Calling all OGs

[savagegrant]

I was 15 when (shareware) Doom came out and it was at least 6 months later when our family got our first PC sometime during 1994. It was a 486SX-33 that cost about $5000 (after interest payments) and came with an amazing 2x 'multimedia' CD-ROM drive complete with an encyclopedia on just one disc, woo! lol. Anyway, it wasn't until three years later that I bought my own computer, which was an AMD K5 (can't remember the clock speed) and I soon got the Internet and an addiction to TF - I did never forgot my true love though (I dabbled in Doom mapping around this time). Anyway (2), I'd love to hear about other people's experiences of the period before Doom II came out, especially those who had the Internet in 1993 and were hyped for the first release of Doom.

[SOSU]

I wasn't even a thing before Doom 2 came out :D

[savagegrant]

Thanks for making me feel old, ya moll! ;P *giggles*

[Remilia Scarlet]

I was 10 when Doom came out, but I didn't own a computer that could play it until a few years after.  All of my information on it came from a friend I had in school.  I still vaguely remember going over to his house to see the game (partially because he also showed me Out of This World at the same time).

[savagegrant]

Hehe. I think it was a school friend who had a 286 with Wolfenstein 3D and Dune II that got me interested in PCs (I was previously an OOG with the original Nintendo and Commodore 64 lol).

[reflex17]

Let me see now... 

 

1.4mb demo for Raptor: Call of the Shadows took 24 hours to download on 48.8 or 56k modem, good times. When Wolfenstein 3d came out, kids at school talked about it, and I remember when my friend told me about the "M I L" code in grade 6, while we were waiting to go to class. I didn't go on BBS pages at all, I just played the games/demos my brother had downloaded, so for me, Doom came out of nowhere. I was about 12 or so, and I remember using the cheat codes a lot once we had discovered them. Once I found out you could make your own levels I was hooked for good, and didn't play the base game very much from then on. 

[GarrettChan]

I had my computer when I was 4 (1992). There was Wolf3D at the moment, and I got Doom 2 in 1995. The funny thing is, there wasn't Internet (at least ones you can use at your home) until 1998 in China, so I have no idea how people got these games into China.

 

BTW, 56k Modems are just fun back in the days :D

[seed]

1 hour ago, SOSU said:

I wasn't even a thing before Doom 2 came out :D

Me neither xdd, being born in '97 and got my first PC around 2002 which of course came with Doom II, Wolfenstein 3D, along dozens of other games.

 

Before that I was busy with my NES stuff.

[SOSU]

Just now, Agent6 said:

Me neither xdd, being born in '97 and got my first PC around 2002 which of course came with Doom II, Wolfenstein 3D, along dozens of other games.

 

Before that I was busy with my NES stuff.

I was born in 2002 C: though living in a second world country i grew up with retro games too so i know my stuff :D

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Idk I don't remember anything from when I was a toddler. 

[Bauul]

It must have been 1994 when I first came across Doom - a school-friend showed me this strange new game he'd got the shareware of.  Later that year, my Dad bought us our first PC to upgrade from the Commodore Amiga 1500 we had before: a Pentium P90.  It came with a CD of 250 shovelware games, but nestled among them was the Doom shareware.  I was so excited, I actually remember my Mum commenting to my Dad how happy I seemed.

 

Over Christmas we'd heard that Doom 2 had been released, so we went down to Electronic Boutique (what subsequently became Game in the UK) and my Dad bought it for me.  The version we got came on 5 floppies, and for some reason we just couldn't get them to install in sequence properly, and I remember feeling so disappointed.  So my Dad snuck back to the store during his lunch break the next day and pursued them to exchange it for the CD version.  

 

In hindsight, I should really thank my Dad for helping kickstart my Doom enjoyment!

[Impie]

1993 i was 12 years old, and nobody at my house understood how computers worked, so I mostly played console games. My horror gaming fix was Splatterhouse at the time. I was aware of Doom but I avoided it 'cos I was still a recovering Baptist.

 

I didn't actually play Doom 'til the SNES port came out ('94? '95?) and instantly fell in love with it 'cos it was like running around in the recurring nightmares I suffered at the time, right down to the unresponsive movement and attacks. Probably helped me face a lot of fears I had as a child. I think I got into Doom 2 around '96, and a lot of other FPS games all at once.

[Empyre]

My 28th birthday was in 1993, but I didn't find out about Doom until a year later when I happened upon shareware Doom on a CD with a bunch of stuff, because I didn't get Internet until 2001. I was thinking "I don't need chat rooms." I didn't know what I was missing.

 

Even after I got Internet, Doom was a single-player game for me until I stumbled upon coop in ZDaemon in 2006. I dusted off the maps I had made in the 90s and started improving them, and I am still improving and adding to them now.

[SOSU]

16 minutes ago, Empyre said:

My 28th birthday was in 1993,

You are 63?!?!?!?

[geo]

My first PC to run DOOM was a 486... that literally crashed and wouldn't restart after I restart it. Now that I'm older I assume it was some sort of scam from the guy that made the computer. Include a boot virus. It had a giant tape drive.

 

Before that we had a 286... several 286s.

 

Over time I had a friend who had a cousin that got obsolete military computers, a bunch of 386s that we'd test Doom on it. It ran slow.

[geo]

1 minute ago, SOSU said:

You are 63?!?!?!?

And you will be too if you play your cards right.

[Empyre]

3 minutes ago, SOSU said:

You are 63?!?!?!?

Nope. 24 years later, I am 52.

[SOSU]

Just now, Empyre said:

Nope. 24 years later, I am 52.

I seem to have had a brain fart there,still :O you are as old as my mom XD

[Reisal]

First experience was Doom in 1995 (was about 11-12 at the time) on a 386 SX 25Mhz but had to upgrade to 4 MB RAM. Ran a lot nicer on the 486 DX 100Mhz with 16MB RAM.

SNES Doom was my first non-shareware experience and that's where I grew to love that port's soundtrack.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Glaice

[wheresthebeef]

Original Doom came out on my 4th birthday. I remember playing it within a year or two of that release and loving the little armor room at the beginning of E1M1, specifically the mountains (after it took several tries to get up those narrow stairs)

I remember eventually renting SNES Doom and not having any idea how to get out of the first room of E1M1, so my brothers and me would just skip to Episodes 2 and 3.

Eventually after school I found out there was a door you could open and since my brothers werent home yet I ran to tell my home who couldn't care less but I was excited.

Years later one of my brothers bought Doom 2 for Mac. We had a Mac and a crappy PC, and to try and do multiplayer we had a Mac emulator on the PC and made that run Mac Doom (it ran as bad as you could imagine) but we did get coop working for that one night.

Later in the early 2000s my other brother bought the ultimate collection on PC and I finally did a full playthrough of Ultimate Doom.

[PizzaGuy]

I was 8 when Doom came out , I remember my brother raving about it as one of his friends had it on PC. I also recall it being shown on an amazing TV show we used have in the UK called Games Master. I didn't play it until 1997 on The PSX.