How Many People Care About Maximum Doom?

[SwiftBlitz]

If you don't know already, maximum doom is an expansion pack that came alongside The Master Levels for Doom 2 (which I rarely see people talk about nowadays), consisting over over 1,000 individual maps (i could be mistaken, there are 3,000 according to the box cover art).

 

I'm curious to know how many people have actually played it, if anyone even cares about it, or if anyone out in the world has ever completed all of the maps.

 

[Kwisior]

Not all maps are possible to beat, however Tarnsman and (I think) a few others have completed all the possible ones.

I'm sure speedrunners care about it, some of them love table-filling (that is, filling out the leaderboard of records for a particular WAD).

As for me, I don't think I'll ever try it out. I don't even know how to get it.

Edited June 3, 2023 by Kwisior

[SwiftBlitz]

1 minute ago, Kwisior said:

I don't even know how to get it.

Yeah, Me Neither. Several people in the Doom community have said a majority of the levels are trash. after all, there are over 1K maps.

[RataUnderground]

This, like many other shovelware compilations of the era, I like that they exist for their archeological and nostalgic value. 
Are they good wads? 99% of them are not, but from most of them you can get something curious or interesting, or simply reflect on how the state of the art has changed.

[Rudolph]

There was a project to revise a bunch of them and make them into a full megawad:

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/1994_Tune-up_Community_Project

 

There are also HEROES and HEROES 2:

 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Heroes

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Heroes_2

Edited June 3, 2023 by Rudolph

[Doomlover77]

@Kwisior  @Phantaxal you can get maximum doom here. 
https://archive.org/download/maximum_doom/maximum_doom.zip. There’s wads for Doom, Doom2 & Heretic. 

 

@Doomlover77  

Edited June 3, 2023 by Doomlover77

[Devalaous]

Ive had fun chipping away at the content over time, but the Doom 2 side is so heavily flooded in duplicates and bad Doom 1 conversions. A curated 'fixed' version of Maximum Doom that trims the dupes and fixes broken stuff would be neat, but whos really going to bother with that?

[Kwisior]

13 minutes ago, Doomlover77 said:

@Kwisior  @Phantaxal you can get maximum doom here. 
https://archive.org/download/maximum_doom/maximum_doom.zip. There’s wads for Doom, Doom2 & Heretic. 

 

@Doomlover77  

Thanks, man!

[No-Man Baugh]

I mostly care about it in relation to the Master Levels and ID software during that time

Spoiler

They tried so hard to compete with stuff like D!zone more honorably, hiring on map makers from the community that they saw as especially promising and curating the creme de la crop on a commercially released official addon for just a humble $19.99 (or however much they actually charged for it idk), only to just stoop to the archive scraping tactics of all the other shovelware companies last minute to actually compete with the big numbers that the competition boasted.

 

There are also lists hosted on classicdoom.com and the /idgames archives cataloging every wad found in MAX DOOM and linking to their page on /idgames

 

https://classicdoom.com/mlcdwads.htm

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/docs/misc/maxdoom

 

Although if there's one wad from this compilation I do care about for some reason; it would have to be HELLMART!!!

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/g-i/hellmart

 

[Dark Pulse]

@Maximum Matt certainly does. :)

[RjY]

2 hours ago, Phantaxal said:

I'm curious to know how many people have actually played it, if anyone even cares about it, or if anyone out in the world has ever completed all of the maps.

 

@Maximum Matt someone's made a thread about you.

(I'm pretty sure Matt named himself after the compilation, anyway.)

But yes there are a good few of us Shovelware Spelunkers on this website.

[Liberation]

I played a lot of it back in the day, had classics like Galaxia and Dr Sleep's first 2 levels of the Inferno series, all some of my fav Doom maps! And also Doom Hockey DM iirc, you punched a voodoo into either net to score.

 

So while I don't really care for it these days, I do have some fond memories, it was pretty epic.

[Murdoch]

Couldn't care less beyond it's historical curiosity value. I never played it back in the day but did play others and know they were seldom worth the effort. They worked on the quantity is better than quality mantra, and i would rather play one good map than ten crap ones.

[JacketEternal]

3 hours ago, Kwisior said:

Not all maps are possible to beat, however Tarnsman and (I think) a few others have completed all the possible ones.

I'm sure speedrunners care about it, some of them love table-filling (that is, filling out the leaderboard of records for a particular WAD).

As for me, I don't think I'll ever try it out. I don't even know how to get it.

Kinda strange that they would include impossible maps, but I guess even they cant have played all of them before release lol.

That said, this pack gives me the strange itching to play as much of it as possible. Maybe document my findings... what an idea.

[BigBoy91]

I love shovelware.

[Devalaous]

2 hours ago, JacketEternal said:

Kinda strange that they would include impossible maps, but I guess even they cant have played all of them before release lol.

That said, this pack gives me the strange itching to play as much of it as possible. Maybe document my findings... what an idea.

