Should Doom 64 Have its own category?

[Murdoch]

A big part of the problem is really, Doom 3 should never have been called Doom 3 in the first place. It's clearly a reboot of the first game, not a sequential followup, so calling it Doom 3 makes about as much sense as calling a game about sci-fi Frankensteinian aliens attacking Earth Quake II when the first Quake was about horrible demonic abominations from other dimensions, or calling Doom 2016 just Doom when it was clearly a followup from the first games and indeed Doom 64 itself, set in the life the same character but pulled into an alternate reality.

Conclusion: id sucks at naming their games.

 

So as much as I personally dislike Doom 64 I kinda sort of have to agree with the "it's the real Doom 3" crowd in the sense that in terms of the mainline canon, such as it is, it's the third game especially now it's been officially brought to the PC and legitimized in the lore with the new games. Assuming one considers Final Doom more standalone mission packs than major releases. It does not de-legitimize or take away from Doom 3 to say that, because I like that game too. I really do not think it is worth getting into fights over. Really, both points of view are correct.

 

10 hours ago, OpenRift said:

You forget that Doom 64 didn't sell nearly as well as the installments that came before, and it was that misconception that fueled it, because people who weren't following Doom 64 stuff just assumed it was another port. Not to mention the fact that by that time Quake was in the id software limelight.

 

Exactly. Technologically speaking, it really came out too late and on the wrong system in terms of potentially getting in front of the right audience. The Nintendo 64 did have some solid FPS entries, but it is not really the genre that comes to mind when one thinks of the N64.

 

7 hours ago, Doomkid said:

The name had nothing to do with Doom64's (unfortunately) low sales during its lifetime. Not a single soul alive at the time saw the game in a store/magazine/on a website, and assumed it was just a port. It clearly had new sprites, textures and levels.

 

I forget how I heard of it because I was a PC player almost exclusively but for occasionally dusting off my Master System by the time of release and never owned a Nintendo. I hired a console and the game to give it a go because the material I read showed how it was basically a new third Doom game with new levels and resources. That said, I would fully believe someone read or heard "Doom 64" at the time with no other information that they would just assume it was a port until shown otherwise.

[Redneckerz]

13 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Had it been called Doom Absolution as originally intended, it would have probably got more recognition and popularity as it would have not been seen as just another port.

Too bad we can't go back in time and leave business to The Strife Commando because my goodness the success id would have then!

 

13 hours ago, Doomkid said:

It runs on the exact same engine as D1, D2 and Final Doom, it features the exact same cast of enemies (albeit reduced) who function in the same way, and it's a licensed game from the mid 90s with DOOM right there in the title.

I always wondered if it really is the exact same renderer powering D64. Clearly it is enhanced all things considered.

 

If that version would have released on PC in 1997 (for MS-DOS) it likely would have required a graphics card, or it would be one of those weird DOS-accelerated shooters. D64 wouldn't be a game to run on a 486 though - A Pentium, more likely.

5 hours ago, Murdoch said:

A big part of the problem is really, Doom 3 should never have been called Doom 3 in the first place. It's clearly a reboot of the first game, not a sequential followup, so calling it Doom 3 makes about as much sense as calling a game about sci-fi Frankensteinian aliens attacking Earth Quake II when the first Quake was about horrible demonic abominations from other dimensions, or calling Doom 2016 just Doom when it was clearly a followup from the first games and indeed Doom 64 itself, set in the life the same character but pulled into an alternate reality.

If anything else, The as-released Doom 3 should be called Absolution instead, clearly signifying a spin-off.

5 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Technologically speaking, it really came out too late and on the wrong system in terms of potentially getting in front of the right audience. The Nintendo 64 did have some solid FPS entries, but it is not really the genre that comes to mind when one thinks of the N64.

A Doom 64 should have played to the system's strengths and be fully polygonal. Heck, as a cheat job, one could have just used the Quake 64 engine and be done with it. The fact both games came out within a year of eachother, yet Quake 64 looks like a perfect port tech wise tells me they could have used that to a lot better degree. And that game would be better suited for a different name.

