Doom GBA is 20 Years old. Any cool memories/stories DW?? I finished it in under 8 minutes this week. :)

[Alexo]

It has been a while since I have updated the console topic here with GBA science. But I felt it best to save for a general thread for the public, I'd love to hear some other folks tales about the game and what they liked about it.

Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of Doom for GBA! Released October 26th 2001.

What do you think of the game today? Any awesome memories or stories? People you played it with?

 

 

Lets hear some stories Doomworld? Do you remember when it was brand new? Anyone have it day one? :)

I had bought my copy used in 2003, and seldom played it soon after that. But it was my first intro to classic Doom, having seen Doom III prior. Eventually the XBLA and source ports consumed my time, and I left the GBA version like so many in the past. But my entry into the speedrunning world, and coming across this puzzle of a speedrun. Easily one of the most bizarre things in my life today.. lol.
 

Beating the full game in under 8 minutes was considered unobtainable a year ago at this time. New glitches described in June's thread, further give discussion into the aspects of the entire completion of the game today. But it was amazing to see, no matter how much I assumed it couldn't get any better- it just kept evolving. I can understand some look at it like opening a bag of crap after 20 years, and you find 1000$ sitting there in the bag... haha

I know some folks don't enjoy the game, some say it's the worst port. They never played the others, its definitely not the bottom of the barrel, from a outside perspective I wouldn't grade it above other viable, easy to purchase versions. But I've ran across so many people who look at it in quality terms. It was with them at a time in life they enjoyed, they had great times playing the game. Hell, it's 20 years later now, and I'm still playing stupid runs that I would have never believed 3 years ago! So its got an interesting aspect even up to today. Plenty of mods, and folks who hold it as a top 5 port in their eyes, it was the first "3-D on the go"!

When I began pushing myself to speedrun the game, there wasn't a wide resource, or a lot of players in the game with a speedrunning consideration. 20 minutes long was the best submitted time for the full game. It was seldom optimized in aspects, and it was a fun to gather information from the community, set new routes, test new theories, and accomplish a great time that sounds rediculous. Finding the quirks and bugs that others had seldom taken to task for optimization. All of the folks who say they've enjoyed seeing the progress and new finds- the legends of gaming who have just seen the progress in passing. The community that gave laughs at how broken it got- I thank you for the kindness. :)

I had fun messing around with it for the QA test/puzzle aspect better times demanded. Thus, why I'm the resident Game Boy person to those familiar on Doomworld. :)

I'll be running Nightmare(Ultra-Violence settings) on twitch in this evening leading into the anniversary. So we're going to see if it takes just under 20 years, or 20 years to the day... for a less then 10 minute nightmare speedrun to happen once.. 10:15 is the current time to beat, its very close!

Attempts for Nightmare in under 10 minutes, stream will be in about 19 hours on the schedule now. Hope the folks who enjoyed seeing the recent speedruns will come check out the runs, but likely setting this away again until next year sometime.

Until the next stupid broken glitch is found for episode 3. Which could be never...

But I never say never with this game.... Here's to 20 years! 

 

I just reached a milestone time for any% with 7:58, only the first sub 8 minute time yet!

 

Edited October 25, 2021 by Alexo

[Hawk of The Crystals]

The only real memory that I have of the port is when a friend hogged my gba for at least 20 minutes to play it. I wasn't even that much of doom fan back then, and yet I knew that I was being robbed of an enjoyable experience.

[Dimon12321]

I didn't like GBA in my childhood, because only SP versions were available in my country. I've never seen original GBAs with bigger screens, so Doom didn't impress me in the first place. It was a rare game, btw
In the adulthood, I revisited (or more like, substantially met) console Doom and it gave me the opposite impression. I got used to horrible graphics because I used to have a weak PC till the age of 17, but my only complaint is that GBA Doom looks even more pixelated then SNES Doom when I load them in emulators.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Dimon12321

[Doomkid]

I really wanted it, but I could never find it in stores that sold Gameboy cartridges. 7 years belated, I got it in 2009 and found it to be the 3rd best console port of Doom at the time, only behind PSX Doom and the version of Doom that comes with Doom3 for the original Xbox. I'd played the 32x, 3DO, SNES, Saturn and several other versions through emulators, and was surprised the tiny little GBA was blessed with a better port that actually "felt like Doom" compared to the other ones.

