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

[Enjay]

Being a Wolf3D player at the time, I was following id related news anyway and became aware pretty early on that they were making "something".

I think I saw the pre-release screenshots via the CompuServe action games forum.

I remember seeing a full page advert for it in a magazine. It featured the Doom box art and the headline "Prepare to meet (or maybe beat) thy Doom.

My friend managed to snag a copy of the shareware disks from a magazine cover before I did and I went around to his house to play it for the first time.

[Torn]

Back in 1996 my parents got their first computer, included with a few games on the harddisc. Those were Duke Nukem 3d (lagged like hell, even with low details. The computer was a 486) and Doom 3: Mr. Smiley Head Safari. This is an illegal "hacked" (edited) version of doom 1 (v1,2 I think) with various things. It is basicly idgames archive of 94/95.

Later I got maximum doom (that box with Ultimate Doom, Doom 2 and a couple of 1000 levels made by amateur mappers). I finished both games with the keyboard. :)

[leileilol]

1.0. December '93. A bbs, watching that qmodem file transfer progress bar slowly creeping along through a slow external modem. How I found about it was through a little flyer of 'hot' files on that BBS. Doom was on the cover (screenshot of the baron of hell, similar choreography of:
)

I liked what I saw and it was ordered by mail. Other than Jetpack, this is the only time I instantly registered my shareware.

[purist]

I was a little late into it. I saw it on a videogame show called Gamesmaster - it was a gore special and it featured Doom as well as Mortal Kombat and other gory games.

I bought Doom I on my Jaguar having played it in Alders on a display machine - E1M4 I think. My friend had Doom II on his PC and we played and edited it with WADED (read: replaced things on IWAD maps).

I forgot about it for a while then came accross this website after getting an urge to edit a FPS.

Doom is probably my all time favourite game and, other than Football Manager and ISS, is the only game I really enjoy playing anymore.

That said my interest in Doom peaks and troughs. I went through a phase of mapping for two Megawads but haven't touched either for months.

[Super Jamie]

Torn said:

Doom 3: Mr. Smiley Head Safari

Hahaha, that has to be one of the worst WADs I have ever seen. The cartoon hand holding the pistol "gangster style" is so hilariously lame. Though, beating Barney up with a baseball bat does seem pretty satisfying.

[AnarchicQ]

A lot of these posts start with "My dad...."

My dad worked in computers, and as such, we usually had some of the first copies of games distributed via shareware and stuff, and I already liked Wolfenstein. (Except shooting the dogs, little 12 year old me hated do that.)

So he brought home this game "like Wolfenstein, by the same people" and it was so original that we adored it.

We showed it to all my neighbours, they would come over and play it. Once, to keep the sun's glare off the computer screen, we put a sheet over the monitor and ourselves, so we were cocooned within DooM!

A neighbour bought the full game and we pirated it from him. The first time I saw Cacodemons I screamed, ran, killed them, and then ran out of the room.

Unfortunately my dad got sick with Cancer, and when he told his father (who was kind of an ass), he sent dad money. So dad upgraded his computer with a new soundcard, monitor, keyboard and speakers. I came home to watch him testing all this stuff out on DooM, full volume.

I was waiting like crazy for DooM II when it was due to come out. and our second to last Christmas we had with him, he bought me DooM II and the Cheat book.

When DooM III came out, I dragged my then 5 year old niece though the mall to buy it.

So DooM is like a family thing to me.

[Torn]

Super Jamie said:

Hahaha, that has to be one of the worst WADs I have ever seen. The cartoon hand holding the pistol "gangster style" is so hilariously lame. Though, beating Barney up with a baseball bat does seem pretty satisfying.

You know the most sad thing? That "wad" has so many memories for me, too bad when I play it now I think it sucks big time. But for a 13-year old who used to play the NES and stuff like that, it was cool. :P

There is a couple of levels I remember best, E1M1 which has got the infamous ship. Some level in E3 who has some kind of maze system, I forgot what map slot it was.

[ReFracture]

1996. (Age 7) Our first computer. The system builder that my dad bought it from put the shareware version on there. Some short time after that, my brother installed his friend's copy of Ultimate Doom. For about two years from 96 to 98, I played it so much. Off and on, I would go over to either my friend's or uncle's house and play Doom II. Around 98, we had the hard drive formatted on that computer, and so I lost doom. I got to play Doom II occasionally from there on out on my Uncle's computer, but not a lot.

2003. I was still on dial up at this point. I had met and was spending time with a new friend, and I was in shock and awe at how "You can download anything you want!" off of kazza or grokster, and I immediately asked him to look up doom since I hadn't played it in so long. We found Doom 95, along with Ultimate, Doom2, and final doom, and then the addiction started again.

