What were the first three PWADs you downloaded?

[Graf Zahl]

It was early 1995, no internet access when a colleague of mine connected to a BBS and we downloaded the first wads in their list:

 

aa21doom, aa22doom and Crossing Acheron.

 

Shovelware discs came later when we realized how restrictive many of these BBSs were back then.

 

 

Somwhow it makes me feel old when I see what mods some people here started with... :?
 

[rzh]

I don't remember precisely, because my first interaction with Doom was downloading a "collection" from Pirate Bay, more than 10 years ago. It had all the IWADs, and a bunch of PWADs, all bundled with ZDoom. The only 2 I can actually remember are Action Doom 2, which is also an IWAD, sort-of, and Mr. Smiley Head's Safari, which I only tried because it was named doom3.wad and I thought it was a demake of Doom 3 in Doom's engine. It was such a surreal experience playing it.

[Gibbon]

I got my pwads from floppy discs around 1995 at computer stores who downloaded them from BBSs and sold them.  Before that time I didn’t touch pwads as it took me about 2 years to beat Doom and Doom 2 part time (I was like 8).
 

No idea of the name, but one pwad made shotgunners heads explode when shot.

[ChopBlock223]

Long, long time ago, but I guess I'll say Ghostbusters Doom 2, then I think Titan (which I couldn't get to work at the time, because I was too dumb), and at some point Skulltag. Early to mid 2000s.

 

10 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

it makes me feel old when I see what mods some people here started with... :?

We're all different generations of Doom, I'm only slightly older than the game itself.

[DrRock]

The three, I think, were Chex Quest, ZPack and either Unloved or Urban Brawl.

[Astronomical]

Before I would argue I was really a member of the community here, I was intrested in seeing what people were doing with doom, so I had found Ancient Aliens because it was the first result when looking into custom wads (other than Eviternity), Maps of chaos as for a while it is one of the best wads to pair with a gameplay mod, and I think the original scythe.  Finished none of them until much later.  I stopped playing wads for a while, but Doomkid's video on online multiplayer got me interested again. 

 

Just for fun here are the wads I played after my interest was peaked again.  The original Rowdy Rudy, STAQ, and Eviternity.

[Boomdav]

Scythe,Doom the golden souls 1 and action doom

[mrthejoshmon]

I remember these well... Sort of, I might get the order mixed or might have played something else?

 

1: Nazi Auferstehung from DoomWadStation, naive and foolish young me had spent years ogling at the total conversions and maps on DoomWadStation for years on the school computer during lunch, "one day I'll get my own computer and then I'll play all of these!"... Fast forward to this and the first thing I download is 32 SLIDGE maps with stolen content, a flying start that kickstarted my love of garbage and appreciation of the finer sets.

 

2: Aliens TC, the second wad I played was a modified version of Aliens TC made to work on modern ports, it also came with an incredibly crunchy low quality PSX Doom music replacer as well haha. Aliens TC is an absolutely fantastic classic and I recommend it to literally everyone, that's not just nostalgia I played it recently and despite some jank it is still exceptional atmosphere (if you replace the music like I did originally). I distinctly remember staying up all night to play through and being late for school because of it.

 

3: Urban Slaughter, a fun novelty where you and a bunch of summon able soldiers hold off in the city streets against increasing waves of enemies, only one level however.

[Zulk RS]

Honestly, I jumped straight into PWADs by writing reviews for newstuff chronicles. I was a dumb teen at the time and thought I could review shit. How hard can it be right? Well crappy reviews aside, those were some of the first PWADs I played ever. I don't remember all their names or even all of them. I also don't remember which one was the "First" and which one was the "third".

 

The earliest ones I remember are (again, in no particular order):

 

1. A wad where you played as a Silver Surfer looking dude with brown hair. The wad had a set of maps but they weren't really "Good" by any metric. There was two custom weapons though. A Gauss gun which was basically a faster pistol that fired two bullets per shot and the "Missile Volley" or something that fired like 8 missiles at once and usually killed the user with splash damage. I want to say the wad was called Fields of Glory but I am not sure.

