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Resigned_34

Hungarian Doom Novels

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Just found out there existed unofficial Hungarian doom books and their covers are pretty awesome (his gun even says IDKFA).

 

Doom_-_A_pokol_kapui.jpg

 

 

But I feel like the marketing guys over at EA may have drawn some inspiration.

 

 

Tiszt%C3%ADt%C3%B3t%C5%B1z.jpg

 

367151-battlefield-1-playstation-4-front

 

Though probably not...

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These were pretty fun books (in a brainless sci-fi pulp novel way). One day I'd like to write a detailed synopsis about them for the non-hungarian Doom fans, so they could too learn some the "beauties" the books offer.

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49 minutes ago, NoneeLlama said:

These were pretty fun books (in a brainless sci-fi pulp novel way). One day I'd like to write a detailed synopsis about them for the non-hungarian Doom fans, so they could too learn some the "beauties" the books offer.

 

I'm very interested.

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Hah, my buddy Robert creates the battlefield cover art. Pretty sure he doesn't need Hungarian Doom novels for inspiration.

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13 hours ago, NoneeLlama said:

These were pretty fun books (in a brainless sci-fi pulp novel way). One day I'd like to write a detailed synopsis about them for the non-hungarian Doom fans, so they could too learn some the "beauties" the books offer.

I second this. Would love to read them.

 

Also that pose isn't exactly a stand-out thing nobody else would think of if they didn't rip it off.

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18 hours ago, NoneeLlama said:

These were pretty fun books (in a brainless sci-fi pulp novel way). One day I'd like to write a detailed synopsis about them for the non-hungarian Doom fans, so they could too learn some the "beauties" the books offer.

Would be great for the wiki's purposes; I'm also personally interested :)

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I had no idea these existed. Unofficial? Were IP laws lax in Hungary, did id even know about it, and if they did, presumably they didn't really care.

 

The official novels are frankly trash. The first one reads like a cross between a fanfic with too many liberties taken, and the journal of a very unskilled player's experience playing the first game. The subsequent ones delved further into madness, eventually involving Mormons and evil bioengineering space aliens of all things.

 

Those Hungarian covers are bitchin'.

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8 hours ago, Blastfrog said:

Those Hungarian covers are bitchin'.

Seconded. I was struck by the quality of the cover art; for a collector, that alone might be worth the acquisition of trashy novels.

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The covers were made by Boros and Szikszai. They were making cover arts for fantasy and sci-fi stuff in Hungary for decades. Then they ended up at Blizzard doing paintings for the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game and Hearthstone. You can check out their work here:

http://boros-szikszai.com/

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11 hours ago, Blastfrog said:

I had no idea these existed. Unofficial? Were IP laws lax in Hungary, did id even know about it, and if they did, presumably they didn't really care.

The Eastern Bloc nations weren't a party to the Berne Copyright Convention AFAIK, so after the overthrow of communism it took quite a while (well into the 2000's in some cases) for copyright enforcement to catch up with other countries, especially when dealing with stuff from the West. That's why buying bootleg cassettes, CDs, and DVDs from street vendors in some of those countries wasn't at all unusual at the time.

 

It's unlikely to have been profitable, if even possible, for id Software to do anything about it at the time.

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On 12/1/2017 at 2:01 PM, Quasar said:

It's unlikely to have been profitable, if even possible, for id Software to do anything about it at the time.

I wouldn't be surprised if they really didn't care that much at all. Remember, id was a rather small company with relatively young employees that were making money hand over fist from a game (games if you include Doom 2) that was (were) designed around being able to use free, user-generated content.

 

And they were giving away the episode 1 as completely unfettered shareware. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a release of any game as shareware that wasn't just a limited trial.

