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MajorRawne

Was PC Doom considered scary?

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lol the SC-55 in that recording isn't even playing the correct instrument. It's supposed to be a fretless bass according to the MIDI, not a slapped one. I've noticed quite a few of those old MP2s by Micheal Massay have that issue, at least with the Doom 2 recordings.

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Countdown to Death is a wonderful, dark track and I find it perfect for Gauntlet. In Gauntlet we are introduced to the Chaingunner and Demons and Spectres and a lot of the rusty metal wall textures. After clearing out the main area of the map (area with two opposing staircases and chaingunner pits) and scavenging all the weapons and ammo, I would pause and take in the sight of this area with the tourches against the brown cloud sky and listen to the music as I realize that things are going to get harder yet in DOOM II. I wonder what lies ahead.....

Into Sandy's City is by far my favorite DOOM II track (OPL version). I really feel like no matter how many hordes of monsters I take out, it will never end and this track really gives me a feeling of hopelessness. After clearing out the outside circular area with the two Mancubi and BFG-9000, I would stop and listen to the track while backed up in a corner looking at the sky and the corpses. It fits level 9 for me, as The Pit is a very ammo hungry level and there is not much ammo left if any on pistol start.

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I remember playing The Focus and hearing Between Levels for the first time, everytime I shot a monster I expected confetti and popcorn to come flying out of the monsters instead of blood. This music is so upbeat I feel it doesn't fit the Doom atmosphere at all. To this day I can't play the games with the original OST. Other songs sound like Salsa Dance music and Elevator music, no thanks. It's strange, The Focus is such a dark level, yet it has one of the most obnoxious tracks ever.

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Piper Maru said:

I remember playing The Focus and hearing Between Levels for the first time, everytime I shot a monster I expected confetti and popcorn to come flying out of the monsters instead of blood. This music is so upbeat I feel it doesn't fit the Doom atmosphere at all.

It's a remix of a Wolfenstein song, and from the title was originally intended as intermission music rather than level music.

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Gez said:

It's a remix of a Wolfenstein song

Is that a speculation or did Prince actually say this?

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It seems that the music of Doom is the most contentious (and interesting) aspect of the game.

In honour of those who've argued well for Bobby Prince, I'm going to listen to all of his music again and see if I can hear it with new ears.

In fairness though, there are two extremely powerful facts on Bobby Prince's side: the Classic Doom 3 music and 3DO Doom's soundtrack. I'd rate those versions of his music alongside Hodges'.

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After you get to know what the monsters look like and their ability's the game gets less scary in the sense of jump scares. But what really actually makes the game scary is the amounts of symbolism and the powerful soundtracks that make the game scary to this day.

On Phobos Anomaly once you kill the last Barron of hell and you see the room open up, you get a little scared but when you realize you are the only living thing left on Phobos and you realize your all alone in a huge deserted area it gets scarier along with the sound track a sign of evil. Then when the stairs rise up to the teleporter, you get an uneasy feeling but for some reason you climb the stairs anyways knowing it's a bad idea and right after in a matter of seconds you die and go to hell.

Also on E2M4 near the end, you see a bunch of faces all merged together behind bars. Could these faces have been the faces of the people who were on Deimos before?

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I've always found Halls Of The Damned to be the scariest of the commercial id maps. Great music and atmosphere that still scares me - provided you don't grab the night vision goggles.

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Doom's fright factor seems completely subjective. Some people were terrified of the game upon its release (including Tim Willits, which is why he emphasized a horror atmosphere when in charge of Doom 3), while others weren't affected at all, purely seeing it as an action game. This is yet another part of why it's so difficult to define exactly what Doom is, and why it's so tough to make a worthy sequel, as Doom is wildly different things to different people.

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Average said:

It was an incredibly immersive experience walking through the dark only to hear a monster hiss in surprise at the sight of you.