 

[Rudolph]

5 hours ago, Murdoch said:

The Nintendo 64 did have some solid FPS entries, but it is not really the genre that comes to mind when one thinks of the N64.

That is funny, because GoldenEye 007 and to a lesser extent Perfect Dark were among the console's biggest draws for me.

[Mr Masker]

I like to imagine that if there was a Doom 64 Category the very first proper post would be, "Is this the Real Doom 3?! Honest thoughts only" and that post would get locked in like 2 days... for someone to then make another one 2 weeks later.

 

This isn't me making a point against the creation of the category I just found it funny.

[Alex S.]

Yes. Although it's still considered "Doom on a console" it really stands apart from the other console releases since it has completely original content rather than just being a re-implementation of another Doom game. Also, since this is a cross-platform release (not just a console game anymore), I will stand with it deserving its own category.

[BGreener]

I wouldn’t mind it having its own section, but I can understand the Big Doods in charge here keeping it with the other console ports.

Similarly, I wouldn’t be too opposed to the newer Dooms - 3, 2016, Eternal - all being consolidated to a single forum.

[Obsidian Plague]

Why wouldn't it be it's own category, anyway?

[Nine Inch Heels]

19 hours ago, OpenRift said:

You forget that Doom 64 didn't sell nearly as well as the installments that came before, and it was that misconception that fueled it, because people who weren't following Doom 64 stuff just assumed it was another port. Not to mention the fact that by that time Quake was in the id software limelight.

This seems more like an  assumption rather than something you would be able to back up with something tangible...

 

Why are you so damn sure that someone, who was interested in the franchise, who then also heard of an "N64 Doom", wouldn't even care to lift a damn finger to find out what this new game is or isn't..? One of the most influential franchises of its era is coming to console, and almost nobody saw anything about it in magazines, ads, etc... Everybody just thought it was gonna suck and didn't care any more, not even out of morbid curiosity...? I think the perspective you are entertaining is too tough to sell as fact, no matter how often you cycle back to the same arguments...

[SleepyVelvet]

I'm going off of fuzzy childhood memory, but I'm pretty sure I personally thought Doom 64 was just an N64 port of Doom/DoomII, which for me at the time all slurred together into one brand: Doom. 

 

"Game Title 64" was just what games on the N64 were called as far as I understood, despite most of them being brand new experiences.  There's also a PlayStation Doom, which I think is just the original levels?  I'm unsure about how much I saw of each of these, and if I saw magazine or box cover stuff of them, it would've been outclassed by any other of the N64 games that would've piqued my interest.

 

Edit: ~snip~.  Here was a side-by-side img of PlayStation Doom and Doom64 to drive the point home, but I don't know how to format them.  Also, damn, the "64" on the coverart is squashed flat and subdued so hard that it "clearly can't be a new game and is just 'Doom', right?".  Whatever.

 

Also p.s.  I guess this whole thing is tangential to the main topic.  I guess Doom 64 is close enough to original idtech 1 derived stuff.  It should go wherever people are posting Heretic/Hexen stuff, which I think is in Wads and Mods anyways.

 

p.p.s edit 2:  Wait, there's a subforum here called "Console Doom", wtf?!

Edited June 28, 2022 by NoisyVelvet

[Kinsie]

But seriously, folks, let's get down to the real questions:

 

Should Doom 2 have its own category?

[Redneckerz]

38 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

But seriously, folks, let's get down to the real questions:

 

Should Doom 2 have its own category?

I always thought Doom 2 was the Real Doom 3, what with original Doom and Ultimate Doom being two distinctive Doom versions.

 

 

[ludicrous_peridot]

Personally I have a very revisionist view that Doom 64 is an actual second game in the series, starting where PSX Doom has left off, the latter being the first game, and 2016 reboot offering the third and the fourth installments in the series through retconning (I didn't know people had thought about 64 being a prequel to 2016 until the Nightdive port). I don't dismiss or put down any of the other games in the franchise, but I am personally treating them as yet to be perfected (rushed) versions, less successful takes on/reboots, or (ahem) DLCs.

