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Platinum Shell

PC Doom vs. Doom 64: Which had creepier gore visuals?

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As I was tromping about in the Staging Area of DooM64, I was greatly intrigued and disturbed by the odd twitchy thing on the floor in the Demon ambush room. I started to compare some gore visuals from DooM 64 (more guts and limbs and such; similar to some gore in Brutal DooM) and PC DooM (mutilated bodies and corpses, including textures.)


In my personal opinion, I believe PC DooM had the most disturbing and creepy gore visuals; hanging bodies that swayed in the wind along with the fact that PSX DooM runs off of it's style, I believe it takes the cake.



What is your opinion on this?

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The Doom 64 definitely has gorier death animations, if not for the simple fact the colors are less saturated. Doom has more gory visuals, such as the burnt limbless twitching man, or the infamous AASHITTY, but the colors are almost comic book in style.

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Platinum Shell said:

I was greatly intrigued and disturbed by the odd twitchy thing on the floor in the Demon ambush room.

I always thought that was a beating heart if you're talking about what I think you're.

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PC Doom was plenty bloody, I don't recall any dudes splattered all over walls in Doom64

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I think Adrian Carmack's art was much more gripping for me than anything in Doom 64. The hanging limbs from chains, the decapitated heads on poles, the twitching impaled zombieman, the marble pillar with the beating heart, The ripped up Hell Baron's in E2M8. Doom 64 hardly has anything like that.

The amount of color in PC Doom really makes the blood and gory deaths come alive when you see them. Especially the cacodemon's organs gushing out from it's face and the eye popping out and rolling on the ground. That sprite alone has many ranges of colors which really portray what's happening.

Many of the sprites in Doom 64 show the same actions, but the monsters are often camouflaged to the color of the room via colored lighting, which means you hardly see the blood much at all for any of the monsters, only excepting the pinky demon which has a sick death animation, with that stream of blood from it's nose splashing down on it's corpse.

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40oz said:

Doom 64 hardly has anything like that.

Uh, yeah it does. Impaled zombieman being the only thing missing afaik.

You're right about the colour choices in PC Doom making the gore that much more noticeable though.

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DoomUK said:

Uh, yeah it does. Impaled zombieman being the only thing missing afaik.

You're right about the colour choices in PC Doom making the gore that much more noticeable though.


The head on a stick was one of the most ominous and creepy sprites i'd seen in a game at that time.

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I find several Doom 64 monsters to be more intimidating than their Doom 2 counterparts: Pain Elementals, Lost Souls, Mancubi, Imps, Demons, Arachnotrons. A few of these are deadlier than in Doom 2.

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40oz said:

I think Adrian Carmack's art was much more gripping for me than anything in Doom 64. The hanging limbs from chains, the decapitated heads on poles, the twitching impaled zombieman, the marble pillar with the beating heart, The ripped up Hell Baron's in E2M8. Doom 64 hardly has anything like that.

The amount of color in PC Doom really makes the blood and gory deaths come alive when you see them. Especially the cacodemon's organs gushing out from it's face and the eye popping out and rolling on the ground. That sprite alone has many ranges of colors which really portray what's happening.

Many of the sprites in Doom 64 show the same actions, but the monsters are often camouflaged to the color of the room via colored lighting, which means you hardly see the blood much at all for any of the monsters, only excepting the pinky demon which has a sick death animation, with that stream of blood from it's nose splashing down on it's corpse.


Artists of id did high quality stuff and designs.
D64 gfx, esp. monsters, look childish(except for Demon) and has way less detail... reminds me of "artwork" used in early PSX 3d intros.

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The larger sprites and higher resolution textures severely limited the amount of props in Doom 64, so it definitely is less gory in that sense. Doom/Doom 2 has some really grotesque sacrificial images and fleshy/bleeding wall textures that you see very little of in Doom 64. However, many of these death animations in Doom 64 are a bit more explicit, although the Arachnotron's is painfully bland and the Mancubus leaves a bit to be desired. Overall, I think Doom 64 looks creepier overall, but PC Doom has more gore.

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GoatLord said:

Doom 64 looks creepier overall, but PC Doom has more gore.

I think Doom 64 focused on satanic stars, faces, and upside crosses while PC Doom focused on gore and impaled bodys.