When I finally got a PC and played Doom with the soundtrack I actually found it completely jarring. That first map with the loud and abrasive Metallica rip off just didn't have the scare factor any more...

I had forgotten I´ve played Doom with no music until 2007 or so. It just ruined the atmosphere. Now I see it as an arcade, so I don't mind anymore. At my first couple of maps music was replaced by blanks. I can dig an upbeat metal soundtrack if you are exploding everything with a rocket launcher, but at first map with that pea shooter pistol?

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I never really saw the scariness myself, but apparently my mom played it back when it was new and it gave her nightmares. She wouldn't let me play it until recent years for that reason and that reason only.

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My first Doom experience was the PSX version, and we all know the ambience of that versions soundtrack sets a very dark creepy tone that many argue fits this type of game, me included.

But does that mean that the original is bad? And doesn't fit at all? Of course not, and not for just being the original but it fits the game in a different way.

I decided to play some Chocolate Ultimate Doom to take me back what made me love Doom in the first place, and with the capped fps and the old style sounding mus music this game can still get you quite spooked. And the more I play the more the music makes sense. Let me try to explain from my perspective, others may differ:

The music for he first episode, set on Phobos, I find is generally more upbeat with a general "military" feel. From a story point of view, the marine really hasn't figured out what's going on yet, it's treated more as an alien invasion with the music more action orientated, the moon is still physically unchanged by demonic forces until you get to the last map where the music is suddenly more gloomy and makes you feel hopeless for what's to come, that this goes deeper and the invasion is far from over.

Then we get to Deimos, and the music sets a different tone, E2M2 is a prime example, you really do feel alone and isolated whilst these moon bases have demonic architecture scattered around them as something evil is taking over, and the Tower of Babel music really does suit your first encounter with the Cyberdemon, The Shores of Hell soundtrack is more Horror/Gloomy.

And finally Inferno, The Marine at this point knows the deal, he is in Hell, and the music reflexes this, it's unsettling music but with a touch of all the above, action, horror (reused songs) all mixed into the Doomguys final push in the original Doom.

Sorry if this dragged on a bit, but hopefully you understand what I mean. the PC Version rocks in it's own way like the PSX Version rocks in another.

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Patch93 said:

lol the SC-55 in that recording isn't even playing the correct instrument. It's supposed to be a fretless bass according to the MIDI, not a slapped one. I've noticed quite a few of those old MP2s by Micheal Massay have that issue, at least with the Doom 2 recordings.


Aha.. It did strike me as odd when I heard some of these. Map27 is also a victim of this.

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PC Doom was disturbing and intense, but not scary. When I started playing it on PS1 and N64, SHIT GOT REAL. It was just wow. I have not played a game since that has frightened me like that.

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I played PSX Final Doom and then Doom 64, several years after mastering the PC versions. Both games had incredibly disturbing scores for the first map. I have yet to hear even a Hollywood film with as scary a soundtrack, except perhaps The Shining.

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RUSH said:

I've always found Halls Of The Damned to be the scariest of the commercial id maps. Great music and atmosphere that still scares me - provided you don't grab the night vision goggles.


THIS...

Halls of the damned still makes me jump from time to time.

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I keep forgetting to listen to the PC Doom music.

I went ghost hunting a couple of weeks ago with a girl from work and we were in the middle of the woods near an old folly (piece of architecture built to show off wealth) called Hoober Stand. There had been a really eerie, blood red sunset and now it was pitch black. Hannah had found the remains of a bonfire with burnt feathers in it.

For some reason I had a 4G connection, so I went onto YouTube and started playing the babies crying music from PSX Doom. As soon as she heard it, it was literally five seconds before she asked me to turn it off.

I obliged - and put the Deimos Anomaly track on, with the Barons singing "Tell Me Why". It took a few seconds of horrified confusion before she asked me to turn that off too.

Call me sadistic, but I don't think I'd have got that effect if I'd started playing Countdown to Death.

Oh and that's not me trying to start a new argument, just thought people would find it funny.