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On 12/1/2017 at 9:01 PM, Quasar said:

The Eastern Bloc nations weren't a party to the Berne Copyright Convention AFAIK, so after the overthrow of communism it took quite a while (well into the 2000's in some cases) for copyright enforcement to catch up with other countries, especially when dealing with stuff from the West. That's why buying bootleg cassettes, CDs, and DVDs from street vendors in some of those countries wasn't at all unusual at the time.

 

It's unlikely to have been profitable, if even possible, for id Software to do anything about it at the time.

 

It's also why piracy is still a popular past time in countries from Eastern Europe.

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On 11/30/2017 at 3:04 AM, NoneeLlama said:

These were pretty fun books (in a brainless sci-fi pulp novel way). One day I'd like to write a detailed synopsis about them for the non-hungarian Doom fans, so they could too learn some the "beauties" the books offer.

Not to be a bother, but could you give us a basic gist of what happens in these books?

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On 2017. 12. 06. at 3:54 AM, TurrboAnklet said:

Not to be a bother, but could you give us a basic gist of what happens in these books?

In short, it has nothing to do with the original plot. The story revolves around a matter called The Mirror, wich is examined at a base on Mars, not far away from a prison. Unfortunatly, there was a prison outbreak led by a mad prophet called Fuentes (nicknamed "Bitchlips"), who uses the mirror to bring his crazy monster visions to life (the Doom monsters).

The Doom Guy of the books are actually two man: the consciousness of an american army general called A. A. Milne (I shit you not) put into the primitive, but über-tough Oleg Gontar.

Although from this it may seems like it has nothing to do with Doom, almost everything about Doom makes either an appearance or mention (the chapters are called .wad for instance, the computer map is described just as the automap in the game, etc.). Although the imps are described more lizard like, and the revenants wear jerseys for some really strange reason...

Edited by NoneeLlama

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5 minutes ago, NoneeLlama said:

Unfortunatly, there was a prison outbreak led by a mad prophet called Fuentes (nicknamed "Bitchlips"), who uses the mirror to bring his crazy monster visions to life (the Doom monsters).

 

7 minutes ago, NoneeLlama said:

The Doom Guy of the books are actually two men: the consciousness of an american army general called A. A. Milne (I shit you not) put into the primitive, but über-tough Oleg Gontar.

 

8 minutes ago, NoneeLlama said:

And the revenants wear jerseys for some really strange reason...

It's...

It's beautiful.

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42 minutes ago, NoneeLlama said:

In short, it has nothing to do with the original plot. The story revolves around a matter called The Mirror, wich is examined at a base on Mars, not far away from a prison. Unfortunatly, there was a prison outbreak led by a mad prophet called Fuentes (nicknamed "Bitchlips"), who uses the mirror to bring his crazy monster visions to life (the Doom monsters).

Awww.... He broke the mirror. Hello 7 years of rotten luck.

Quote


The Doom Guy of the books are actually two man: the consciousness of an american army general called A. A. Milne (I shit you not) put into the primitive, but über-tough Oleg Gontar.
 

Mmm... creative. I think I like it.

Quote

[...] and the revenants wear jerseys for some really strange reason...

Pretty silly, but still much better than them wearing boxer shorts.

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Is it just an unspoken rule that you can't write a Doom story without including Revenants with an absurd fashion sense? What's the deal with that? Even as a child I never saw it as anything but silver armor with two mounted rocket launchers, the thought of adults playing the game and genuinely thinking "ah yes, those skeletons are clearly wearing red undies and a football jersey" just boggles my mind.

 

From the brief synopsis these sound just as absurd as the 'official' Doom books, but I actually couldn't even get through the first English book and apparently that's the best one of the lot. It wasn't just like "oh that's a little silly", it slammed you in the face with sheer absurdity and was just impossible to get into, for me anyway.

