How you discovered the Doom series? / Your first time playing Doom?

[Doomkid]

My earliest memory is actually of Wolf3D, but it became Doom very soon after - My brother, my dad and myself all huddled around an old PC in awe of how amazing the game looked. My dad laughed at the "Can I play, daddy?" skill level, I'll never forget that..

On the topic of mis-seen Doom art, I still to this day see the pistol as a stupid face, and have since early childhood. I'm sure I'm not alone on that one (right?)

[capodecima]

My first memory is like from 1998 when i first played doom 2. I just remember Entryway and it was witch czech translate. Stuck in my memory forever. Good times. :D

[ASD]

That cyber pareidolia reminds me of the Warcraft 2 menu screen. It took me years to figure out the archer's face.

[lazygecko]

I remember being at a McDonald's birthday party around 1994. It was in a restauraunt downtown that was connected to their administrative headquarters so we got tour around the place. I managed to wander off from the group and entered into an empty office with a computer. And sure enough, that computer was running Doom.

[Da Werecat]

My mother took me to her work in mid-90s. They had a computer there, so she exposed me to Pac-Man to keep me busy. I managed to shut it down somehow, and started to explore the directory. Lost Vikings were quickly discovered, as well as a strange, very realistic game with a title comprised of 4 letters:



Unfortunately, I didn't figure out how to open doors, so my adventures were limited to looking out the windows, walking on raw meat and blowing up barrels with a pistol. Although I vaguely remember loading someone's savegame and being killed by a bunch of imps. To this day I can't figure out which level it was.

[baronofheck82]

The earliest memory I have of Doom, to the best of my recollection, is seeing a review of PSX Doom in a December '95 issue of GameFan - and it was very positive. Needless to say, I was intrigued.

[Mithran Denizen]

My earliest Doom memory is of my dad gushing about the game after he'd been playing it on the lab computers at his job. I had a hard time visualizing it very well at first. He eventually resorted to analogy with a game he'd introduced me to already, as I remember it:

"It's like Wolfenstein, but with monsters. And some of them are invisible! And you can wear armor! And you can go outside! And you know the biggest gun you can get in Wolfenstein? That's one of the first guns you get in Doom, and then they keep getting bigger!"

Never was the sci-fi setting mentioned in that conversation. For a while, I imagined the armor (and the environments) to be much more medieval-style, probably by mental reference to all the suits of plate armor that decorate Wolf 3D. My initial conception of the monsters had them looking lumbering, blobby, and a bit cartoonish, like colorful versions of the Freedoom baron replacement. He eventually invited me to come check out the game at work one day, to set me straight. I remember using cheat codes and spamming everything on E1M1 with the BFG. No sound or music.

I later had access to the registered Doom install media, manual, and a very thorough strategy guide before having access to a computer that could actually play the game. I lost the floppies and the box at some point, but I still have the manual and guide (the "Doom Battle Book") kicking around in my closet somewhere.

My first thorough gameplay experience was without any music and using only the PC speaker sound effects. That was Doom to me for several years, so those sounds are permanently carved into my memory now.

[Hoodie]

Seeing a Williams logo and then the words DOOM come out of fire.

I don't remember being scared, but I was tense as hell.

[Joshua Schäferhund]

I'm not sure, but I believe my earliest memory of Doom dates back to about 2002-2003 when I was in 2nd grade. Our next door neighbors gave us a CD with some DOS games on it. One of them happened to be the shareware version of Doom 1. I remember watching my older brother and his best friend at the time play up to about E1M3-E1M5-ish before our mom saw the game and it's violence and threw out the CD.

It wouldn't be until about some time in 2007 when I played the game again for the first time in years and then played it seriously and became a fan in 2008.

[TwinBeast]

The black/grey part under the Cyberdemon's crotch looks like a fist with a black glove on it. There's also a small imp face in Doomguy's butt on the right side. And an eye next to the D in the brown part of the red wall.

I think my earliest memory of Doom might be the blue floored corridor at the start of E1M7. Or the E1M1 start.