 

2. A wad that was set in like a haunted house. Lots of wooden textures and furniture and stuff. I hated it because I got lost and I was bad at ammo management so I ran out of ammo real quick. Looking back though, If I ever play that wad again, I'll probably really dig the aesthetic and I probably wouldn't have such a hard time with puzzles and monsters.

 

3. A ZDoom wad that had a lot of cool stuff like Colored Lighting, Lightning, Deep Water, 3D bridges etc. It was set in a black and dark tech base. I want to say it was a MAP30 replacement. It had TNT MAP04 music as custom music. It also had grey colored imps that had higher health and a final boss fight against a grey cyber demon. I believe they were done via ACS scripting instead of being wholly separate monsters. I remember one thing very clearly about that wad though. In the text file, the author said they made it mostly to practice with ACS and ZDoom stuff.

 

As for wads I actually remember the names of, that would be (Again in no particular order):

 

1. Flashback to Hell (The 15 Map megawad)
2. ZDoom Community Map Project Take II

3. Doom Raider

 

Just want to mention real quick that my first source port was Skulltag and I spent a lot of time in the Invasion maps and playing Deathmatch with bots. 

[rediska_3_14]

1. Scythe, no idea why I found it appealing. It was enjoyable except for THAT map.

2. TNT Revilution, because I wanted more TNT. Got my butt kicked, but overall experience was fun.

3. I don't remember the third one. It was 2 years ago and my memory is awful.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

6 hours ago, smeghammer said:

Do PC magazine coverdisks count? Fairly sure I played some very early WADs (really shit ones!) that were shoved onto coverdisks. Take your pick from any of maps on the shovelware ISOs you can find...

 

In terms of ones I can recall specifically playing (probably via finding them amongst the aforementioned dross...) are the early Doom 1 episodes set (1994) of Serenity/Eternity/Infinity, and Strain (Doom 2, 1997 - which is really good BTW) and a few years later, The Corrupt Priest (2001, D2 single level).

 

These may not have been the actual first three, but are some of my more memorable ones.

Yeah, Strain's Dehacked, sprites, music, and levels are all great. One of my favorites. The Serenity series is pretty cool too. It could use a midi pack though.

[esselfortium]

The first wads I played were mostly gotten from shovelware CDs, because I didn't know where else to get Doom wads in the mid/late 90s. Things like Simpsons Doom, Knee-Deep in the DEU, etc. I remember being intrigued and mystified by a TC called "Quest for Necronomicon" that I could never get to work properly on Mac since it required some DOS tools for wad merging.

 

Also, the tutorial wads that came with the map editor Hellmaker.

 

I remember also playing a bit of Realm of Chaos, which I think was included on some Mac magazine CD.

 

Once I started looking for wads online around 2001-2002, some of the first ones I remember checking out were Laz Rojas's WolfenDoom episodes, Batman Doom, and some levels sent to me by Kid Airbag, Submerge, and Darkhaven who had all volunteered to help out with an ill-conceived Doom Bible project I tried to start when I was 12 and not supposed to be posting on here.

[Kor]

I don't recall the first three I downloaded at all, and the first ones I played were off a D! Zone CD as my family had yet to have an Internet connection way back then (end of 1995).  But some early ones I downloaded were Icarus, the levels from the old Tab series, and Bloodlands.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Kor

[Drywtler]

Can't remember precisely which were the three first ones...

Spoiler

Grezzo Due counts as a pwad?

Back in 2015 when i started playing UDoom and Doom II, I got the IWADs and Sourceport from the rando that uploaded them to MEGA on a youtube video I've found. That sourceport, was Skulltag.

 

I fucking loved playing Invasion mode and wanted to try play those modes with Gameplay Mods but everything I downloaded didn't work and didn't understood why... The one that finally worked was Satan's Covenant which had some cool weapons. 

Some of the oldest PWADs I have saved on my portable drive (before i started managing them well with DoomLauncher) that I can remember playing for a bit are: Half-Life ZDoom (didn't knew about Paranoid), RUNBUDDY, Earth (and some more maps from the Cacoawards Top 100)...

I was more of a Half-Life player back then, so my selection of PWADs was all over the place.

