SNES Doom Limited Run Collector's Edition ANNOUNCED

[Roebloz]

A brand-new re-release of SNES Doom has just been announced! It's gonna feature the missing levels, as well as Episode 4, on top of better performance!

 

RETRO CONSOLE DOOM IS ALIVE AGAIN!!!!!

 

Can we get much cooler than that? (Well, I can, because now I can say I've worked on an official Doom game: I helped to port E4M9! MY NAME IS IN AN OFFICIAL DOOM CONSOLE PORT, BABY)

[VL2M STUDIO]

Good job!

[Impboy4]

I've also had a hand at this - I did E1M6 from the first episode.

[taufan99]

On top of DOOM + DOOM II, we also got this? Oh, I hope people can buy this for playing the ROM as well!

 

And congrats to everyone in our community involved in this. Proves that even console DOOM fans can also get their acknowledgement!

Edited August 8 by taufan99

[CacodemonTube]

I'm pleased to announce that I was part of the development team! It's such an honor to work at an official project of Id Software.

I worked on quite a bit of the missing levels. Which was so fun to do!

I'll see if I can get a video up in a few days explaining more about it...

[D4NUK1]

Wow, such cool experience,  but missing the experience of a fire-blue cartrige for the SNES.

[theretromike]

I'm also glad to say that I'm part of the development team too regarding this fantastic port.
To be honest, even after having found the hidden Easter Egg "Randy Linden ♥︎ Jodi Harvey" more than a decade ago, I would have never guessed that I would work on such a project.

Edited August 8 by theretromike

[Wavy]

1 hour ago, Roebloz said:

Well, I can, because now I can say I've worked on an official Doom game: I helped to port E4M9! MY NAME IS IN AN OFFICIAL DOOM CONSOLE PORT, BABY

Huge congrats!

 

And in general I'm really surprised this is getting rereleased at all

[Buckshot]

Got to play the prototype cartridge they had up on the 3rd floor and talk to the dev. Drilled him a bit on the if it's still using the Super FX chip and he confirmed it's using a improved SFX chip (believe he called it "sfx3"). The controller they had connected to the retro system running the cartridge was a custom SNES controller with rumble features, and reviewed all the individual rumble options for weapons and stuff that this version will support.

Additionally, still runs at the same resolution, but far smoother, framerate greatly increased and blood is now red instead of green. All sorts of cool new menus and improvements. Good stuff!

[Roebloz]

1 minute ago, Buckshot said:

Got to play the prototype cartridge they had up on the 3rd floor and talk to the dev. Drilled him a bit on the if it's still using the Super FX chip and he confirmed it's using a improved SFX chip (believe he called it "sfx3"). The controller they had connected to the retro system running the cartridge was a custom SNES controller with rumble features, and reviewed all the individual rumble options for weapons and stuff that this version will support.

Additionally, still runs at the same resolution, but far smoother, framerate greatly increased and blood is now red instead of green. All sorts of cool new menus and improvements. Good stuff!

Wasn't the blood always red? (Preeetty sure only GBA Doom had green blood) Also yeah, we are aware of the rumble controller and SuperFX 3 chip, though none of us in the porting team have gotten the chance to actually play the improved port, so congrats, you've beaten us to it.

How smooth is the framerate by the way? I'm very curious about that.

[Buckshot]

19 minutes ago, Roebloz said:

Wasn't the blood always red? (Preeetty sure only GBA Doom had green blood) Also yeah, we are aware of the rumble controller and SuperFX 3 chip, though none of us in the porting team have gotten the chance to actually play the improved port, so congrats, you've beaten us to it.

How smooth is the framerate by the way? I'm very curious about that.

Could be blood was always red and I've confused it with another Nintendo release. It's been a long (and I do mean long) time since I last played the original SNES version. And it ran like a slideshow. 

As I was standing there playing it, it no longer felt like i was playing a slideshow. And when I questioned the resolution and the framerate, the gentlemen did confirm it is still running at the original resolution but confirmed that it was running at a higher framerate. If I had to guess, i'd say the original SNES port felt like 10fps or less, and this release felt closer to 30fps. Turns and movement felt fluid as did combat. Mind you i only sampled E1M1.

 

[Perfect Bear]

I have a copy of SNES Doom (It was my introduction to the game) and can confirm the blood on sprites was red at least in the North American release. By 1995, Nintendo of America had eased up on their censorship policies a fair bit. Blood from bullet impacts was removed, but that's one of the many sacrifices made in the name of performance.

 

The blood in the Japanese version of Hexen's N64 port is green, though! Maybe that's what you meant, @Buckshot.

 

I'll relish the chance to see this new SNES port; getting Doom to run on the SNES at all was kind of a miracle.