[leodoom85]

I have barely played that version of Doom on emulator because I haven't found the proper cartridge and it's rare as hell in here. And, it's not different than SNES for the controls, as far as I know.

 

I might try to play it again on emulator someday.

[Teo Slayer]

It was basically the 2nd Doom port I've tried. It brings me back in the days when I was new at Doom and I was looking for the perfect port to start playing Ultimate Doom. I tried SNES at first but it was a bit of trash. Later, I tried GBA which was better than SNES but the problems it had was the quality, the brightness and wrong placed music. GBA was more fun than SNES but I wasn't satisfied enough so I ended up sticking with DOSBox for some months until I move to ZDoom. Really fun memories

[D4NUK1]

My first time playing it was on a softmoded xbox that i brought in 2006. Its came with a GBAEmulators and many roms, one of them being DOOM.

I played a fair time, completing the two episodes, and inferno just only the first level if i remember. It was weird, because i played in a big TV for that time, so the game would be so much pixeleted, but it was fun in the end, so it's was great.

My second take was playing on a DS with a Cartridge from a Friend, and its was good, but to my feel in gameplay, the Doom 2 port of GBA was superior.

[SMG_Man]

I'd always stared at the id software products page with wonder, seeing the other Doom entries like Final Doom, Ultimate Doom, and even some of the ports like GBA Doom listed there. Back in those days, all we had was v1.666 of shareware doom and Doom 2 (and the Master/Maximum levels), so dreams of what could be in store in The Shores of Hell and Inferno and Final Doom danced through my head all the time.

 

The GBA SP was my first handheld console, and for a while pretty much all I had on it was a few Pokemon, Kirby, and Metroid games. Amazing games sure, but they weren't FPS games like Doom, so the thought of having it portably available kept me hyped. One day, my mom and older brother had gone to a GameStop, and they found Doom *and* Doom II for the GBA, and man, the magic of plugging in that cartridge and seeing the (mostly) familiar game come to life on my gameboy was great.

 

Oh right, besides being portable, there was one more important reason GBA Doom blew our minds: Back in the day, the computers we had could not support music in Doom/Doom II (we had no idea about source ports back then). I didn't even know there was supposed to be music in the game until the chiptune-esque tones came out of that gameboy, and holy shit it blew our minds. Looking back and revisiting the soundtracks for the GBA ports, the first one's soundtrack is kind of... a bad adaptation of the music in all honesty (almost to the point of being unrecognizable), but on the other hand GBA Doom II has some really good interpretations of the original soundtrack (my faves are probably the arrangements for Shawn's got the Shotgun and Waiting for Romero to Play). I still listen to it on occasion today.

[Agent Slacker]

I'm pretty sure the GBA port of DOOM 2 was my first time beating DOOM 2. For some reason I have this vivid memory of playing the Wolfenstein level in high school on my beat up SP. Much like SMG_Man, I'm quite fond of the GBA's renditions of the soundtrack, from the upbeat take on In the Dark (which sounds like something straight outta Seinfeld) to whatever they did with Into Sandy's City (my favorite version of that song ever) I'm a bit sad that Between Levels didn't make the cut, but replacing it with ISC was a decent compromise.
 

 

[Azuris]

Got it early this Year, because it is a kinda insane Port but looked playable on Videos.

It is a pretty nice Game and its Fun to play.

 

The turned down Levels are ok for a portable Version, the Lack of Color is sometimes a bit boring, but could be worse.

Green Blood? Not as noticable :P

 

The Differences compared to a proper modern Port make it even worth playing today, since you'll experience Doom a bit different and thats fun :)

 

Somehow, i never got as much into the Second one on the GBA, but i haven't found a original Modul, so my Experience is bound to the Mister and Emulation.

 

[A Nobody]

I played GBA Doom 2 with the uncensor patch that also fixed things.

[babyherc]

i tried running it in retroarch, i let you decided how that turned out

[MegaZzZeux]

I remember feeling amazing having a portable version of Doom... and not quite related to the original, but when Doom 2 came out for GBA I went to Hastings to buy it but they needed my brother who was 18+ to buy it for me even though it was clearly Rated T on the box. (I was 14 at the time)