[Arsinikk]

1. Void

2. Equinox

3. Doom Raider

[Ar_e_en]

Don't remember the 2nd or 3rd, but the 1st one I got was "Scythe 2"! Why not the first "Scythe"? Because I wanted something a bit different from normal DOOM at the time, but not too different. The first "Scythe" was a bit too much like normal DOOM, but 2 had new added monsters and different textures while still being somewhat conservative in its design.

[kwc]

I can't remember the other two, but 2006-7, Star Wars Doom was definitely the first I ever tried. I'm pretty sure I got sidetracked looking for new pwads, as a number of wads just weren't working, which resulted in me discovering that there was a Doom 2. So I ended up playing a lot of those levels.

It's all really strange, to tell you the truth. Obviously I had early fond memories of Doom, and Doom 3 had released only 3-4 years prior, but I somehow was completely ignorant of revenants, archviles, and mancubi, or anything to do with Doom 2. I think there as a period where I was barred from technology in the mid-90's to 00's. Tangent, sorry.

Edited March 27, 2022 by kwc

[staticsquidd]

If I can remember correctly, it was Going Down, FORTRESS.WAD (the map that inspired Team Fortress, of which I was a huge fan of at the time) and that one Seinfeld map. 

[Hitboi]

If I remember in order exactly, the first one was Erik Alm's Scythe, then Requiem, followed by either Hell Revealed 1 and 2 or Plutonia 2.

[Walter confetti]

Iirc

Darkening

Above and Below

and some other map i don't remember now

[forgettable pyromaniac]

- the Harris wads (i was looking up reviews for doom 2 when i found it, someone in one of the reviews mentioned it, looked it up).
- Going Down (from when I watched the mountain man play it)
- speed of doom (from when I heard the music, which bopped, and taught me that jimmymidis existed)

[Dusty_Rhodes]

7 hours ago, esselfortium said:

The first wads I played were mostly gotten from shovelware CDs, because I didn't know where else to get Doom wads in the mid/late 90s. Things like Simpsons Doom, Knee-Deep in the DEU, etc. I remember being intrigued and mystified by a TC called "Quest for Necronomicon" that I could never get to work properly on Mac since it required some DOS tools for wad merging.

 

Also, the tutorial wads that came with the map editor Hellmaker.

 

I remember also playing a bit of Realm of Chaos, which I think was included on some Mac magazine CD.

 

Once I started looking for wads online around 2001-2002, some of the first ones I remember checking out were Laz Rojas's WolfenDoom episodes, Batman Doom, and some levels sent to me by Kid Airbag, Submerge, and Darkhaven who had all volunteered to help out with an ill-conceived Doom Bible project I tried to start when I was 12 and not supposed to be posting on here.

Kind of unrelated, but I think the Doom Mac port sounds pretty cool. How did it run? I know some Mac ports like the Wolf 3D one were absolute nightmares for FPS. Also, the name of Quest for Necronomicon definitely intrigues me, I'll have to check it out. 

 

3 hours ago, staticsquidd said:

If I can remember correctly, it was Going Down, FORTRESS.WAD (the map that inspired Team Fortress, of which I was a huge fan of at the time) and that one Seinfeld map. 

Ha, FORTRESS was one of the first single - level wads I downloaded - I love the Team Fortress games, especially TF2, so when I heard it was a Doom wad that inspired 2Fort I had to check it out. Pretty interesting map, but I think conventional DM would be boring on it. More fun to run around in -nomonsters looking at the interesting rooms.

3 hours ago, Hitboi said:

If I remember in order exactly, the first one was Erik Alm's Scythe, then Requiem, followed by either Hell Revealed 1 and 2 or Plutonia 2.

OOoo good ones. Well, PL2 is a lot more fun than HR1 and 2 (sorry Yonatan and Jonas :c) but still, solid starts. I'm surprised I don't see Requiem recommended to newer doomers more often.

1 hour ago, Walter confetti said:

Iirc

Darkening

Above and Below

and some other map i don't remember now

Also good ones :D

[Dusty_Rhodes]

On 8/18/2021 at 10:23 AM, Doomkid said:

Ahhh, it's a shame you feel this way, but "modern megawads are too hard" is a sentiment I see all the time. The vast majority of my wads are not only on the easier side even on UV, but have thoroughly implemented difficulty levels.

