Unsual and unknown wads you're aware of?

[Sonikkumania]

What is the most weird / out of place Doom wad you've come across? That no one has heard of?

 

I most definately vote for "Marine Doom", an official USMC Doom wad created for training purposes. Wild.

E: Marine Doom is popular.

Edited October 10, 2022 by Sonikkumania

[Stupid Bunny]

I don't know if it's possible to name a most "obscure" wad I've seen, though if I had to I'd probably best dig up something that I downloaded at release years ago and which never made it onto /idgames, and which is no longer possible to find.  Maybe some of the maps submitted to somebody's abortive jokewad community project some 13+ years ago could qualify, I still have a bunch of them for some reason

 

I stumbled on Tele-Direct Atlantic Doom a while ago and it stuck in my mind for the surprisingly well-animated custom sprite the author drew for the project.  Cute little fella, apparently an office mascot of some sort.  Otherwise mostly an unremarkable map based around somebody's cubicle-rich office, with all the shortcomings most such maps tend to come with.

 

 

Edited October 11, 2022 by Stupid Bunny

[baja blast rd.]

45 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

What is the most obscure Doom wad you've come across?

 

I couldn't say because I didn't notice when it happened. 

[Sonikkumania]

This Dawn of the Dead wad ... It is weird.

 

[Redneckerz]

51 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

What is the most obscure Doom wad you've come across?

 

I most definately vote for "Marine Doom", an official USMC Doom wad created for training purposes. Wild.

 

So obscure it has a wiki page.

 

The most obscure one in my arsenal is the Thrust TC from Darkfang and Doom Millennium.

[Sonikkumania]

3 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

So obscure it has a wiki page.

 

The most obscure one in my arsenal is the Thrust TC from Darkfang and Doom Millennium.

Fine, fine, I'll change the thread title name, I guess I don't know 100 % sure what "obscure" means.

[Redneckerz]

3 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

Fine, fine, I'll change the thread title name, I guess I don't know 100 % sure what "obscure" means.

On the updated question the obvious one is this one.

[Herr Dethnout]

21 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

This Dawn of the Dead wad ... It is weird.

 

More respect to the legendary ZOMBIES TC >:c

 

Spoiler

hehe

 

[Sonikkumania]

Just now, Herr Dethnout said:

More respect to the legendary ZOMBIES TC >:c

 

  Reveal hidden contents

hehe

 

It's least it's somewhat loyal to it's source material. Otherwise, an acid trip.

[Dexiaz]

>Dawn of the Dead TC
>Marine Doom

 

Bruh, seriously? Maybe you'll also mention WOW.wad and NUTS 1-3?

[Sonikkumania]

30 minutes ago, Dexiaz said:

>Dawn of the Dead TC
>Marine Doom

 

Bruh, seriously? Maybe you'll also mention WOW.wad and NUTS 1-3?

I made this thread so I could find more unknown stuff. Don't really know much myself.

[Dexiaz]

17 minutes ago, Sonikkumania said:

I made this thread so I could find more unknown stuff. Don't really know much myself.

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Category:Joke_WADs

 

Have fun!

[Stupid Bunny]

I guess what you're looking for is "unusual/off-color wads that are also little known within the community" (so not things like wow.wad, Lillith, The Sky May Be etc.).  I suppose the last thing I posted would qualify.

 

Actually, here's another one that @Sena found in one of the Random /idgames threads, titled Haslam's Book Store of Doom (EDIT: and was also described by @Arrowhead in an older Wad Archaeology thread which is where I first heard about it--interesting it came up again just a few days ago).  It's in exactly the same spirit as Tele-Direct Atlantic Doom, where somebody has made their workplace into an amusing if fairly unexciting Doom map.  I think this was a common thing to do in the early days of Doom--my dad says he even did one of his house but the map is sadly long gone.  Anyway the most interesting thing about this one isn't so much the map (though it has its moments) as the fact that the map is, to this day, listed on the official website for Haslam's Book Store in St. Petersburg, FL.  As much as these aren't the funnest maps in the world I always find them charming, they're a cute snapshot of a period in a person's life as well as a relic of a different time.  I won't post screenshots since everything you need to see is in the two links there

Edited October 10, 2022 by Stupid Bunny
Realized this wad has come up multiple times by the grace of the Random button

[Sonikkumania]

3 minutes ago, Stupid Bunny said:

I guess what you're looking for is "unusual/off-color wads that are also little known within the community" (so not things like wow.wad, Lillith, The Sky May Be etc.).  I suppose the last thing I posted would qualify.

 

Actually, here's another one that @Sena found in one of the Random /idgames threads, titled Haslam's Book Store of Doom (well technically the Random button found it, but Sena did a thoughtful writeup of it).  It's in exactly the same spirit as Tele-Direct Atlantic Doom, where somebody has made their workplace into an amusing if fairly unexciting Doom map.  I think this was a common thing to do in the early days of Doom--my dad says he even did one of his house but the map is sadly long gone.  Anyway the most interesting thing about this one isn't so much the map (though it has its moments) as the fact that the map is, to this day, listed on the official website for Haslam's Book Store in St. Petersburg, FL.  As much as these aren't the funnest maps in the world I always find them charming, they're a cute snapshot of a period in a person's life as well as a relic of a different time.  I won't post screenshots since everything you need to see is in the two links there

Yes! Thanks for clarifying and for the story.

[Sonikkumania]

18 minutes ago, Dexiaz said:

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Category:Joke_WADs

 

Have fun!

Nah I'm not looking for joke wads.