[scifista42]

Jimi said:

There's also a small imp face in Doomguy's butt on the right side.

Please, show where.

[purist]

Suicide pact with a demon and rocket launcher in the E1M4 maze shortly followed by a peer pressured death in the dark flashing arrow area of Waste Tunnels.

Both were display demos in department stores.

[TwinBeast]

This is what I saw in the titlepic...

[scifista42]

Jimi said:

This is what I saw in the titlepic...

Thanks. I would never figure out the imp's face, for me they're still just random green pixels on the original picture. I've seen the eye, and knew what did you mean the glove (although I couldn't force myself to see it as a glove).

[FireFish]

When i was 6 or 7, catching a glimpse of doom running on a pc when my dad and somebody he knew where playing it away from the kids in a (hobby) computer room.

[Koko Ricky]

I remember playing Doom in 1994 on a 386SX. If you're around 30, then you know that is a slow-as-fuck machine for a game like Doom. The computer lacked a sound card, so I spent the first year or so playing in low-res mode, windowed, with blinking sprites and PC speaker sounds.

[Tracer]

Now I can't under the duck...dammit.

[Blastfrog]

My earliest memory of Doom is when some techies moved in next door and the man of the house helped me build my first computer from scratch as an elementary school student. He told me there was a classic game he was absolutely obsessed with called "Doom" and I had heard people talk about it before him on Sonic Retro back when it was operated by the far more reasonable Simon Wai (I don't exactly like the current administration there because they're dicks to me).

It wasn't until 2006 that I actually got around to trying Doom for myself. I was using my mom's former Windows ME machine with SNES9x to play the SNES version. I had actually played Halo before that so that was my main frame of reference for FPS games. I thought Doom was primitive but a nice starting point for the genre. I "got" it once I played the PC version a couple months later after realizing the SNES version was hardly representative of the true experience.

Of course, I discovered ZDoom a year after (and that mob-like internet communities could be horrible a bit later) and learned not only more detailed history of FPS games and gaming in general, but also not to be a dick on the internet. Thanks, Doomworld, for making me mature, somehow. :P

Weird to think how central Doom was to me before I even started playing (the wrong version of) it.

[Fredrik]

My earliest memory of Doom is from one of the first times I ever used a computer. My mom was visiting a friend of hers, whose son, David, was something of a computer geek (and a few years older than me). I don't quite remember why I had been brought along, but anyway, I had to be entertained somehow, and while the moms were chatting away downstairs, David let me test the computer for a few minutes. I recall playing two games: Prince of Persia, and Doom. I actually remember my impression of level 1 of Prince of Persia quite well (it was bloody hard), but all I remember from that encounter with Doom, apart from absolutely being unable to play it in any meaningful sense, was that it had a chainsaw (David must have helped me with IDKFA).

I first played Doom properly much later (a couple of years?) when we had a computer at home, after discovering it on a shareware CD. Actually, that CD was a huge disappointment at first: it seemed to have pretty much every game ever made (117 of them), except Doom, which was the only PC game I actually really badly wanted to play. The "Shooter games" folder on that CD only had games like Nitemare 3D that were described as Doom-like but completely sucked. Presumably Doom was far too awesome to be included on such a shovelware collection. Indeed, I knew very well from reading computer magazines that Doom had to be awesome, and I even had that dim memory of trying it once. But there didn't seem to be a way to get to play it. Buying Doom was out of the question -- my parents would probably not have allowed it, and I didn't know any store that had it anyway.

Then one day I decided to look under "Windows games" on that CD (has to be boring stuff like Minesweeper, right?) where there turned out to be a game called "Doom 95". And sure enough, it was the real thing. That moment was like Christmas, or better, like discovering an actual treasure in an unexpected place :) My recollection of playing Doom that time is actually quite vivid, including strange details like the impression of the intense colors on the title and help screens...

[quackbal]

First memory for me was playing it at my Dads work with PC speaker! They then got a proper sound card and I remember being amazed. Didn't have enough memory on my computer at home so would go into my dads work just to play Doom on ITYTD!