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_bruce_ said:

Artists of id did high quality stuff and designs.
D64 gfx, esp. monsters, look childish(except for Demon) and has way less detail... reminds me of "artwork" used in early PSX 3d intros.

Put side-to-side with no prior knowledge of which came first, almost everyone would say the PC visuals were the childish ones.

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Doom had more of the action and brighter visuals while Doom 64 had more of the atmosphere, specially the lighting, textures and music atop the darker gore and obstacles.

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Dragonsbrethren said:

Put side-to-side with no prior knowledge of which came first, almost everyone would say the PC visuals were the childish ones.


Depends on if you've got an eye for well done artwork.

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_bruce_ said:

Artists of id did high quality stuff and designs.
D64 gfx, esp. monsters, look childish(except for Demon) and has way less detail... reminds me of "artwork" used in early PSX 3d intros.


I agree, Doom64's creatures just smack of cheap computer graphics, the kind you'd always see in lame intro movies of games during that era. Some are just trying to hard to look evil or scary and it falls flat. They do fit the feel of the game, but I certainly don't enjoy shooting them as much.

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Use3D said:

I agree, Doom64's creatures just smack of cheap computer graphics, the kind you'd always see in lame intro movies of games during that era. Some are just trying to hard to look evil or scary and it falls flat. They do fit the feel of the game, but I certainly don't enjoy shooting them as much.



let's see them side by side.

here are the doom objects:



(larger version here

and here the D64 objects:

(as posted above by DoomUK)



the D64 objects have imo a darker, but simpler look, perhaps what some posters describe as childish. the darker medikits and ammo packs are reminiscent of quake's art.

i don't see them being that different, except for the more vibrant colors in doom. the real difference for me are the monsters, they're indeed less threatening and less satisfying to shoot, except for the pinky. the imp for example looks just lifeless and badly animated compared to his hissing, spiky cousin, the arachnotron smells like plain 3d modeling and the cyber has got pretty thin.

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buttspit said:

I wouldn't mind being able to smell things in a video game.


Given how ubiquitous sewers are in practically all genres of video games, I think I'd mind.

To say nothing of the charnel houses and heaps of decaying corpses horror-themed games love.

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DoomUK said:

Uh, yeah it does. Impaled zombieman being the only thing missing afaik.

You're right about the colour choices in PC Doom making the gore that much more noticeable though.


The cage reminds me of Wolf3D's gore cages.

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Pirx said:

let's see them side by side.

here are the doom objects:


The item objects are mostly well done - they also have a different feel to them... more african voodoo - especially the elongated keys exhibit this. Pretty cool because it feels they're cursed by agyptian gods.

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Yeah I think there's pretty clear bias to say one is more detailed or simpler than the other. They're both pretty detailed. The barrels are almost identical except for a bit of color difference and it's higher res in D64. Look at the armor in D64, the muscles and the shadowing. The detail in the faces on the spheres. The keys, the trees, the head on the stick to the right of the gargoyles. Everything has alot of detail in both versions. I think the low quality of the image in original doom, the pixelation, gives people the impression there's more detail. The graphics in D64 are smoother and look "simpler" but there's not much real difference.

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_bruce_ said:

The item objects are mostly well done - they also have a different feel to them... more african voodoo - especially the elongated keys exhibit this. Pretty cool because it feels they're cursed by agyptian gods.


thanks for making this clear. i had this feeling of having seen this art style somewhere, i just couldn't pinpoint it. the elongated heads look indeed like some african sculptures (i found some pretty scary looking real-world examples), also the demon heads on pedestals in the right corner of the sheet.

the perceived better details of the pc version could come from the more vibrant colors, as D64 tends to be a bit dark and overridden by the game's lighting. the weapons aren't that iconic like in the pc version, they look all like some generic scifi boomstick to me.

the spheres are very similar, i remember how intrigued i was by them when i was new to the game, i thought these things were somehow alive, and after seeing the "soul walls" with the changing faces i was sure these powerups contained some spirit that gave me his powers when i freed him ;)

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Pirx, you said that the archnotron "smells like simple 3D modeling," but all of the enemies are 3D models! Do you just mean that the arachnotron looks more obvious? Personally, I've always liked the models, even if most of the death animations leave a bit to be desired.

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In doom64, perhaps the scariest sprite/texture was the diablo face that grimaced at you every few seconds. I always tried to hide away from them. Itd be neat to set up a trap with them.

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