[Immorpher]

Maybe not as weird as you are looking for. But there's this map called "The Grid" which is an unfinished but very cool map. It is made by someone with a bit of experience in Doom 64 with all of the gradient lighting and coloring; plus I think the curve tool was used too. Years ago it was attributed to jdagenet, which made sense since he has a lot of experience; but he told me he had no memory of such a map at all. I have been always curious about it since it was made by someone with good skill! 

 

[PanDeFrutas2007]

5 hours ago, Sonikkumania said:

What is the most weird / out of place Doom wad you've come across? That no one has heard of?

 

I most definately vote for "Marine Doom", an official USMC Doom wad created for training purposes. Wild.

E: Marine Doom is popular.

I vote for "rootpain.wad"

[Captain POLAND]

Kick Attack! might be the kind of thing you're looking for.

[Chezza]

@Stupid Bunny interesting, the logo behind the first image is from the old Yellow Pages directory. Makes me wonder if the was was made by a disgruntled employee or customer.

[PineFresh]

I'm going to go with Stars, an ancient mid-to-low-effort jokewad before jokewads were really a thing (as best I can recall). Three maps. Lots of star shaped sectors. Most sounds replaced with the kind of random .wav files you could find on the internet in 1996. Music literally replaced with MIDIs of nursery rhymes. I'm not gonna say it's good, but it's at least functional and slightly amusing for all of half a map or so.

Edited October 10, 2022 by PineFresh

[Shepardus]

Speezdec is fairly popular for speedrunning but there's next to no information about it except that it comes from the Russian Doom community:

It's a bit of an unusual wad.

[PineFresh]

Ok, so the thread title changed and "weird/random wads" is very different from "unusual and unknown wads." Just pointing that out. I made my previous post based on the former because it seemed we were looking for obscure jokewads rather than hidden gems.

 

In the latter category, well, I'll go with Roger Ritenour's Earth for the "unusual" category. 10 maps, fairly chill, focuses on interesting outdoor areas, scalable cliff faces and such. It has this quasi-random monster closet mechanic that doesn't quite work and it's a little over-reliant on ashwall textures but otherwise it's pretty cool.

 

Then again, it was mentioned in the 10 years of Doom feature, so for something less unique but at least obscure enough to have avoided a page on the Doom Wiki thus far, there's Dimensions of Time. It's a megawad, nothing special for its time but managed to strike the right difficulty balance for my taste and has a couple interesting ideas in there (I'm not into slaughterhouse wads).

[Sonikkumania]

9 hours ago, PineFresh said:

Ok, so the thread title changed and "weird/random wads" is very different from "unusual and unknown wads." Just pointing that out. I made my previous post based on the former because it seemed we were looking for obscure jokewads rather than hidden gems.

Yeah, I always thought that the word "obscure" meant something like "eerie" or "weird", something shadowy anyway. It wasn't until @Stupid Bunny came up with a decent thread title, lol.

 

Anyway thank you everybody for interesting takes and I will check them out too 8)

[Stupid Bunny]

14 hours ago, Chezza said:

@Stupid Bunny interesting, the logo behind the first image is from the old Yellow Pages directory. Makes me wonder if the was was made by a disgruntled employee or customer.

I think I googled “Tele-Direct Atlantic” and it was some company associated with Yellow Pages in the Canadian maritimes back in the day. Also the author actually was given the building blueprints by his employer according to the text file. Nothing indicating what degree of gruntledness he was at when making this though

[Uni]

Doom Rat was posted here a couple of years ago and it's quite an interesting 90's WAD. I never played through all of it but it has some quirky maps and adorable sprite/sound replacement.

[roadworx]

i've always found this one to be a bit odd; it can be a bit obtuse at times and it's not amazing or anything, but it's certainly an interesting experience. the layout is a bit of a confusing mess at first, though it does open up more and more as it goes on.

 

22 hours ago, Stupid Bunny said:

Actually, here's another one that @Sena found in one of the Random /idgames threads, titled Haslam's Book Store of Doom (EDIT: and was also described by @Arrowhead in an older Wad Archaeology thread which is where I first heard about it--interesting it came up again just a few days ago).  It's in exactly the same spirit as Tele-Direct Atlantic Doom, where somebody has made their workplace into an amusing if fairly unexciting Doom map.  I think this was a common thing to do in the early days of Doom--my dad says he even did one of his house but the map is sadly long gone.  Anyway the most interesting thing about this one isn't so much the map (though it has its moments) as the fact that the map is, to this day, listed on the official website for Haslam's Book Store in St. Petersburg, FL.  As much as these aren't the funnest maps in the world I always find them charming, they're a cute snapshot of a period in a person's life as well as a relic of a different time.  I won't post screenshots since everything you need to see is in the two links there

ayy, haslam's! that was actually the first doom pwad i ever played...i cannot for the life of me figure out why that of all things was the first :p

[TheSlipgateStudios]

It Only Gets Worse. Even though it's mainly a jokewad, people forgot about this one, even if it was nominated for a cacowards at some point.

[yakfak]

17 hours ago, Uni said:

Doom Rat was posted here a couple of years ago and it's quite an interesting 90's WAD. I never played through all of it but it has some quirky maps and adorable sprite/sound replacement.

great link, this is so sweet & MAP 02 is really good. i know it's silly but its my type of silly. maybe it was originally made for doom+ or boom cos I think a lot of these maps would VPO

[Thelokk]

Pretty much all of Kirschner's stuff is untapped gold. 

[tatsu91]

how is Deem from @Jaxxoon R not on this list https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/deemep1 still waiting for episode 2 though

Edited October 12, 2022 by tatsu91