[Buckshot]

4 minutes ago, Perfect Bear said:

I have a copy of SNES Doom (It was my introduction to the game) and can confirm the blood on sprites was red at least in the North American release. By 1995, Nintendo of America had eased up on their censorship policies a fair bit. Blood from bullet impacts was removed, but that's one of the many sacrifices made in the name of performance.

 

The blood in the Japanese version of Hexen's N64 port is green, though! Maybe that's what you meant, @Buckshot.

Could have been. I just remember green blood in some id game due to Nintendo's censoring at the time. Either my mind is slipping in my old age or this is a case of the Mandela effect playing out before us.

[taufan99]

3 minutes ago, Buckshot said:

Could have been. I just remember green blood in some id game due to Nintendo's censoring at the time. Either my mind is slipping in my old age or this is a case of the Mandela effect playing out before us.

DOOM and DOOM II for GBA?

[Perfect Bear]

I just did some digging on the GBA version of Doom 1 and 2. Yes, blood is green in those. Seems Nintendo was encouraging third parties to gun for the "T for Teen" rating when it came to making games for the Advance.

[Buckshot]

Very likely i was thinking about GBA versions.

With that said, the new & improved SNES version coming out will be a bump up from the prior. I did notice that ceiling/floor textures are still flat colors, but the framerate and movement alone felt more along the lines of the PSX version, and some of the new features seemed cool enough, so for SNES DOOM diehards, this is probably gonna be a surefire hit for those folks.

[Metal_Slayer]

And what is this SuperFX 3 exactly? An ASIC just like the original, an FPGA or a Microcontroller?

[Dark Pulse]

Having to keep my involvement in this a secret for over a year was a considerable effort, but 10 year-old me would've been floored to find out what he'd be doing 30 years later.

 

Hope you guys enjoy it all!

[heliumlamb]

3 hours ago, Metal_Slayer said:

And what is this SuperFX 3 exactly? An ASIC just like the original, an FPGA or a Microcontroller?

one thing's for certain: it can't be burned to CD-R

[taufan99]

Oh, I'm also curious about this; do we get to see the unused status bar face sprites in this new version?

 

[scalliano]

Congrats on the release guys - unfortunately this won't fit in my PAL SNES but it's cool all the same!

[LuciferSam86]

Congratulations for the release.

 

Those levels will be available in the future in the form of a patch to run in an emulator too?

[Dimon12321]

1 hour ago, LuciferSam86 said:

Congratulations for the release.

 

1 hour ago, scalliano said:

Congrats on the release guys

Hold on. It's not 2025 yet xD

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, LuciferSam86 said:

Those levels will be available in the future in the form of a patch to run in an emulator too?

Emulators will need to be updated to run it. The game is a 4 MB cart, so emulators that assume SuperFX tops out at 2 MB will literally not run it.

[JustAthel]

I'd like to think the recent release of the SNES Doom source code paved the way for this to be possible, and it's absolutely amazing to hear that it's being improved upon! I'd love to hook up a genuine SNES and see this booted up, really curious to see how the new controller works and what tricks they did to be able to pull this off.

 

Would we also be getting the source code sometime down the line? I'm sure many SNES geeks would love to gawk at the differences between the original release and this newer one

[taufan99]

3 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

Emulators will need to be updated to run it. The game is a 4 MB cart, so emulators that assume SuperFX tops out at 2 MB will literally not run it.

So no digital release then?

[Buckshot]

Let me run up to the third floor again, see if they let me record some video and get a bit more detail.

Will update shortly

 

 

EDIT: Video interview and playthrough now, will share in a second

Edited August 9 by Buckshot

[Roebloz]

3 hours ago, JustAthel said:

I'd like to think the recent release of the SNES Doom source code paved the way for this to be possible, and it's absolutely amazing to hear that it's being improved upon! I'd love to hook up a genuine SNES and see this booted up, really curious to see how the new controller works and what tricks they did to be able to pull this off.

 

Would we also be getting the source code sometime down the line? I'm sure many SNES geeks would love to gawk at the differences between the original release and this newer one

No, the source code release didn't matter at all; Randy had started the project about 2 years ago (With us being brought into it about a year ago) because remember: He HAS the complete source code, he just wasn't able to fully release it by himself, unlike the other guy since he didn't have any obligations.

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, taufan99 said:

So no digital release then?

I do not know Limited Run's release plans and have nothing to do with that, but given their whole business model, I'd be surprised if there's a digital release.

 

I'm sure the ROM will be dumped in no time at all though, but emulators and flashcarts will need to be updated to work with the new SuperFX3 and Rumble Controllers :)

[Buckshot]

They did confirm that framerate will increase by final release. Also, Episode 4 "Thy Flesh Consumed" is now included! WOOOO!!!!!


All here we go, some images:

 

https://imgur.com/a/hOHTGZp

 

And some playthrough and discussion:

 

Edited August 9 by Buckshot