Should Doom 64 Have its own category?

[aboyes1989]

5 hours ago, sandwedge said:

I don't see how you could call Doom 64 the real Doom 3 when it took out a bunch of stuff that is pretty important to Doom 2, like the revenants, archviles, chaingunners and whatever else.  To me it's a bit of a step back.  The levels were also designed for an N64 controller so they are a bit easier and simplistic on PC imo.  And I am definitely not using an N64 controller anymore if I can help it, lol.  It's a great game that was made specifically to conform to N64 limitations and did it really well with that.  But I can't possibly think of it as a step up just because they put in an ambient soundtrack, some coloured lighting and made the pinkies look like clay.

 

I see it as a reimagining of the original game, as you said designed around the N64. It really is its own thing.

 

Much like Duke Nukem 64. That adds so much that the original Duke 3D didn't have, however, a lot of what made Duke 3D what it was is not included due to mature themes. So it is both a step forward, and step back. A great game, but very much its own thing.

[ClumsyCryptid]

Is it a noteworthy game worthy for it's own category? I'd say no.

 

I've noticed that interest in it is quite niche in the community, it's both reviled for the controls on the N64 but in recent years, even slightly before Doom '16 came out, there was a rising interest in it albeit since the Absolution TC was announced for Legacy Doom all those years ago. Interest for it rose when Doom64 EX was released giving people a proper way to play Doom 64 without relying on fan-made TCs and N64 Emulators. (This may be a sour opinion to mention here, but I like Brutal version for it. It heightens the uneasy, creepiness factor of the game and is an awesome mod / port though the creator's design choices for monsters plagues it. IIRC the person isn't on good terms anywhere so I'll be polite and not mention their handle though I believe everyone knows who he is.)

 

Even with the release of the proper commercial Nightdive port that released with Doom Eternal I think the interest in it is quite niche and a passing fancy so to speak. I'd say that Doom64 should remain squished into 'it's a console port' category. It's only spiritually Doom 3 because the NuDoom games built their canon based on Doom 64's end screen before that it was the crappy N64 port that no one wanted to talk about because of haunted memories of removed monsters, odd lighting choices, and obviously claymodel monsters not to mention the controls.

 

Just my two cents.

[mrthejoshmon]

The whole Doom 64 is the real 3 bothers me, because on one side it's the "I don't like Doom 3" mentality that people love to openly express every 3 seconds, which is really annoying when you actually like Doom 3 but some classic elitist will constantly remind you it "isn't a real doom game".

 

On another side, it isn't the 3rd game but rather the 4th as Final Doom came out before it.

 

And then the fact it is a direct sequel to the events of 2, apparently, this makes it canonically 3, which is also incorrect because the Final Doom chapters are actually (if you read the manuals) direct sequels to Doom 2.

 

So, what makes it Doom 3 exactly?

Edited June 26, 2022 by mrthejoshmon

[Doomkid]

45 minutes ago, mrthejoshmon said:

So, what makes it Doom 3 exactly?

Subtracting 61 of course!

[A Nobody]

12 hours ago, TheMagicMushroomMan said:

Can we stop with this bullshit? I'm sick of seeing this remark on every other DOOM 3 and DOOM 64 thread. The real DOOM 3 is, in fact, DOOM Fucking 3. This comment is as dumb as saying "DOOM 3 is the real DOOM 64 because it focuses on horror even more than DOOM 64", or "DOOM Eternal is the real DOOM 3 because I didn't like DOOM 3 and I also can't come up with an original joke so I'm going to leave this worthless comment here instead of actually trying to think about an answer to your question".

People who have played it call it the real Doom 3 though.

[SMG_Man]

4 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

People who have played it call it the real Doom 3 though.

 

that's less because it's the "real Doom 3" and more because they just don't care for Doom 3. It's a twofer - praise Doom 64 *and* dunk on Doom 3! Like shit, I've played both and I don't think "doom 64 is the REAL doom 3". I don't believe Doom 3 is so irredeemably bad so as to act like it doesn't exist. It's not like the ATLA movie for christ's sake.

Edited June 26, 2022 by SMG_Man

[A Nobody]

5 minutes ago, SMG_Man said:

 

that's less because it's the "real Doom 3" and more because they just don't care for Doom 3. It's a twofer - praise Doom 64 *and* dunk on Doom 3! Like shit, I've played both and I don't think "doom 64 is the REAL doom 3". I don't believe Doom 3 is so irredeemably bad so as to act like it doesn't exist. It's not like the ATLA movie for christ's sake.

Doom 3 isn't bad. No one said it was bad.

