How did you find out about classic Doom?

[Ennello]

To this day classic Doom is still my only fps (aside from maybe Heretic and Hexen). I don't even like fps games, but the completion aspect of doom tickles a certain part of my brain.

[Klear]

The first FPS I played was Wolfenstein 3D, thought I *thought* I was maybe playing Doom (which I only knew by reputation back then). I also thought I was playing something similar to Warcraft the first time I saw Civilisation. I was kinda dumb in this way =P

 

But overall I'd say it's more fair to say I was lead to Doom through Duke3D. That was my jam back then and it took me a while to get a full appreciation for Doom which felt like a downgrade in comparison. I still love both games dearly.

[MemeMind]

A cool review of Doom 2016, which got me to play 2016. I enjoyed it and played the older games. (Eternal hadnt came out at that point)

[ImpRevenant]

 I got my current 3 year old laptop because I wanted to play team fortress 2, that led me to watch decino's channel on youtube, where I discovered that classic doom had a lot to offer, I installed gzdoom and played through the entirety of doom 1 and 2

[Azuris]

15 hours ago, Astro X said:

Was there any specific game that you got to know previously, that then led you to classic Doom?

 

Catacomb 3D

 

Edit:

Doom and Doom 2 were on a CD my Uncle gave me with dozens of Dos Games.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Azuris

[Darkcrafter07]

I was first introduced to Duke Nukem 3D when I was 6 and my family obtained a computer with an AMD K-5 CPU running at 133MHz, ESS FM audio card, some sort of 1mb video card and 16 megs of RAM under Windows 98 SE on 800mb hdd. The games like Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake were running pretty smoothly, but some tiniest slowdowns still occured time to time and I treated them as an intentional artistic effect to stress new game events because I knew nothing of performance and just didn't think about it. I absolutely couldn't stand playing Duke Nukem 3D in 640x400 resolution for it to looking squashed (wrong aspect ration as it turned out) and "twitching picture", yeah bad performance.

 

As soon as it occured being way too hard for me to play Duke, I could find some cheat codes for Doom II instead, that's how I ended up playing Doom II. Since then it has been the most memorable game of all my life. That's right, I started playing Doom with Doom II with cheats like IDDQD and IDKFA. It amused me what rocketlauncher could do to the first two zombiemans, it looked so powerful back in the day.

 

I wasn't missing time playing Duke Nukem 3D either but 2 years later I discovered Doom Shareware and OMG it was such a huge revelation. This game met me with the same character peeking left and right, that E1M1 OPL rock music that sounded alike Doom II I loved so much already, and absolutely astonishing starting screen - those 4 pillars, computers, blueish rug, a red marine corpse which I hadn't met in Doom II before, barrels, windows. Superb textures and graphics, great lighting effects that looked like a real "base" in a mist weather. The levels I liked so much too, also not looking that brown and that much claustrophobic as some Doom II levels did, absolutely mindblowing experience! It wasn't up unti for the next year or two when I discovered Doom Registered and then Doom Ultimate shortly after, interestingly enough, playing missing episodes didn't feel as big as the first one, it was rather boring.

 

It all started in 2002 when classic Doom was forgotten, everybody just was looking into the "future", it was so funny to even think about this game, cause "man, look at those new games and graphics, you must have been insane for looking at those pixels" and didn't sell on physical drives so it was almost impossible for me to find these games here, even if pirated, up until the times of internet got widely spread. This is also the time when I discovered the source ports and it felt like magic, the stuff I could only dream to have in the game were finally there like jumping, crouching, crosshairs, 3D, hi-res stuff, music and so on. That was also the time I could finally obtain all classic Doom games legally on Steam.

A bit later, I found out about TNT and Plutonia and man these games looked like old dry puke compared to the original series, no matter how much I tried to get into playing them, it didn't feel being my thing. Recently I have dramaticaly changed my opinion about final doom though, all thanks to WASD+mouse controls and source ports.

 

So I voted for Duke Nukem 3D -> Doom.

