Doom (1993)

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Doom "As you walk through the main entrance of the base, you hear animal-like growls echoing throughout the distant corridors. They know you're here. There's no turning back now." — The game's manual Protagonist(s): Doomguy Genre(s): First-person shooter Platform(s): MS-DOS 32X Atari Jaguar Super Nintendo Entertainment System PlayStation 3DO Interactive Multiplayer Sega Saturn Acorn Archimedes Game Boy Advance Xbox Xbox 360 iOS PlayStation 3 Microsoft Windows (Doom95) Nintendo Switch Playstation 4 Xbox One Android Release: MS-DOS: NA: December 10, 1993 EU: December, 1993 Mac OS NA: November 4, 1994 Atari Jaguar NA: November 28, 1994 PC-98 JP: December 9, 1994 PlayStation NA: November 16, 1995 EU: December 1995 The Ultimate Doom: WW: April 30, 1995 RISC OS EU: 1998 Game Boy Advance NA: October 24, 2001 EU: November 16, 2001 Xbox 360 WW: September 27, 2006 iOS EU: October 30, 2009 NA: October 31, 2009 PlayStation 3 NA: November 20, 2012 Android, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One WW: July 26, 2019 Developer(s): id Software Publisher(s): GT Interactive Country: United States Series: Doom Successor: Doom II: Hell on Earth

Doom is a 1993 first-person shooter developed by id Software for MS-DOS. An updated version with an additional episode and more difficult levels titled The Ultimate Doom, was released in 1995 and sold at retail.

Plot

An unnamed space marine is shipped to Mars to act as security for the Union Aerospace Corporation. During an experiment involving teleportation, a device creates a portal to Hell and unleashes demons and evil forces on the Mars base, making Deimos disappear and causing the scientists and security guards to die horribly while the evil revives them as zombies. It's up to the Marine to fight off the demons and zombies before Earth becomes the next to fall.

Why It's Not Doomed

1. The premise was very unique at the time, where a space marine must fight off the evil forces of Hell.
2. Many weapons are available to the marine including a rocket launcher, a plasma rifle, a chainsaw, and the BFG9000.
3. The BFG9000 is the most powerful gun in the game and is the most iconic in the DOOM franchise right with the Super Shotgun. A single shot is enough to turn entire rooms of but the toughest monsters into steaming piles of gore. It uses 40 cells with every single blast note, but is quite slow to fire, with a long delay between the trigger being pulled and a projectile leaving the barrel. The initial plasma ball can deal up to 800 damage, and after it explodes the gun launches 40 hitscan rays in a cone-like pattern, for a total maximum of 4,280 damage and an average of 2,200.
4. Great graphics that featured detail that hadn't been seen in an FPS game at the time.
5. There are many enemy types including demons, zombie soldiers (who shoot guns), flaming skulls, and more.
6. The game has bosses that are amalgamations of cybernetics like the Cyberdemon and Spiderdemon.
7. The game has powerups that are hidden in each level.
   • Backpack: Two times the ammo capacity.
   • Berserk: It brings you back up to 100 health if you're anywhere below that, and boosts the power of your punches.
   • Invulnerability
   • Invisibility
   • Light amplification visor: Allows the player to see in dark rooms.
   • Radiation shielding suit: Protects from floor damage.
8. This game introduces the automap feature, meaning that there is now an overhead map that is drawn as the player explores. You can even find a computer map that will reveal unvisited areas, which is helpful when finding secrets. This automap feature would become a staple of FPS games for years to come.
9. The game is great for mods and has had a modding community that has been going strong since 1994.
10. It has been ported unofficially to numerous bizarre platforms; so many ports exist, including for esoteric devices such as calculators, thermostats, oscilloscopes, printers, a digital pregnancy stick, and even Doom itself.
11. The game introduced multiplayer deathmatch, which would become a staple of multiplayer FPS games to this day.
12. The PlayStation port is filled with new exclusive details, such as new ambient music, realistic gun sounds, new enemy sounds, new levels, much darker lighting for the atmosphere, Super Shotgun and Doom II enemies in the first Doom game levels and even includes Doom II.
13. The soundtrack is great and takes inspiration from heavy metal and hard rock songs from Metallica, AC/DC, Pantera, Slayer, etc.
    • The 3DO version (despite being a terrible port) has one of the best version of the soundtrack, which can be modded on PC.
14. The PC version has source ports that you can use to play Doom WADS, and you can even easily make your own graphics, sound levels, etc. practically making your own FPS games out of Doom.
15. The Atari Jaguar port is the closest of the console ports to the PC original, having a smooth frame rate, great visuals, and great textures, though it doesn't have any music during gameplay.
16. The ending was a perfect way to tease Doom II: Hell on Earth.

Bad Qualities

1. With the exception of the PlayStation and Atari Jaguar, all of the original console ports like the 32X, Sega Saturn, and SNES (although it's still a fairly decent version) versions suffer from a variety of issues including downgraded graphics, terrible AI behavior, and framerate issues, with the most infamous being the 3DO port. In addition, all of the console ports are missing varying amounts of levels and bosses.
   • The PlayStation version uses a password system instead of being able to save to a memory card.
   • Unlike the other console ports, the Atari Jaguar port does not have any music during gameplay.
2. Armor doesn't work as it does in future FPS games since your armor doesn't deplete completely before your health does, but instead absorbs a set percentage of hit point damage depending on its color: 33% for green armor and 50% for blue. Counterintuitively, this means collecting green armor within a certain range of values can actually make you more vulnerable.
3. There are only two bosses in the game: the Cyberdemon and the Spider Mastermind.

Reception

Doom received critical acclaim and was widely praised in the gaming press, broadly considered to be one of the most important and influential titles in gaming history. Though it did face controversy (especially from Christian groups) for extreme violence and heavy satanic imagery.

Doom is legendary for being of the earliest first-person shooters along with Wolfenstein 3D. It's also famous for, along with Mortal Kombat, helping to create the ESRB rating system and launch more mature video games. Since its creation, over 10 million copies of the franchise have been sold.

Trivia

1. GAG: The Impotent Mystery has been parodied into VROOM 666 in a laptop with the Doors 97 OS (a parody of Microsoft Windows 98) location.
2. The game was (and remains) a controversial product due to its high levels of violence, gore, and Satanic imagery. It has been repeatedly criticized by Christian organizations for its diabolic undertones, and prompted fears that virtual reality technology, then in its earliest forms, could be used to simulate extremely realistic killing; in 1994, this led to unsuccessful attempts by Washington state senator Phil Talmadge to introduce compulsory licensing of VR use. The game again made national headlines in 1999, when it was linked to the Columbine High School Massacre.
3. This game was famously ported to the Texas Instruments calculators, mainly the TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus

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