Top 25 Cacoward Snubs

[Scuba Steve]

From 2004-2010, I was the primary gatekeeper to winning a Cacoward; if you had a problem with the winners, it was entirely my fault. Starting in 2011, other contributors were brought on to take the fall and defend why the map they selected was worthy of being a top 10 winner. Let's be blunt-I/we probably made a lot of mistakes. From the outright vitriol I took for my selection of KDiZD to the chaos caused by lilith's award, there was never a shortage of forum resentment on what SHOULD have won! Well... here we are, 15 years later, to rectify some of those mistakes! While I can't take back awards for 'undeserved' projects, we can present you with the 25 best wads that never won a Cacoward.

 

...in hindsight, I really kinda blew it with Deus Vult I, didn't I?

[elend]

Great list! Even more for me to play. ;_( 

 

Selecting a winner out of anything and not piss someone off is nigh impossible. Don‘t worry about that. That‘s where the community comes in with its well worded and totally not salty recommendations of more WADs to enjoy! 

[Spectre01]

Nice to see A.L.T. on that list! Still patiently hoping for a DWMC playthrough in the future.

[Capellan]

12 minutes ago, Spectre01 said:

Nice to see A.L.T. on that list! Still patiently hoping for a DWMC playthrough in the future.

 

Just keep voting for it.  Persistence pays off eventually :)

[Cynical]

So glad to see Plutonium Winds listed there.  Amazing wad, probably my favorite of recent years.

[Denim Destroyer]

Glad to see A.L.T get some apprecation, one of my favorite user levels ever.

[Scuba Steve]

Biggest snub: Tormentor667 not receiving "Creator of the Year" in 2007.

[Ribbiks]

nice to see some of my all-time favorites on the docket (totg, skepland, pw), as well as a proper understanding of ToD maps. interesting choices, indeed

[Linguica]

Biggest snub: Army of Darkness Doom (1996) for its excellent Map03 that was in no way terrible

[kmxexii]

3 minutes ago, Linguica said:

Biggest snub: Army of Darkness Doom (1996) for its excellent Map03 that was in no way terrible

 

[Linguica]

By the way, if you ever want to make a logo fast and don't give a shit if it's completely cheesy, cooltext.com is a revelation

[Not Jabba]

This list was really awesome to work on. There's been so much great content over the years that's missed recognition for one reason or another, and although these 25 wads are the tip of the iceberg of everything else that's been worth playing, it was great to be able to recognize the cream of the snub crop, including a lot of stuff that the people who worked on the list were really passionate about. @kmxexii was incredibly helpful with this (both as a classicist/hidden gem miner and as a past Cacoward judge), as were the others who wrote for it and helped with the selections.

 

One thing I really loved about this list is that we didn't try to limit it more than we wanted. It was initially proposed as a list of five, then became 10 by the time we actually started discussing selections...and then 15, and then 20, and in the end we said the hell with it, let's do 25. And we were able to include everything that we really wanted to include. It was pretty great after all the hard choices and cuts of the Cacowards and the 100 memorable maps list.

I hope you all find cool new favorites in here that you didn't know existed!

[Jimmy]

1 hour ago, Scuba Steve said:

Biggest snub: Tormentor667 not receiving "Creator of the Year" in 2007.

 

This was the one I was thinking of right as I clicked the thread, heh.

[RonLivingston]

I'am surprised scythe x is still not a map 1-32 megawad, still. it would've won a cacoward too

[Da Werecat]

City of the Damned: Apocalypse, fuck yes. A very uncharacteristic work for the author.

[pcorf]

Nice to see Demonized there as well. One of the first Boom compatible wads and a very underrated map set.

[Spie812]

Doomworld's 25 Years is back at it, making sure I have no free time for the next few months.

 

Another list that, for the most part, I completely agree with. From the maps I recognized, they all definitely deserved better and I can't really think of anything else that I'd want to put there.

[Nancsi]

And yet another thread when I shamefully advertise what I consider the best Doom map ever made:

and a crime that it didn't get a cacoward IMHO.

 

Another misses are Foursite (which is largely disliked on this board for whatever reason) and E1M4b (also disliked).

[Benjogami]

Thanks for the writeup @rdwpa :D

 

Toilet of the Gods is in very good company, I'm humbled. Your HNTR recommendation reminds me that one of my few regrets is that there isn't easier platforming for the lower difficulties, and that I didn't spend more time implementing the lower difficulties in general. I've learned a lot since then. :D

[Khorus]

Honored at the Warlock's Hearth getting a slot here, proud to be amongst some epic snubs!

[SiFi270]

While Demon Eclipse is still technically in progress under the name of Hell Forged, I was really sad not to see the final release of its first episode after it was separated from the rest of the project, or even the idgames release which kind of missed out on its award for the same reason as Scythe X and Sunder, on this list. But that's just me being an unpleasable crybaby. Hell Forged seems to be coming along well enough to have a chance at next year's Mordeth Award, and if there was even just a brief mention of one of the aforementioned earlier releases in its entry I think I'd be satisfied.

[yakfak]

great article. bunch of outstanding work here; ALT and Sacrament are my faves to play and explore; Sunder, ESP and Toilet of the Gods are my faves to watch top players play and explore <3

[Gothic]

Sacrment is such an amazing mapset, gotta love the big, lonely, post-apocalyptic landscapes,  but the music wasn't always fitting.

 

Also, I feel like Skulltag's invasion maps deserve a mention too.

[Dragonfly]

Great list. The standout one for me that I'm really pleased to see is @Batandy's GS1, actually!

 

[Paul977]

Cool list even if it miss Disturbia

[bioshockfan90]

really happy to see skepland up there, one of the first hard PWADs I played and although it kicked my ass tenfold I liked it enough to learn the maps and I ended up a lot better off at Doom for having beaten it. nice picks in the end though, this 25th anniversary just keeps giving!

Edited December 12, 2018 by bioshockfan90

[FrancisT218]

Great list (at least through 2016), some wads I'm really happy to see picked like NOVA 2, Warlock's Hearth, Skepland, Plutonium Winds, Jade Earth, and Zaero to pick what I'd probably consider my favorites in the list. Least favorite might be Sacrament, in part simply because having ALT on the list already handled giving BOS its recognition here. 

 

NOVA 2 is IMO the best megawad to not get a Caco (it is almost like there was a CC5 and it got missed!), even though in some ways ALT is even more impressive, but for gameplay, NOVA 2 wins.

 

Best 'still snubs'? Probably a Stormwalker wad (but only one, as to give as many authors as possible their shot) and Titan 2 (by Ixnatiful) come to my mind quickest, factoring in that I tend to first consider episodes and authors who NEVER got any award to-date to be the top candidates here.

 

 

[Nine Inch Heels]

Finally tod got something he deserved for so long. <3

 

Also seems rdwpa pulled a slight "dammit NIH" when doing the writeup for totg. :P

[Not Jabba]

1 hour ago, Paul977 said:

Cool list even if it miss Disturbia

 

One nice thing about having the two big lists was being able to divide our priorities a little bit and give the most deserving type of recognition to any given project. We intentionally made the distinction between No Chance as the best d-d map (missed Cacowards) and Disturbia as the most memorable (top 100 memorable maps).

[gaspe]

Before clicking on the list I already thought of ALT, and the list didn't disappoint. Glad that also Sacrament was included. Osiris and Invasion 2 also deserved it, overlooked works from the 90's. Scythe X and Sunder have a funny story for why they didn't made into the cacowards as people just waited for complete version that never came out. Never heard of Zaero, it looks nice by the description, going to play it soon.