Remember shaking in excitement when we finally got it working at home... but then I got stuck on E1M4 (c'mon I was 5) and wanted to get to E1M5 as I loved that map in the rolling demos...

Memories :)

[TheOrganGrinder]

Oddly enough my earliest memory of Doom is in fact Doom II, or more specifically, seeing a review of it on Gamesmaster. I don't remember much beyond some footage of a cacodemon and the reviewer concluding his review with "but in the end, it's just more Doom, and that's no bad thing" - I think the review was somewhere in the mid-to-high 80% range. I'd never heard of Doom before this, but I was intrigued.

[doomer713]

actually i found out about doom when researching about columbine. great game but sad of what eric and dylan did

[MFG38]

Visiting a friend in 2007 and playing Doom 3 on his computer.

[Jaxxoon R]

Sodaholic said:

...(I don't exactly like the current administration there because they're dicks to me)...

I personally hate Stealth's dickish protectiveness over his precious illegally-modified twenty-year-old game.

Anyways, I've told this story over two times now, but here goes:

When I first saw screenshots of Doom in a magazine, it was before I could even read.

So I somehow came to the conclusion it was a dungeon-crawler game about a woman from the future trapped in a medieval demonic labyrinth, and that you travelled from level to level on foot.

Edit: It may have had something to do with the fact that the mag cropped out the status bar and mugshot.

I didn't play Doom until the AVGN mentioned it in his 32X video, and then only briefly in ZSNES. Then a couple years later I got into Sonic Robo Blast 2 and soon saw this video of people loading the Iwad in Skulltag and running through the broken levels. The aesthetics and themes of the game intrigued me, so I did a little research into the different sourceports and then pirated Doom 2. Don't worry, I've since gotten all the classic games on Steam.

So I played the game for the longest time, making shitty myfirstwad test map abominations... and then years later I found Doomworld. I learned a lot about game design and making a good level from the numerous interviews with John Romero and usermade levels. I lurked for a few years and finally decided to make an account less than a year ago.

My username came from people (incorrectly) assuming Jackson was my full name (It's just Jack). The bizarre spelling comes from the goofy way people pronounced it when they greeted me and to also make sure that it would turn up in search results fairly consistently. The R comes in for the same reason (search engines) and it stands for whatever you want, personally I'd say it means "real". As in "the real jaxxoon". It's also a bit of a nod towards Chris R from The Room.

Pretty flippin' anal, I know.

[Blastfrog]

Drunken, angry and meaningless rambling incoming: if you don't care about Sonic Retro, don't bother yourself with reading it. I realize it's rather self-indulgent and must sound whiny as hell to outsiders, but I'm passionate enough to write a small wall of text about it, so whatever.

Jaxxoon R said:

I personally hate Stealth's dickish protectiveness over his precious illegally-modified twenty-year-old game.

Stealth is not an administrator there and the E02 engine is entirely his work. I wish he'd make it free software, but whatever, it's not directly taken from SEGA or anything like that. He has the right to do that and I respect it.

I was specifically talking about getting unfairly shit on whenever bringing up any kind of legit grievance. Two key examples:

1. Why is the site down so often? Because fuck me for asking. But oh, someone else asks equally politely and doesn't get shit on, how nice and consistent. And no, Scarred Sun, I don't have money to donate. If I did, your shitting on basic questions like this makes me a lot less inclined to want to donate. I get it, I'm a relic from the old Simon-era and haven't contributed much. No reason to treat me so poorly, so consistently. I'm really bitching right now, no doubt, but I swear I've generally been polite and would keep my trap shut until something seems to become a consistent user experience problem for many more people than just myself.

2. Why do you spam your own pages with unexpected, loud, and resource-intensive scripted sights and sounds almost as if you were trying to disrespect and annoy your users? Because fuck me for asking. (Cinossu even implemented a script on that page alone just to spite me) Putting scripts that play loud music and rotate the posts with flashing colors just because I brought up the fact that such was considered in poor tastes even 10 years ago is hardly the way to treat your visitors.