 

Again this is my personal view on the cannon, but what is this thread anyway, if not a battle of those expressing personal views and others presenting facts? I also have some reasoning behind this point of view, but would not want to bring it here yet, at the risk of further derailing AND that reasoning being devastated by facts wielders (@redneckers is already too close to this with the Legacy* remark!)

 

If I could try to reconcile the two parties though: much criticized tone of the opening statement aside, the author does not even refer to Doom 3 there! He's saying Doom III, see?

 

For the poll, I voted yes for the separate section, as browsing through both console Doom and other parts of the forum I was discovering something new about community working with Doom 64 material all the time. Moreover my impression has been this happened far more frequent for Doom 64 than, say, PSX Doom. This was also often in unlikely places like GZDoom mod discussion, hence I think that giving all the like-minded folks a home for their creative works would be a good idea for their work to be more clearly seen.

 

After reading very reasonable posts from @Doomkid, something else springed to my mind: these works don't come from nowhere. People are obviously discussing their creative intent, sharing the news, and posting playtesting results somewhere already. I always suspected an underground Discord server network existed for that that @Immorpher has been running... but that being true or not that "home" may actually be there already, so not sure if the hypothetic new section will actually be getting much content.

[Average]

I'd be really interested in a specific Doom 64 category.  Lumping the game in along with console releases is pretty out of date.  Apart from the fact that unofficial PC versions have been around for a really long time the official PC port has been out for years in its own right.

 

I feel like setting up a separate category would be worth a try.  If it turns out to be a 'ghost town' then it could just be merged back onto whatever category would best suit - no harm, no foul.

 

Concentrating the topic of a very specific game can only help focus discussion and development.  As it stands, there is a small but dedicated community around D64 but it lacks a home here on the biggest single hub of all things Doom.  It just seems a little unfair to this fantastic entry in the Doom canon.   

[Quasar]

One thing confusing me here is the constantly reoccuring assertion that Doom 64 "didn't sell well." Anybody got an actual citation for that? The devs' complaints about its reception were that it didn't review well due to reviewers dashing it on things like "dated" graphics and lack of multiplayer, and that 007 outperformed it. But I have never seen a single data point on actual sales figures, distribution numbers, total production run, etc. Unless you have this information you need to not speak about sales because it's never been some kind of foregone conclusion that Doom 64 didn't sell. It was being hyped up very heavily all the way from Dec '94 til its release in the game mags (some of which were not nearly so critical about it either). People were very much aware of it at the time; I remember hearing about it from inside the Doom community in 1997, but I was a broke HS student and didn't end up having enough money to buy it at the time.

[Shepardus]

14 minutes ago, Quasar said:

One thing confusing me here is the constantly reoccuring assertion that Doom 64 "didn't sell well." Anybody got an actual citation for that? The devs' complaints about its reception were that it didn't review well due to reviewers dashing it on things like "dated" graphics and lack of multiplayer, and that 007 outperformed it. But I have never seen a single data point on actual sales figures, distribution numbers, total production run, etc. Unless you have this information you need to not speak about sales because it's never been some kind of foregone conclusion that Doom 64 didn't sell. It was being hyped up very heavily all the way from Dec '94 til its release in the game mags (some of which were not nearly so critical about it either). People were very much aware of it at the time; I remember hearing about it from inside the Doom community in 1997, but I was a broke HS student and didn't end up having enough money to buy it at the time.

Indeed, according to this post from a dev it did "pretty well," and the cancellation of the sequel was more due to expectations that Quake 64 (also from Midway) would do better.

