Scythe

-Memento Mori

[ICID]

I know I started with Hell Revealed 1 and 2, can't remember what exactly came after that.

[Lizardcommando]

Disney Doom, Nintendo Doom and Doom City

[ReaperAA]

While I don't remember exactly, I do think that the twid wads (DTWiD and D2TWiD) and NRFTL were the first 3 wads that I played after playing all the iwads. This was around 2014-15.

 

Valiant was the first non-twid megawad that I played and the first wad to really wow me due to the combination of custom textures, music, new monster roster and much more challenging gameplay. Ever since then, I got hooked to the Doom community wads.

[DuckReconMajor]

LEGO Doom and 2 others I have no idea. I think I downloaded some ZDoom wad that had tons of scripting and other features that I thought was incredible. Not sure how people remember these things lol. I've run across old posts of mine mentioning playing wads I have no recollection of.

 

OP I'd like to congratulate whatever sadists gave you those wads to start and told you that you had to play on Ultra-Violence, it gave me a chuckle at least.

I generally take it 12 steps further than what Doomkid said and remind you of

• god mode
• SUPRWEP8.DEH
• other deh that help lessen the difficulty
• nomonsters
• resurrect when you die (or iddqd twice when almost dead), and best of all:
• SAVESCUM (or, even better, dsda-doom new rewind feature)

Difficulty is there for you in case you get bored. It's not a standard to prove you "played" something. Cheat your way through every wad just to look. It's not against the law (that I know of)

[HAK3180]

I only remember the first. It was Scythe. I went on idgames, sorted Doom 2 megawads by average rating, and picked one of the top ones that I thought sounded cool maybe.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Ultimate Torment and Torture was the first, I'd have to think about the others.

[Optimus]

Back in 1996, I had no internet, but a CD from a computer magazine had some WADs. I tried some random ones.

I don't remember which one was exactly the first, but there was some WADs by other Mark Klem, and the were all mk_something

I see now:

mkhalls

mkmines

mktowers

etc

 

Maybe mkhalls was the first I tried. I got confused or died, I was noob.

I had a 486 then. I remember I tried another WAD next that made the framerate to crawl to 2fps. I opened a door and someone did doomcute on the floor with a painting of a girls face or something.. I can't find this one.

 

[tatsu91]

Some Very bad one level Wads for Doom1 cannot recall the names even

[MFG38]

It's been 12 years, you expect me to remember their names?

 

I may have good memory, but it isn't that good.

[Yukarin]

The only one I can recall was Ultimate Simpsons Doom like 10 - 12 years ago

[KubaloBlackMT]

From what I can remember out of my own brain. It was Evil Unleashed (an episode 3 replacement wad), "Doom Mania" wad compilation, and probably Aliens TC.

[Doom_Dude]

23 minutes ago, Optimus said:

Back in 1996, I had no internet, but a CD from a computer magazine had some WADs.

 

Same sort of story. Back in 1995. Had no internet (didn't get online until 2000). I played wads from a Doom shovelware collection CD called The Ultimate Add On.

 

I honestly can't remember what exactly the first three maps I played 26 years ago.

 

I do remember playing Crossing Acheron and UAC Dead as the first maps that were good.

 

Also used to buy PC Gamer magazine every month to get the Doom, Quake and Duke maps since I didn't have internet.

 

Otherwise it's all a blur.

 

Didn't get to edit Doom until early 2000 when I bought The Doom Hacker's Guide + CD with DoomCAD on it.

 

 

 

[KeaganDunn]

15 months ago. I asked a friend about any custom maps out there and he gave me NUTS 3 as a joke. Then I found Sunlust, which I consider to be my first.

I think I downloaded 50 Shades of Graytall after that, I can't remember where I found it. According to my file history I also did a playthrough of Knee Deep in ZDoom at the request of the same friend afterwards.

 

F u n .

 

EDIT: Also according to my file history, I had Stardate 20x7 downloaded at around the same time as KDiZD. It took me a while to finish it on HNTR, though, and I have yet to play all the maps on UV.

I found Sunlust through a quick Google search and a Reddit post looking for high-quality Doom WADs.

[P41R47]

my first three were:

-infected area: really good puzzleish mapset with a good and funny story

-MBELCHER: outrageous looking and quite scary little mapset.

-and the third probably was Cleimos episode, Demonfear, or The Talosian Incident, probably this last one as i remember it having really creepy music.

And they all come from a shovelware CD with thousands of mapsets on it.
Including Icarus, Cleimos II, Mementos Moris, Alien Vendetta and more, but i played them some time later as my PC was old and for some reason, it swallowed CD and never returned them. So i learn to not use CD, and zip all and floopy all.
Good times, ha!

[BCHQ]

Alien Vendetta, yeears ago. Because I stumbled upon some article about how people make lots of cool maps for Doom and how Demonic Hordes has like a thousand monsters... I was interested. For some reason I started from MAP01 and played through everything until the Hordes, (probably) beat it... and didn't finish the rest. 3 years ago, I decided to try at pwads again. I guess I started with beating AV again, but I'm not sure.

 

To another summer child asking where to start, I'd recommend Eviternity... even if it sets the aesthetic standard right at the top.

[Midnight_00]

Deus Vult II, Phobos Anomaly Reborn and Knee Deep in ZDoom, if I'm remembering right. By the end of KDIZD I honestly hated it, and I haven't gone back since, so I don't know how I'd feel about it nowadays. I don't remember getting that far in DVII what with the high difficulty. To this day I've only completed the levels up to Eagle's Nest. I'd quite like to try and play all the way through at some point. Don't remember PAR that well, but I do know it's one of the first I played.

[Tango]

off the top of my head, my first three wads would have been:

 

- Chex Quest

- Batman Doom

- D2XGold

Edited August 18, 2021 by Tango

[Arrowhead]

I don't really remember the first three pwads I downloaded - the first pwads I ever played were all shovelware disc stuff off of D!Zone 1.

 

I remember Scythe being downloaded pretty early by my young self, as well as Demonfear - but other than that, I can't remember, its been too long. :)

[Skronkidonk]

Well the first wad I ever knew about was Alien Vendetta because I looked up "The hardest doom level ever" on youtube and Dark Dome popped up.

Soon after that I watched a Bigmacdavis playthrough on Scythe

Then 2 or 3 years later when I got back into doom I eventually discovered decino and saw his Hell revealed videos. I binged all of his videos overtime until he started playing Sunlust, and then I just knew I had to try it out.

 

But anyways my list goes:

Scythe

Alien Vendetta

Sunlust

 

Scythe was the first wad I ever completed and probably a couple months later I beat AV. I'm closing in on the completion of Sunlust since I just beat Maelstrom today.

I'm extremely excited to play more wads.

 

[Maya]

Doomsday of UAC

Plutonia 2

Memento Mori

Edited August 18, 2021 by Maya Amano

[Andromeda]

Eternal Doom, Hell Revealed and Scythe.

[GarrettChan]

Memento Mori 2 back in 1997

Then somehow I got Hell Revealed 2 in 200X

Can't remember anything after this because it stretches way too long.