 

The Doom movie cops a lot of flak, but at least it's not flat-out absurdist nonsensical horse shit. I can glean some Doomyness from it, it's got an overall good aesthetic, the story is basic but not 'horrible and cringeworthy' and most importantly, it doesn't overstay it's welcome. It's a cheesy but not terrible B-movie sci-fi action flick. "Mostly harmless" is an apt review. These books on the other hand... If the first one (and the various blips I've heard about the others) are anything to go by, it could have been way worse. Like, a whole fucking lot worse. Who knows though, maybe film adaptations of these bizarre books could have been in "so bad it's good" territory. As far as trying to read it went though, it was just bad.

 

I want to give an English translation of these Hungarian novels a proper chance and see which series of Doom books wins the absurdity contest.

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At least it sounds like it could potentially be really, really entertaining. An English translation would definitely be welcome. :)

 

The official novels are terrible, only one I tried to actually read was the first one, and it quickly became apparently that it was a bad fanfic tacked onto a bad walkthrough with missing detail and significant liberties taken. I couldn't finish it. The only other stuff I've read are excerpts and synopses of the latter three, and I must say I'm not impressed (and glad I didn't waste my time or money on them).

 

 

While the Doom movie probably could've been a lot better in most areas, it was much closer to what a purely narrative adaptation of Doom should be IMO.

 

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On 30.11.2017 at 3:21 AM, Jamins34 said:

Just found out there existed unofficial Hungarian doom books and their covers are pretty awesome (his gun even says IDKFA).

 

Doom_-_A_pokol_kapui.jpg

 

This looks like it was ripped from some Warhammer 40k artwork or something similar...

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I don't know if the plot synopsis was for both books or just one, but they don't sound so bad, more or less what you'd expect out of something written to take advantage of a craze for anything with the name Doom on it, but with an author who still wanted to have some pang of originality with what he was doing. If you're looking for deep introspection about life while knights play chess with Death, you'll likely be disappointed. That being said ...

 

On 12/7/2017 at 0:30 PM, NoneeLlama said:

 the consciousness of an american army general called A. A. Milne (I shit you not)

There's something awesome about that.

 

12 hours ago, Blastfrog said:

While the Doom movie probably could've been a lot better in most areas, it was much closer to what a purely narrative adaptation of Doom should be IMO.

 

The Doom movie had that first person sequence which reminded me very much of Doom 3, so there was that, and it was set on Mars. If you were going to the movies expecting to see demons from Hell, you were probably setting yourself up to be disappointed, because that sort of movie would probably never be made.

 

13 hours ago, Doomkid said:

From the brief synopsis these sound just as absurd as the 'official' Doom books, but I actually couldn't even get through the first English book and apparently that's the best one of the lot. It wasn't just like "oh that's a little silly", it slammed you in the face with sheer absurdity and was just impossible to get into, for me anyway.

 

1 hour ago, Liberation said:

The first 2 books were reasonable, I've read a lot worse.

I only read the first book (back in the 90's); I didn't even know there were another three until recently. I didn't think it was that bad. Will it be read in high school English classes in 100 years? No, but I thought it was entertaining enough (actually, probably more entertaining than some of the books I did read in English class). I don't remember a lot of it now, except that they referred to the Cyberdemon as a Steam Demon, the guy (whose name I forgot) described the imps as throwing flaming snot (I think I remember that), and when he and the girl (whose name I forgot) met in Deimos, they were both naked and covered in blood, but she blinked, so he didn't shoot her.

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@Pegleg Yeah that's about the jist of the first book. The first 2 were acceptable, even if the 2nd did go abit strange towards the end. Never bothered with the last 2 as according to the reviews they got very silly. 

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I have an Aliens vs Predator novel from the same author. It's from 1992-93. It has a sequel I haven't read, with old Dutch Schaefer on the cover. If I'm correct then the alias "Damien Forrestal" was used by two guys.

 

covers_292599.jpg

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Are there any versions of that first one without creases on the left side by chance?

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13 hours ago, Glaice said:

Are there any versions of that first one without creases on the left side by chance?

Feel free to prove me wrong, but from what little 'research' I've done, all the images of the cover I've found still have the creases and a lot of those are low res.

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