[roadworx]

2 hours ago, Quasar said:

One thing confusing me here is the constantly reoccuring assertion that Doom 64 "didn't sell well." Anybody got an actual citation for that? The devs' complaints about its reception were that it didn't review well due to reviewers dashing it on things like "dated" graphics and lack of multiplayer, and that 007 outperformed it. But I have never seen a single data point on actual sales figures, distribution numbers, total production run, etc. Unless you have this information you need to not speak about sales because it's never been some kind of foregone conclusion that Doom 64 didn't sell. It was being hyped up very heavily all the way from Dec '94 til its release in the game mags (some of which were not nearly so critical about it either). People were very much aware of it at the time; I remember hearing about it from inside the Doom community in 1997, but I was a broke HS student and didn't end up having enough money to buy it at the time.

there's absolutely none, and tbh, the amount of people i know who've only ever played the n64 game and have never even touched the originals tells me otherwise. that's just conjecture based on personal experience tho

[The Doommer]

It just doesn't feel like a brand new doom game ig?

Don't get me wrong I like it a lot.

But it's pretty much the same engine with not too much of an addition

Which is why Doom II is in the same category as Doom

[A Nobody]

On 6/27/2022 at 11:46 AM, Redneckerz said:

Too bad we can't go back in time and leave business to The Strife Commando because my goodness the success id would have then!

Oh think you can do any better?

[Murdoch]

On 7/3/2022 at 8:50 AM, The Doommer said:

It just doesn't feel like a brand new doom game ig?

Don't get me wrong I like it a lot.

But it's pretty much the same engine with not too much of an addition

Which is why Doom II is in the same category as Doom

 

It is literally a brand new game in every conceivable way bar the engine which actually was heavily modified. There is not a single resource in common with the original games. By your logic Quake 2 isn't a brand new game as it's only a refinement of the Quake engine with all new resources. 

[Gez]

If we're talking about forum categories here, please consider that Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Hacx, Chex Quest, and all the newfangled indie games that are being developed these days also don't get their own particular categories.

[Redneckerz]

5 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Oh think you can do any better?

Oh no, i don't have the ambition to decide retroactively if a different game title will land a bigger success. That ambition is yours and yours only.

[The Doommer]

5 hours ago, Murdoch said:

It is literally a brand new game in every conceivable way bar the engine which actually was heavily modified. There is not a single resource in common with the original games.

I mean Doom II is also another game to the series and it doesn't get a separate section.

 

Besides, what is new besides the 3D-looking sprites, new weapons and the animated sky?

[baja blast rd.]

The "does this deserve a new section by being an interesting/important topic?" angle is kind of weird because splits are really more about "quarantining" one section from another (like Wads and Mods and Wad Discussion separated to avoid each cluttering each). The theoretical ideal number of splits for a forum to have is zero (meaning everything goes on in one place) -- each extra sub has a passive reading and management cost -- but usually that would result in clutter, which is worse, so you split to a reasonable point. And that's the logic behind why subforums exist and are a good idea on somewhere like DW. But you don't just add one because a topic is cool and you think it "deserves" one. It's not about that sort of merit. 

 

As Kinsie's snark post hints at: Doom 2 surely "deserves" its own subforum -- if anything deserves a sub, it's that -- but that would be kind of silly, for obvious reasons. It'd be bad organization. 

 

Also whether something is logically distinct and sorting out taxonomy about whether D64 was 'truly' D3 or more like classic Doom doesn't seem relevant either. It matters if it's functionally distinct -- like whether they'd have substantially different readers and priorities that would clash.

 

That would be probably the strongest case yet.

 

A good test about new sub or not imo is if you split a sub for a year or something reasonable and let it play out, would you be able to condense it back and have that make sense. And if no, and provided the new sub should be on DW at all (for example you might not be able to remerge a Dildo subforum into Doom General), that's probably a good (present-day) split. 

 

That is a good way of sidestepping the problem of status quo bias. Comparing value today means you would be way less inclined to split subs unless it's dire, because as Doomkid correctly points out, the current thread volume doesn't really justify a split. But thinking in the future is like asking the inverted question "should we merge the the Doom 64 sub after a year of (projected) activity with the Console Doom sub?" and if the answer is 'wtf no that'd be kind of weird' then that might suggest a new sub split! 

So the "more people would post and there'd be a lot more threads" thing is probably the strongest case if that's correct. 