[darmok]

My journey was different than most because we were a Mac only household in the 90s. I got to play a little bit of all the latest PC games at friend's houses though. I remember when Wolf3d was the big thing then Doom blew all our minds. Unfortunately we always had to wait a year or two for the Mac ports. But plus side was I got to play the Mac only games like Pathways into Darkness, Marathon, Hellcats, FA-18 Hornet.

 

I still have all my original Mac CDs for Doom, Descent, Duke3D, Shadow Warrior, Dark Forces, X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Tomb Raider and more. Unfortunately I lost all the game boxes in a flood.

 

I'm on a big retro kick right now. I'm currently doing my first full playthrough of the Doom series and then want to do Descent, Marathon, Duke and all the rest. In those days I rarely actually played an entire game all the way through. Only ones were Dark Forces, Marathon 1 and 2, Tomb Raider 2,3,4 and a few others.

 

 

[Fiber Wire]

i actually found out about doom from playing heretic first since the shareware was on the disc. before that i had heard of the game but never played it. 

[Mystic 256]

my dad introduced me and let me play the game when I was maybe 10 or 11 around the mid 00s

I don't know if I had even played any FPS games before then

[idbeholdME]

Nothing specifically led me to Doom, but the 2 main FPS games I played/saw being played when I was about 6, were Duke Nukem 3D (shareware episode) and Doom 2. Yep, I had a good childhood :)

Edited March 1, 2023 by idbeholdME

[Captain POLAND]

I don't actually remember, which is kind of odd since I know how I got started with many other games. But given my parents' aversion to letting me play violent games as a kid, I probably first didn't obtain it legally.

 

I first played Wolfenstein 3D at a friend's house in the mid to late 90s.

 

I distinctly remember one time I was a kid and my dad took me online to find me a game demo version to play, and he rejected Quake because it was too violent, so we decided on Descent 2. I later was able to have my parents buy me the full versions of Descent 1 and 2.

 

I also remember going to a game store and wanting to buy the original Star Wars: Dark Forces, but my mom refused because it has an advisory that said "violence: humans killed". Although either she or my dad later bought it for me anyway.

 

I first saw and played Duke Nukem 3D at a computer programming summer camp where some of the other kids had it on the computers. I recall this being in the very late 90s, like 1999.

 

But I don't remember when I first played Doom, or if it was the shareware or full version, or Doom 1 or 2, or what. I do think I didn't play Episode 4 until after playing Doom 1 and 2, though. As for TNT and Plutonia, I had heard about them for a long time (I specifically remember reading about the backstories, especially the one with the 'Hell ship' made of bones and flesh, that sounded awesome to me), but I never actually played them until just a few years ago.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Captain POLAND

[supdol4944]

In last year's summer i randomly got a recommended video about doom on youtube. I never heard of doom before that. Then i decided to give doom 2016 and eternal a try first, but my pc is so shitty that it can't run them, then i gave classic doom a try, and it's my favourite game since then.

[Gougaru]

Honestly just watched Mt older brother play and hopped on his pc when he wasn't around 

[TheSlipgateStudios]

My brother brought home pirated CD's with old games. Quake was first, Heretic second and Doom was probably third. Yeah...that was life in central/eastern Europe in late 90's/early 2000's.

[Azafran]

I first experienced Doom as a child in my cousin computer and I remember it sacared me to the point of crying (I was born in 91). I keep watching it from time to time but I don't exactly remember what year it was, probably around 95 because I remember launching it from Windows 95 in DOS mode.

 

But the first shooter I ever played probably was the shareware version of Blake Stone in DOS. I was very young so I didn't advance much and I remember playing along my father.

 

Then I tried Doom sourceports along the years, because it gives me a very strong nostalgic feeling, but never completing even the 1st episode. Just curiosity and nostalgia.

 

Last year I wanted to complete the game at last and did so on Steam with the unity port. Then Doom 2, TNT Evilution and Doom 64 and Duke Nukem 3D, and multiple community WADS. And here I am.

Purley because of the nostalgia factor, almost no other games can give me that, it's one of my earliest memories of PC gaming.