After finishing the iwads, I started to look around for whatever else there might be. There was this guy called Bob Larkin, I believe he ran the website Doom Wad Station. I played a lot of his work. I remember downloading one of his wads and trying to play it with Doom 95. It completely froze my PC up, and I was scared shitless that I had downloaded a virus or something, so I emailed him about it. He recommended that I download ZDoom.. needless to say, I was blown away by that. Over the next few months, Bob would email me some of the wads he was working on and I would give him some feed back, I loved doing that, even though I wasn't a good tester at the time since I hadn't played enough to give useful feedback (Probably why he stopped emailing me at some point.. heh).

June 13th, 2003 (I remember this specific date because it was 3 days after my birth day.) I found Doom Connector. Somebody recommended I stop using ZDoom and get Legacy for multi player, and so began the sleepless nights of playing Doom online at my friend's house (same friend who i had gone to for Doom II in the past, he had gotten bored of doom, but he got interested in it again when he learned of PWads and Source Ports..) From Doom Connector's website, I found many great Mega Wads (Among them Alien Vendetta, which I stayed up late downloading at something like 4 kb/s on my dial up connection.

2004, I met that nutcase Huy "Converted Doomer" Pham, also goes by Doom Marine. Started testing Deus Vult and primarily Deus Vult II for him. I did this off and on for years up until he released the first edition of it.

Everybody I talk to regularly on the internet stems back from Doom and Doom Connector more specifically in one way or another. I really can't express how happy I am for finding doom and the communities therein.

It wasn't until steam came out with the ID Super Pack that I finally bought doom legitimately. I remember wanting to buy the collector's edition but I had put it off for too long..(Didn't have money as a kid, and I never liked asking my parents to buy me things for some reason..) and boy do I regret it, it's expensive now.

Probably more information that what was asked for, but oh well.

[LogicDeLuxe]

Nothing special for me.
I got a copy of v1.1 registered from a friend when I bough my first 486. It immediately was one of my favorite games. I wanted my own copy, but I didn't find the right source back then. Though I bought both Doom II and Final Doom when they came out. Years later, I finally got a used id anthology, so I now have all Doom games I need.

Talking of pirated copies, I once bought a shareware collection CD (there was a time without the internet) which incidentally had a copy of the Doom II IWAD on it, which doesn't belong there. Not that I had any use for it, since I already had a Doom II.

[Aldaraia]

When I was a young lad of five, my dad introduced me to the computer by installing the Doom shareware on it and I figured out how to play fairly quickly. The demo that played of Phobos Lab from the menu blew my mind, the raising platforms, the toxic pits, it was a step into a whole new world I would never forget, I don't think I really cared that I was mowing down zombies and painting the walls with blood. I do remember my mom saying "I'm too young to die? What kind of game is this?!" I fell in love with the game and playing that episode over and over along with playing Heretic which was damn fun too. I would even pretend that I would be playing Doom when the computer was off and the monitor was blank.

Then a few years later I got the boxed Doom II for Christmas and I was very excited and that game kicked ass although it took me a loong time to beat it cause a number of levels stumped me, Gotcha, Dead Simple, and Icon of Sin. I sure wish I knew what I did with that box of Doom II... But yeah, that's how I found out about Doom.

[Dutch Doomer]

The first time I played the game was at my younger cousin's house, I was like 12 years old or something when I played Doom for the first time. I can still remember sucking at trying to get past the first nukage room you enter in E1M3. I can also remember cheering when I killed an shotgun sergeant.

Sadly my cousin died in an traffic accident some years later, and I think thats one of the reasons why I still play doom. It reminds me of the days I spend playing doom with him. Dammit now I'm getting emotional here.

[LogicDeLuxe]

Talking of memorable maps

Dead Simple wasn't hard to find out for me. I hated that annoying exit step which I frequently managed to rise twice. I wasn't skilled enough to do the jump back then, so I got stuck.

Icon of Sin wasn't that hard to figure out, either. Though it was the least playable map until I upgraded my 486 to 8 MB RAM.

My most hated map was 'O' of Destruction for that stupid jump toward the exit it required, which I never managed on the first try. You know, that nifty raising bridge wasn't there in v1.666 back then. That was when I found the -turbo parm quite convenient, and we often deathmatched with turbo mode on LAN parties, too.