I think Hodges went too far with Doom 64 and again I dont like any of the tracks.

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I think the first game had more of a survival horror bend than doom II or final doom did. The later games seem more like action movies.

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I was pretty young when I first played Doom, but I remember the noise that freaked me out the most was that of scratching noises from imps/barons.

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I'd say the action/suspense ratio is better reflected in the original score.

PSX Doom's score being of the ambient genre is where basically all credit goes for it sounding scarier.

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As I've written earlier, elsewhere, I consider PC DooM to be alike an action flick with horror elements. PSX DooM would be the opposite. The PC version could still be frightening, though.

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I played Shareware at age 3 which I don't remember too clearly, but I got the full games around 6 or 7. The only things that scared me were the Barons hung up on the walls in E2 and onward (something strong enough to hang a baron? the thought of that freaked me out as a youngster) and of course the Doom Bunny at the very end of the game.

That TERRIFIED me beyond belief as a kid, I actually ran out of the room and asked my older brother to turn the PC off for me. I remember it clear as if it were yesterday.

The rest of the game was just mystifying, not really scary, even as a young kid. I grew up around games so the idea of shooting creepy yet cartoony stuff has been sealed in from the beginning - Doom just amped it to a whole new level of fun.

I played PSX doom when I was fairly young, maybe 12 or 13 but it was long enough for me to consider the new music "boring" and the colored lighting to be "pretty cool", but I'd already seen it in ZDoom maps by Kaiser at this point so I certainly wasn't blown away by it. Seemed hollow compared to the thrill of the PC version and so I never really thought of it again until recently with all the PSX TC hype.

EDIT: I suppose Doom 64 was the 'rival' version of PSX Doom. I played D64 a long time ago on emulators and thought it was okay, but it seemed bland once again because of the lack of real music, sand the level design was a little more Wolfensteinish. That said, my fiancee and I recently got an actual D64 cartridge and played it on a big, crisp CRT with booming sound - It was a really fun experience. I don't know why but LCD screens flat out ruin old games.)

Long-short: Yes, it was creepy, but we all must have known the really scary (and in retrospect, less fun) gaming material was on the way in the near future, both stuff by ID and other companies too.

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I remember playing the shareware version of Doom 1 at age 4 and I was fucking terrified. Especially on the level E1M4 in the claustrophobic area with the imps and pinky demons. By the time I played the full version of Doom, the decapitated bunny on a stalagmite made me freak out.

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Doomkid92 said:

...and of course the Doom Bunny at the very end of the game.

That TERRIFIED me beyond belief as a kid, I actually ran out of the room and asked my older brother to turn the PC off for me. I remember it clear as if it were yesterday.

I think I'm the only person here who thought the dead bunny was ridiculous and not funny... it was an almost unbelievably perfect face-palm moment. "They did WHAT to give the Doom Man motivation?"

CUT TO: Composite shot of Earth cities burning and demons running rampant through the streets.

DOOM MARINE (voiceover): "They killed thousands, maybe tens of thousands, before we could evacuate Earth. They destroyed our continents. They blasphemed all religions and tried to drag our world into their hell. And then... they KILLED... MY... RABBIT!

SCENE OF DOOM MARINE IN SILHOUETTE, RAISING HIS FIST TO A BURNING SKY.

DOOM MARINE (voiceover): "DAISY, NOOO!!!!"

FADES TO BLACK

TEXT ON SCREEN: "TO BE CONTINUED IN FINAL DOOM: REVENGE OF THE RABBIT"

DOOM MARINE (voiceover): "Those motherfuckers will wish they never heard of me. For God? For Mankind? No. For Daisy."

Oh and Doom Man is not called John Stalvern. That's such a ridiculous name I actually prefer Flynn Taggart. Who the hell thought Stalvern sounds like something tough or cool? It sounds like some 1980s action film name, because mullets and silly names were the shit back then.

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