[the_kovic]

After getting so utterly sidetracked by DOOM 3 (how appropriate though), let's get back to the question at hand which is "Is DOOM 64 significantly different from other console DOOMs?" I honestly struggle to see how anyone could answer anything other than "Yes." All previous DOOMs on console released beforehand, from Jaguar to Playstation, are a straight port of the original game. Most of them have done changes to the levels for performance reasons (or rather, inherited the changes done on Jaguar) but at the core, it is still the same campaign for the same game as the original PC release. The closest thing to anything remotely new is Playstation DOOM with its brand new sound effects and the addition of a single color per sector.

 

Now contrast that with DOOM 64 which has all new graphics and assets (in fact, the only thing in DOOM 64 that's reused from another version of DOOM are the sound effects which Aubrey Hodges reused from his work on Playstation DOOM. Not the music though, that is brand new), 3 new enemies, 3 significant balance changes to existing enemies, 1 new weapon and, of course, the most important things - the new rendering, map format and 32 brand new levels. Now that I think about it, that might be more new features than the jump between DOOM 1 and DOOM 2. It is the first ever DOOM game to do fake 3D, the second ever to do scripting (after Hexen). Every sector now has 5 colors instead of 1. The levels might be small in square units but they more than make up for it by making the player backtrack while using the macro scripts to fuck over with them. I wanna reiterate - the kinds of sequences that DOOM 64 did, you didn't see on PC until ZDoom appeared and evolved and pretty sure the visuals weren't reproducible until UDMF.

 

Now, whether this is enough for it to warrant its own category, that's the discussion here. My two cents are that is weird to discuss Doom 64 amongst other console DOOMs now that it officially is a PC game too. Maybe not a whole new category like but a subforum (like Eternity has under Source Ports) would be suitable.

[mrthejoshmon]

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Subtracting 61 of course!

Spoiler

I have been utterly defeated

 

Edited June 26, 2022 by mrthejoshmon

[Doomy__Doom]

24 minutes ago, the_kovic said:

Maybe not a whole new category like but a subforum (like Eternity has under Source Ports) would be suitable.

I'm actually curious as to why does SP/Eternity exist as a subforum? 4 threads a month doesn't seem like traffic volume particularly worth separation. Looks about as arbitrary as the collection of pinned threads in Source Ports to the relative newcomer* like me, while we're at it.

 

 

*I've lurked for longer than this account exists, but not like 10+ years longer.

[Edward850]

1 hour ago, The Strife Commando said:

People who have played it call it the real Doom 3 though.

Some people also say the earth is flat, that doesn't make them right or worth listening to.

[Nine Inch Heels]

On 6/23/2022 at 8:02 PM, OpenRift said:

Despite its rather misleading title, Doom 64 is far from a mere port to the N64, but rather the closest thing to a real Doom III we've ever gotten. That said, do you think it deserves its own category separate from the rest of console Doom?

The answer is "no"... Doom64 never pretended to be a mere console-port, therefore the title is far from misleading. It is a Doom-franchise-addition made for the N64, and nothing more or less than that. And it's not called "Doom3" because it was tailored towards N64 hardware, hence the 64 instead of a 3. What I'm saying is that the premise you set is sort of faulty...

 

On 6/23/2022 at 9:20 PM, Doomkid said:

What I would love to see is the speedrunning section moved away from special interest (why was it there anyway??? I guess it was rarer to speedrun one upon a time?) to under the Classic Doom umbrella where it belongs, but finding a way to add even one more subsection without it becoming overly-cluttered is a hurdle that we still need to work out..

Speedrunning should have its own entire section, divided into PC and console, and then by game... Then it's "future proof", at least...

 

As for why it's "special interest"... It's special interest because most people don't do speedruns, they don't download demos to watch, and many of the most excellent runs you can find there put even the most thorough editing guide to shame as far as effort involved is considered... Also speedruns were a pretty niche deal like 15 years or such ago...

Edited June 26, 2022 by Nine Inch Heels

[Luleta]

57 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

The answer is "no"... Doom64 never pretended to be a mere console-port, therefore the title is far from misleading. It is a Doom-franchise-addition made for the N64, and nothing more or less than that. And it's not called "Doom3" because it was tailored towards N64 hardware, hence the 64 instead of a 3. What I'm saying is that the premise you set is sort of faulty...

ACKSHUALLY it was originally gonna be called "doom: the absolution" but was changed for brand recognition or some bullcrap, that may be why the name was reused on the last level.

i know its not that relevant to the discussion but i wanted my nerd points B)

[OpenRift]

Just a reminder: Doom 64 is a direct sequel to the first 2 games in terms of story, which is why I call it "the real Doom 3".