[The Found Soul]

On 2/27/2023 at 7:11 PM, Astro X said:

Was there any specific game that you got to know previously, that then led you to classic Doom?

I learned about doom while researching into the source engine, I am a fan valve games so I wnated to learn more, I first learned about quake then doom.

[sean-dude]

We had a windows 95 machine when I was a kid, and my dad would play Doom, Wolfenstein 3d, Duken Nukem and Quake. Me and my sister would sit and watch until mom chased us out of the room. 

 

I spent more time with Quake 2 and Half-Life, CS 1.6, and Halo on Xbox. 

 

Brutal Doom is probably what got me into Doom in recent years, but I honestly just play it vanilla these days.

[Skronkidonk]

I watched my dad play it when I was a little kid on the Xbox 360 port. It scared the hell out of me, but I decided to give it a shot when my friend was spending the night. We got all the way to episode 2 but quit because the cacodemons terrified us lol.

[xScavengerWolfx]

On 2/27/2023 at 10:19 PM, xScavengerWolfx said:

For me i found out about OG Doom when they announced Doom 2016 back in 2014. I did some research and found out there was a Xbox live arcade version of both doom and doom 2 as a bundle, so i bought then and never looked back.

 

When Doom 2016 rolled around i started playing that and same thing never looked back, but when i did snap mapping i looked up wads and decided to be a map maker. Well i joined during the Covid 19 lock down of 2020 and here i am, two years later and still going strong.

 

I may not be a crazy outgoing mapper but making maps for a 30+ year old game gives me a chance to flex and show off my style since i've wanted to make levels for video games since i was a kid but never had the chance, since now i do i am going to use it until i either get too old for it or i lose interest in forever. 

Hey i found my comment LULZ

[BedrockCastle]

Back when I was rather young, I convinced my father to let me play Wolfenstein 3D. I loved the game, but eventually I asked if I could move on to playing Doom. He allowed it.

[Deathbringer2]

Simple, it wasn't "classic" when I was 9...

[DoomPlayer00]

Our family computer had Doom when I was very young.

Edited June 25, 2023 by DoomPlayer00
added more to comment

[FecalMystAche]

My aunt had it on her PC, it was Doom II and I borrowed her copy to install on my granddad's PC soon after. Ultimate Doom I actually didn't play until around 2000ish right around the time Doom 3 was nearing release and that's also when I was introduced to Final Doom. I was a pre-teen when Doom 2 came out and was only recently done with grade school when Doom 3 came out IIRC.

Edited June 25, 2023 by FecalMystAche

[houston]

I'm a young little shit, my first ever FPS was Halo 2... at around the age of five. For some reason or another I wouldn't end up playing any more of the genre until maybe around another five years later when I heard from my schoolfriends that I've got to convince my parents to buy me an Xbox 360 (of all platforms... I guess it's got a COUPLE Japanese exclusives) with Call of Duty: World at War. I played through the campaign, and constant rounds of team deathmatch and zombies without ever improving. Aside from Halo, I guess that makes my entrypoint a Quake 3 mod.

I would only wind up learning about and playing Doom through gradual cultural osmosis years later. Until my early teenage years, I must have thought Windows gaming was restricted to very undemanding games of a very particular genre like Age of Empires, Plants Versus Zombies, flash games, and the weird scam crap being marketted through those pre-Steam game storefront software which ended up on the computer somehow.

I'm big on other classics (I have a 4.2 BSD emulator running Rogue and Adventure), so it was only a matter of time, and not too long of one.

[Briggsy]

I used to play Doom on the old family Win95 pc as a kid in the late 90s. Still have the box somewhere with the 3.5" floppy disks and instruction manual. Didn't play Doom 2 and TNT/Plutonia until a few years later when my aunt bought me the re-released Doom Collector's Edition that had extras about Doom 3. One of the few games I've ever used the arrow keys to play instead of wsad with the other being a full version of Catacomb Abyss I found on one of those shovel-ware CDs in the family computer desk.