[Hellbent]

Mattfrie1 said:

I only discovered Doom a few months ago while trying to collect every game censored by Nintendo, (weird collection, I know) and stumbled across SNES Doom on the Wikipedia list, Not to mention the drummer from Rammstein (one of my favorite bands) is nick-named Doom after the game, so I wanted to see what it was. From there, I got the PC version, and later brought the SNES and PS1 version and bam, I'm a big Doom fan.

Yay for über-posthumous doom fans!!

My brother told me about it sometime back in 1993. I remember him telling me about the varied level heights and stairs. At the time I wasn't too interested, being deeply steeped in Wolf3d at the time. First time I played Doom I did not like it at all because it was so dark and slow and so much different than Wolf3d which I loved. Not sure how I did come to love Doom. I think one friend was saying how great it was so I decided to give it some time... and started to really enjoy things like the raising catwalk near beginning of E1M5 and the cool refinery outpost (where the imp fires from above) on E1M3).

Watching that embedded video makes me think someone should make a Ghetto Doom Full Conversion. Go around the streets of some gangsta neighbor hood shooting gangsters or some such.

[DoomUK]

Saw some footage on GamesMaster (British tv show and magazine which ran in the early-to-mid nineties).

[myk]

leileilol said:
Doom was on the cover (screenshot of the baron of hell, similar choreography of:
)

Maybe even the same shot? I used a pre-release screen shot to make that.

[The Lag]

i overheard a couple kids talking about it in school right after winter break '93/94. it sounded awesome, so i searched for it for awhile but couldn't find it since i had no internet connection yet. finally, my mom's best friend's son mailed me a floppy with version 1.2 on it.

[Marnetmar]

In this thread we shall discuss our first-time DOOM experiences. I remember the first time I played DOOM it was on an old DOS computer with the PC speaker sound effects, shit gave me nightmares.

I don't know why but DOOM on a DOS computer/DOOM 95 on an actual Win95 computer always seemed creepier.

Now when I touch a keyboard the first keys they touch are left, right, control and alt.

[Reisal]

My first experience was on the SNES when my computer didn't have 4MB RAM back in 1995 (I was 13 then) but a little bit later I got the Ultimate Doom CD, which I still have and is in very good condition.

[Alfonzo]

With my first Doom and subsequent Dooming experiences, I would reach e1m4, get scared, smash in iddqd, see dad walk in and spot me with cheats on, watch him take the floppy disk out of the computer, confiscate it, then lecture me about cheating as a means to an end.

Marnetmar said:

I don't know why but DOOM on a DOS computer/DOOM 95 on an actual Win95 computer always seemed creepier.

Probably something to do with not being able to completely make out what's in front of you, but I know what you mean. Distant, unfamiliar bad guys that slowly materialize in front of you are scary.

[eargosedown]

I was like 4.

And I was scared shitless.

[dontbotherwithmyname]

the first time I played was in 1997, and at that time doom was illegal in my country, making the experience much more frightening

[bytor]

I couldn't stop playing.

I quit going to the local 7-11 to play Ms. Pacman.

[Shanoa]

Was 8 and played on SNES. Good times.

[Bobsklim IV]

I remember playing the original episode 1 on an old DOS and how much more challenging it was, no strafing, no free look, (no skill?) the best/worse part for me though was in E1M8 going up the lift and having the barons appear, was absolutely terrifying.

[Clonehunter]

Isn't there already a thread very similar to this?

[Marnetmar]

Clonehunter said:

Isn't there already a thread very similar to this?

Not that I recall.

[Clonehunter]

Hmm, I thought I remembered one, but maybe not. Well, when I first played Doom, I had no idea what it was. All I remember from a long time ago, was shoting these humans and brown monsters who I belived to be Aliens. Then they bleed as they died, so then I thought, thse are Aliens? When could aliens bleed? Eh, whatever. I finally figured out the name of the game when I got into Dark Forces. Now I love Doom for somereason.

[D_GARG]

first time I played doom was the doom1 demo for doom95 and I never finished e1m1 before I was 7 beacuse I was afraid of what was behind the big black/blue tech structure in the second room.

the barons scared me beacuse they never died and once I had a pathetic nightmare about it.

the atmosphere when playing first tine, 6 years old was AWESOME and thats why I still play it.

[Mithral_Demon]

eargosedown said:

I was like 4.

And I was scared shitless.

Pretty much summed out my playing too...
Except it was DoomShareware on the "Doom and More" Demo disc for like... 6 games that had Jetpack, Doom, Squarez, HeXagon, God of Thunder, and some other one...

[GreyGhost]

Clonehunter said:

Isn't there already a thread very similar to this?

It's similar to the What's your Doom Origin thread and several others I'm too lazy to find right now.