 

They didn't test a single thing, several maps were converted to Doom 2 multiple times, with each conversion differing or breaking differently, text files went missing, Heretic maps ended up in there, and in one weird case, a Heretic text file without the matching map got on there. The most egregious is pornographic content is on the disc in the form of at least one wad having naked women on the walls, which would have gotten them in huge legal trouble...if anyone even cared about Maximum Doom enough to find it and get id in trouble over it.

Edited June 4, 2023 by Devalaous

[JacketEternal]

22 minutes ago, Devalaous said:

 

They didn't test a single thing, several maps were converted to Doom 2 multiple times, with each conversion differing or breaking differently, text files went missing, Heretic maps ended up in there, and in one weird case, a Heretic text file without the matching map got on there. The most egregious is pornographic content is on the disc in the form of at least one wad having naked women on the walls, which would have gotten them in huge legal trouble...if anyone even cared about Maximum Doom enough to find it and get id in trouble over it. 

Talk about it, just played the first one and it uses the goddamn imperial march from star wars.

[Maximum Matt]

On 6/4/2023 at 8:01 AM, Dark Pulse said:

@Maximum Matt certainly does. :)

What, you think I'm some sort of one-note Maximum Doom guy or someth-.... yeah, I am.

On 6/4/2023 at 5:27 AM, Phantaxal said:

I'm curious to know how many people have actually played it, if anyone even cares about it, or if anyone out in the world has ever completed all of the maps.

Shout-out to my man Kes - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBLN1q8gzzQ

On 6/4/2023 at 7:49 AM, No-Man Baugh said:

Although if there's one wad from this compilation I do care about for some reason; it would have to be HELLMART!!!

Deep cut

On 6/4/2023 at 11:33 AM, JacketEternal said:

just played the first one and it uses the goddamn imperial march from star wars.

Ahhhh, 1_ON_1.wad, the very first map alphabetically in Maximum Doom, the one that sets an unrealistically high standard of quality for this collection 

On 6/4/2023 at 9:02 AM, JacketEternal said:

That said, this pack gives me the strange itching to play as much of it as possible. Maybe document my findings... what an idea.

Watch out though, you might get addicted to it and end up with something like this...

Edited June 5, 2023 by Maximum Matt
Romero

[Mystic 256]

I'm currently playing though Heroes 2 which I think was on Maximum Doom

[Maximum Matt]

19 minutes ago, Mystic 256 said:

I'm currently playing though Heroes 2 which I think was on Maximum Doom

It's not, but most of the levels are from Max Doom, some with alterations to make them more playable/less crap - 

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Heroes_2

[Devalaous]

 

The best way to take the Maximum Doom journey is via Doom Launcher and its tag system. By cataloguing each wad you can set a reasonable goal of marking each one as complete in time. At least until you start running into the broken wads.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Or better yet, there this GZDoom project that combines all the WAD files into a single PK3.

 

[stevegohome]

One of my friends @Kes Gaming YT has played all through maximum doom. You can check out the full series here:

 

[Captain POLAND]

Has anyone taken 32 of the best maps in there and made them into a megaWAD?

 

 

[vyruss]

Despite how terrible the quality is, Maximum Doom actually has kind of an interesting nostalgia for me as it was the first shovelware disc my family had picked up related to anything.  This was before internet access was a thing in my household so it was enough to keep me entertained with Doom.

[Gentlepoke]

I only picked up a copy of Maximum Doom (really the Master Levels of Doom with this extra) just to complete the collection. Don't really care much about it other than that.

[Mystic 256]

I kinda want to explore maximum doom more

it is a crazy mix

it does some interesting wads it though like TMALL2.wad

[Devalaous]

14 hours ago, Captain POLAND said:

Has anyone taken 32 of the best maps in there and made them into a megaWAD?

 

 

 

Given there are literally 1000+ wads in there, you'd have one hell of a time organising that. I can say one thing though; Interdiction Zone and Crossing Acheron would be two of the 32.

[betabox]

I like Maximum Doom, from a shovelware and historical standpoint. In that regard, I like these shovelware compilations for 90s FPS games in general. They may be shit but there's a chance they have WADs from back then that are nowhere to be found online today, again the historical aspect. Complimentary shoutout to @GreyGhost as usual, hope to find out what happened with him.

 

On Maximum Doom, I kind of wonder what the earliest mention is of someone beating all the levels of it. I wanna say Ledmeister did post at some point that he did it. I completed it in 2012, but actually tried to do it before in 2005 before easily giving up on burn out; and Led had already completed it prior to then, even, if it was him.

[Maximum Matt]

On 6/6/2023 at 12:17 PM, Devalaous said:

 

Given there are literally 1000+ wads in there, you'd have one hell of a time organising that. I can say one thing though; Interdiction Zone and Crossing Acheron would be two of the 32.

There's actually nearly 3,500 levels.  And yes, those two levels are lit.  So is DANTE (the other main one by John "Dr. Sleep" Andersen), ORACLE (by Jim Flynn), the RAVEN series (by Tim Willits) and NJDOOM, possibly the earliest fan-made megawad, predating Memento Mori