[Nine Inch Heels]

17 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Just a reminder: Doom 64 is a direct sequel to the first 2 games in terms of story, which is why I call it "the real Doom 3".

yes... but therein also lies the problem that it never pretended to be a mere console port, "absolution" or "64" be damned :P

[OpenRift]

3 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

yes... but therein also lies the problem that it never pretended to be a mere console port, "absolution" or "64" be damned :P

Okay? I mean that wasn't really the point of why I said it's not just a port. I said that because the common perception among people at it's release was that it was just a port of the PC game to the N64 because of the game's title. The purpose wasn't to convince people it was just a port, but that's what it was perceived as and largely why it was more of a cult phenomenon. I don't know what you're trying to get at here.

[Nine Inch Heels]

10 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

I said that because the common perception among people at it's release was that it was just a port of the PC game to the N64 because of the game's title.

I haven't really talked to a whole lot of people who were aware of doom64 back when I still had an N64... I think like 4 - 5 at most, so I can't say anything about how common this misconception was. Speaking for myself exclusively, I never understood the game as a mere port in the first place, because there were pictures in magazines, ads on TV, and it looked "pretty damn different" to me...

[Redneckerz]

4 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

People who have played it call it the real Doom 3 though.

So... who are they? If you are going to leave us all lingering, who do you refer to with people?

 

Or are you just speaking in sensu lato?

 

4 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Doom 3 isn't bad. No one said it was bad.

But you know perfectly well what you are doing, which is setting the tone. By making a seemingly innocent yet transparent comment, you laid down the tone for which everyone else to reply to so you could then address that with similar remarks.

 

This isn't the first time you are doing this either, this percieved naiveness when you clearly know what you are doing.

54 minutes ago, OpenRift said:

Just a reminder: Doom 64 is a direct sequel to the first 2 games in terms of story, which is why I call it "the real Doom 3".

Everyone knows Legacy* is the real Doom 3.

 

Spoiler

*It was called Doom3.exe with Doom3.wad in early Legacy builds.

 

[ChestedArmor]

There's so little to disscuss about Doom 64, why should it get its own category?

Doom 3 for example has roughly the same amount of posts as Console Doom and that's not even all Doom 3 related, how can 64 offer enough worthy to stand alone?

[famicommander]

Classic Doom:

The Ultimate Doom 

Doom II: Hell on Earth + The Master Levels for Doom II + No Rest for the Living 

Final Doom

Doom 64 + The Lost Levels

 

Modern Doom:
Doom + Doom VFR

Doom Eternal + The Ancient Gods

 

Awkward transition era Doom:
Doom 3 + Resurrection of Evil + BFG Edition

Doom Resurrection

Doom RPG

Doom II RPG

[SMG_Man]

7 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Doom 3 isn't bad. No one said it was bad.

 

Please think for a second what exactly the meaning of saying that "doom 64 is the real doom 3" implies about the game that was actually released as Doom 3.

Edited June 26, 2022 by SMG_Man

[OpenRift]

4 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I haven't really talked to a whole lot of people who were aware of doom64 back when I still had an N64... I think like 4 - 5 at most, so I can't say anything about how common this misconception was. Speaking for myself exclusively, I never understood the game as a mere port in the first place, because there were pictures in magazines, ads on TV, and it looked "pretty damn different" to me...

You forget that Doom 64 didn't sell nearly as well as the installments that came before, and it was that misconception that fueled it, because people who weren't following Doom 64 stuff just assumed it was another port. Not to mention the fact that by that time Quake was in the id software limelight.

[Immorpher]

3 hours ago, ChestedArmor said:

There's so little to disscuss about Doom 64, why should it get its own category?

There's quite a lot to discuss, just not a lot of people who are into Doom 64 post about it on Doomworld. Before the remaster came out, many Doom 64 fans thought that other Doom fans didn't like the game. So we would go to Facebook groups, discords, and the former Doom 64 EX forums instead. But I have seen a lot of appreciation for Doom 64 since I been here, so I know that perception is not true.

I want to say that Doom 3 has a rightful place in the Doom franchise, and its atmosphere can appeal to a lot of Doom 64 fans. But from the single player maps alone, you can see Doom 64 tends to generate more custom content: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kgPXUDuxEaCN6nxVsWiY2lBy9XM-e9er2Z2D67azgC0/edit?usp=sharing . Admittedly Doom 64 is easier to make custom maps for than Doom 3, but I hope this shows that a lot of it just doesn't get talked about much on Doomworld.

