Which was the dominant weapon in DM before the SSG came along?

Which weapon was the most used during the days before the Super Shotgun came into the Doom DM scene?

People probably went into the future to bring back Doom 2 so they never had to play without it. :Þ

On a serious note, I'd say the plasma rifle would be.

for the whole year that Doom II wasnt out people probably used the Plasma or RL. Actually, they probably used what they could grab in the levels, because I've never seen a decent Doom (or UDoom) DM Wad.

You've got to remember, DM-ing was just being invented. We'd never seen anything like it. Just grabbing any weapon and trying to kill the other guy was amazing. Doom was new, the RL was still as dangerous to the player as to the intended victim in the wrong hands. DM maps were usually made with monsters in them and most of the maps sucked. It was a whole different world.

I'm going to say plasma was probably the weapon of choice. But I did a lot of DM-ing on Episode1 especially E1M1 so the RL would be the choice there because the plasma wasn't available and that area by the nuke-pool is nice and open for using the RL.

A lot of the DM's that my dad got into back when Doom1 was the hottest thing out typically involved chainguns and shotguns. Though Dad was pretty handy with a rocket launcher. I never saw him use the plasma gun though.

In all the matches I was in back in those days, the chaingun and plasma rifle were the two most sought after weapons.