 

Idk, I have no horse in this race and I'm just commenting as a poster, but some arguments looked unusual to me so I felt like pointing that stuff out. 

[Ludi]

(Accidental double post)

[Ludi]

I'm really surprised more people aren't considering it a mainline installment. If you think it's just a console port, you've either not played the game or you're just objectively wrong.

 

Doom 64 absolutely deserves a category considering there's several map packs worth playing nowadays. C'mon mods, get on this bitch.

[LadyMistDragon]

I don't agree with that. Blame the Doom 64 community from not posting more of their maps here? lol. Although I can't see not giving it a separate category when it's as least as active as Doom 2016 if not Doom Eternal. Still doesn't make much sense though.

[Ludi]

3 minutes ago, LadyMistDragon said:

I don't agree with that. Blame the Doom 64 community from not posting more of their maps here? lol. Although I can't see not giving it a separate category when it's as least as active as Doom 2016 if not Doom Eternal. Still doesn't make much sense though.

 

If they have no place to post, then they won't. Simple as that, my friend

[LadyMistDragon]

1 minute ago, Sr_Ludicolo said:

 

If they have no place to post, then they won't. Simple as that, my friend

Or they just don't? Doom 64-related stuff usually amounts to the new versions of the different source ports and not much else. It's certainly not the worst idea but I think it's just like since the activity's not there, it doesn't make sense to make a new forum. It's a little bit ridiculous when you see neo-Doom activity isn't exactly that great, but making a new category just doesn't make much sense.

 

At the same time, I'm starting to realize that relegating it to the "Console Doom" forum makes absolutely no sense when it's an entry by itself and not just another port, regardless of what people contemporaneously may have thought. I just think making another forum that might get a thread or two every few weeks is not something that bears consideration. But I don't like that either.

[Ludi]

Doom 3 rarely gets new life, and yet it has a place. Granted, that's probably because this website is older than Doom 3, but still.

[Doomkid]

I feel like the point is being intentionally missed at this point, heh. The case is not and has never been that Doom 64 isn’t a “mainline” Doom game. The case is that literally any topic one could feasibly make about Doom64 has a perfectly adequate home in Doom General, Console Doom or Wads n Mods.

 

No one is “blaming” the Doom64 community for anything (literally what), the observation was just that Doom64-based threads are relatively uncommon to the point where they simply do not constitute enough forum traffic to warrant yet another section on a site that already probably has too many sections.

 

The only analogy I can think of is for the Mario series, since it’s one of the only other series I’m very familiar with: This is like if we ran a Mario forum with a “Classic Mario Games” section, and a “Newschool Mario Games” section, split by wether or not it was a 2D or 3D game. Then a bunch of people were like “where’s the dedicated Super Mario World section?”, as though it weren’t obviously already part of the “Classic Mario” family. Sure it’s a step up from Mario 1-3, the graphics and music are a bit nicer.. but it’s still so blatantly part of the “old batch” that trying to create one little specialised “forum island” for it is not only super disorganised, but pointless. The fact that some enemies behave/appear slightly differently and the music/texturing is all-new doesn’t change that.

 

Hell, at a glance, having 8 whole forums (not counting subforums!) dedicated to the Classic half of the Doom series is already more than enough. Why would one random entry in the series be given this preferential treatment? It only makes sense once every Classic Doom game is given their own dedicated section.. As things stand, Doom 1, 2, and Final Doom also don’t have their own sections.

 

If the amount of wads and mods/general threads about Doom64 start getting to the point where they’re clogging other sections of the forum with their sheer frequency, I feel like that would be a different story. I frankly don’t understand this push to divorce Doom64 from the other “Classic Doom” games though :( that just means it’s sort of floating off in no man’s land, because it sure as shit doesn’t belong in the “Newfangled Doom” family, nor does it belong in the “side games” family.

 

If a family has 4 kids and 3 of them love wearing bright blue polo shirts but one is totally emo, that doesn’t suddenly sever their genetic lineage, lol.