 

I think some people are finally starting to remember that accessibility is a strong selling point - it seems like we're (pretty much) past the era of mappers coming up with subterfuge to excuse the laziness of not implementing difficulty settings. You really should try any wads you're recommended on the easier skills before deciding they're too hard, a good number of wads actually do implement them, I speak from experience on this one!

 

 

Anyway, I know for a fact my first wad was Doomed 2 Die, I'm 99% sure my second one was Hellrun, and my 3rd was DoomCity.. (I'm pretty sure Bermuda and Area 51 were the 4th and 5th.. I found them all within one year and this was 20something years ago, so it's hard to say for sure. I kept finding other wads of course but this was my "first batch".)

 

I was a kid so I was just enthralled by any new maps or content at all, really - especially if there were some custom MIDIs, SFX and graphics. None of them are too hard by modern standards, and compared to most wads floating around on the net in the late 90s, they were all of a somewhat high quality. All were crucial in making me want to learn modding and mapping myself, and shortly after I started doing just that.

Sorry for the late reply, but someone necro bumped this and it's seen a bit of activity so I think I should reply to this.

 

I've grown a lot in my time here as a player and mapper, so I disagree with a lot of what I said. There are a lot more difficult wads nowadays it seems, but my intent was not to use this post to bitch and moan - sorry if it came off like that heh.

After beating the CC series, a lot of the ASS sessions, the WayiDDid and Final Doom sequels wads, and many, many more, I find I have a pretty particular taste in mapping. Sadly, Sunder and Sunder - styled wads are not in that. Not really a difficulty thing (though they are really, really, hard), just a mismatch of taste. There's a lot of excellent modern wads that aren't too difficult. I'd like to publicly thank @Jaska for Lost Civilization, which is an absolute masterpiece that has helped me through some hard times recently. So that is a fantastic example of quality modern wads. From what I've seen, there's a lot of top quality levels being released here and I'm glad I gave so many wads a chance. It's expanded my tastes as a map author and a player.

 

Great point about difficulties as well. I usually play on UV and I can manage most levels, but if something's tough, I will definitely lower the skill.

 

Anyway, this thread has been a lot of fun. It's cool seeing what everyone else was brought up on.

[esselfortium]

1 hour ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

Kind of unrelated, but I think the Doom Mac port sounds pretty cool. How did it run? I know some Mac ports like the Wolf 3D one were absolute nightmares for FPS.

I don't remember having performance issues with it on my 68040, but I was a kid so I wasn't really taking notice of that kind of thing yet.

[Deleted Account]

UAC Labs

 

Endless Torture

 

Scythe

[horselessheadsman]

I can't remember the names of the first few wads I played, mostly they were the low-quality "wierd-shaped room(s) with ammo, weapons,

monsters, and the player start dumped into it".

They were new content though, and it didn't take much to grab my interest at that age.

The first wad I remember well was Heroes2 by Albert Dewey(1996). It was the first mega-wad I had ever seen, the mapping tricks and new sound

effects made it very distinctive. Decades later I can still recall the first level, with lost-souls rising out of solid ground and the giant gauntlet

of cyberdemons meant to be passed by triggering vodoo-dolls to tele-frag them.

[Hitboi]

11 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

Well, PL2 is a lot more fun than HR1 and 2 (sorry Yonatan and Jonas :c) but still, solid starts.

Yeah, true. I stopped playing HR1/2 right after the first few levels, I didn't knew they were going to be hard. I didn't really care about PL2 because I downloaded it before playing the first Plutonia. Requiem is the only one between of those that I 100% finished.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Hitboi

[RaRu Des2122]

Hell Revealed I & II, Eviternity.

[Tetzlaff]

I don't remember exactly because it was approximately 25 years ago, but among the first custom content I played were Obituary by The Innocent Crew and Mr. Smiley Head's Safari by Impact Software.

[Captain Ventris]

Chex Quest, Chex Quest 2, and that fake Chex Quest 3 back in 98 that stole resources from all over the place. After that I got into Doom proper and things become a blur of ZDoom and Skulltag maps. I only got into the old school stuff in the mid to late two thousands.