In the past 5 years, 7 ports/adaptations have come out (Doom 64 Retribution, GEC Master Edition, Nightdive's Remaster, Doom 64 CE, Brutal Doom 64 2.5, and Doom 64 EX Plus). I could include others like Doom 64 Absolution MP, 3DGE 64, and additional gameplay mods too.

I haven't even gone through any of the projects announced but are still in development. This is to say there is a lot of activity on the Doom 64 side, but Doomworld hasn't traditionally been the go to place for it. The 64 community just scatters around to various bubbles. I have considered starting topics here of other's projects, but to me it feels like I am stealing their thunder if they ever decide to post them here.

It wont be any surprise to anyone that I would have a lot of fun in a Doom 64 category. But I also don't want to pressure the community here into doing it. I have only been here a fraction of the time compared to most, so others are more knowledgeable on whether the Doomworld members would welcome a Doom 64 category. 

[Artman2004]

I like how this thread has been repurposed as the "Is Doom 64 the real Doom 3?" thread.

[LadyMistDragon]

The problem is, custom content for Doom 64 isn't really promoted heavily for the most part. I know Doom 64 maps are made, but it seems perhaps some of them are a little on the personal side and aren't really meant for larger projects. Several of them are not too bad at all, so perhaps it should get its own category. But of course, discussion otherwise is still limited....

[A Nobody]

Had it been called Doom Absolution as originally intended, it would have probably got more recognition and popularity as it would have not been seen as just another port.

[Doomkid]

The name had nothing to do with Doom64's (unfortunately) low sales during its lifetime. Not a single soul alive at the time saw the game in a store/magazine/on a website, and assumed it was just a port. It clearly had new sprites, textures and levels.

 

People wanted polygons a-la Quake and Goldeneye 007 at the time, not to mention players wanted in-built local multiplayer in the form of splitscreen to play with a friend. Not only did Doom64 not look any better than Doom 1 or 2 (just "different"), but it lacked those two things that 90% of the market was clamoring for at the time. The name was a non-factor, plenty of games that had 64 in the title sold either very well or poorly, as an example of how little that mattered.

 

I can handle people floating the idea of Doom64 having its own section, even though I disagree - but hearing people say things oddly close to "Doom 64 isn't a part of the Classic Doom family" is just incorrect. Not a matter of opinion, flat-out wrong. It runs on the exact same engine as D1, D2 and Final Doom, it features the exact same cast of enemies (albeit reduced) who function in the same way, and it's a licensed game from the mid 90s with DOOM right there in the title.

 

Saying it's not part of the Classic Doom family is as absurd as saying Super Mario World for SNES isn't part of the Classic Mario lineup, because "you know, it doesn't re-use sprites or music from Mario 1, 2 or 3, so therefore the 97% similarity they all have in their programming and general design goes away for whatever reason!"

 

Sorry fellas. Doom64 is a part of the Classic Doom family, right there with 1, 2 and Final. I'm frankly baffled that anyone would try to argue "new sprites and non-midi music" was all it took to untether it from the Classic Doom family, when gameplay feel alone couldn't possibly make it more obvious this is a Classic Doom game, with Classic Doom enemies, where you shoot Classic Doom weapons, all running in the Classic Doom engine..

 

It feels like I'm being forced to "put down" Doom 64 when I actually really like the game, but how is the objective fact that it's a Doom game running on id tech 1 a put down? It's not at all, it just means it's part of one of the greatest subseries of games ever made, that subseries of course being Classic Doom.

 

In the "Doom General" and "Wads & Mods" sections alone (barring all others), in Doomworld's 22 year forum history, there have been a bit over 40,000 threads made. About 700 of those have either "Doom 64" or "Doom64" in the title.

 

If someone starts a new Classic Doom oriented thread, there's just over a 1% chance it will be about Doom 64. Put opinions aside - in raw numbers alone, there isn't a world where this warrants a whole new subforum. Not to mention.. what with Doom 64 being a Classic Doom game, all threads anyone could possibly make about it already have a home.

 

I welcome you all to keep chatting about this, I find some of it kinda interesting, although the whole "Doom 64 is secretly Doom 3" thing is just dumb. I always thought people were saying it tongue in cheek, a bit jokingly. I had no idea people actually thought that.

[Endless]

Maybe the real Doom 64 was the friends we made along the way

Edited June 27, 2022 by Endless

[Worm318]

Here comes a new challenger!

[ChestedArmor]

@Immorpher Thanks for pointing that out for me. I didn't know 64 had a notiable fanbase.