-----

Needless to say, I'm not very inclined to participate there anymore. The crowd is totally different than the one I had gotten used to in 2005*, the current admins are callous shitheads that arbitrarily play favorites**, and I've just kinda lost interest in Sonic in general. I only really care about the games I grew up with, the regulars seem far more invested in the meaningless continued cash-ins done by totally different teams.

If anyone from Retro is reading this, this is what I really think about the board. I don't outright hate it and there are cool individuals on there, but I hardly like it as a whole anymore. I'm just not gonna be as openly bitter about it on Retro itself.

*not that it's a bad thing, the quality of people at that time was far lower and has improved drastically since then. I just feel out of place because I basically don't even know anyone there and the culture is very different.

**Just because Simon adopted a "this is a dictatorship, like it or leave it" policy and you've continued it doesn't mean you have to be a dick to non-regulars that aren't afraid to bring up basic and pervasive grievances. His intention was more to dismiss those that felt entitled to anything, even though I'm bitching I don't feel entitled to shit. Obviously, all participation is at will between both parties. I don't have much will to visit anymore, so I don't. If they see this rant and choose to ban me for it, so be it, I won't miss the membership.

Ahh, ranting feels good every once in a while. Kinda off-topic, eh?

[Superluigieth1]

I found out when I was playing Wolf3D and someone mentioned to me that "This level (E1M1) is in Doom 2!" so I went to an abandonware site to try it out. I was amazed. But I eventually got a legal copy in Doom 3 BFG Edition.

[Blastfrog]

Superluigieth1 said:

But I eventually got a legal copy in Doom 3 BFG Edition.

I hope you patched your way back to the proper '90s 1.9 versions. The BFG edition IWADs were sloppily thrown together with various unfortunate liberties taken with some standard graphics (and even missing entire pieces of content in other cases).

[Linguica]

Sodaholic said:

blah blah

Is this inter forum drama? It sounds like inter forum drama.

[Superluigieth1]

Linguica said:

Is this inter forum drama? It sounds like inter forum drama.

oh christ

Sodaholic said:

blah halb

Yup.

[Jaxxoon R]

Sodaholic said:

...Stealth is not an administrator there and the E02 engine is entirely his work...

I know that. I was just saying what I personally hate to see on that site, I'm not actually a part of the community over there as diligently as I lurk.

And I wasn't talking about E02, I was talking about Megamix and the team going apeshit after it was leaked again. I could understand if it was a commercial product that could hurt the final game in some way, but it's not. But if you want to know what I think about E02:

"E02 is a general-purpose, script-driven game engine"

With one of the worst editing interfaces that I've ever seen. The scripting system is like a wall of macros and there's no actual 'HCGE Wiki' to speak of, just a giant HTML document. Given there's not really a community around the thing to maintain it, so I suppose it's somewhat understandable. But I'd say it's a pretty apparent problem when he has to train people how to use the damn thing, maybe so he can say "look, someone other than me can use this". Although to give him credit it's probably to get direct feedback on how to improve the engine.

"The editing interface had always, until now, been low-priority because more importance was placed on the performance and functionality of the engine- it only really mattered if it could be used at all. Had I placed stronger emphasis on the editing interface, HCGE wouldn't be as optimized and versatile as it currently is"

Except it doesn't matter how optimized and versatile an engine is if no one can use it efficiently enough to do anything with it, the interface is the most important part of any engine/tool. Do you think something like Knee-Deep-in-Zdoom would have been at all viable had it have to have been made in something with an interface like DEU?

His plan for Project HC is kind of strange too, wanting complete dedication to the project for everyone else involved only for himself to drop out a few months in and be like "kay have fun making my game, guys."

In effect, you're dropped into what looks like the source code for a Megadrive game halfway-ported halfway-emulated onto modern machines that only he can understand. And that's terrible.

I don't know what it is about Stealth, just some slight hubris in everything he does that irks me.