What Got You Into Doom?

[DNSKILL5]

I was introduced to Doom through Heretic since the shareware was on the disc. I actually played Heretic first. I had Duke 3D, Quake, and Heretic at the same time. It wasn’t until around Doom 3’s release where I got the collection disc that had Doom95 versions of all the classic games that I actually played through the full games on PC. 
 

Somehow I was just wired to still like Doom after decades of playing it. I remember playing Skulltag a lot when it was still around, and that’s what got me interested in the communities, mods, etc. and where I found all the various source ports. There’s been a lot of projects and people that have came and went. Some stuff I remember visually but cannot recall the names of, the person(s) behind them gone, too. I have always had a more involved presence in the Wolfenstein 3D and Duke4 communities but for one reason or another have stuck around Doom’s stuff as well. Most people don’t really know who I am though and I am just sort of here, but I like it that way, even if some I thought were friends at one point long ago. 

 

These days I mostly just use this forum because it’s fun, and I haven’t had free time to play deathmatch for a while, which as I got older I found I find the most enjoyment out of that mode of play. I try to keep up with all the WADs that come out but I tend to catch up only to be behind yet again, so I have just decided to go with the flow in that case. 

Edited January 18 by DNSKILL5

[Broodles]

Doom 2016, had no idea this series existed before then

[treulosetomate]

9 hours ago, fruity lerlups said:

i like your profile pic a lot its cool

 

Best Lea face from CrossCode.

[Dravencour]

I first played Doom II during the 90s, courtesy of one of my cooler uncles who installed it upon an aunt's computer. I would pick up The Ultimate Doom later in the decade, the game that had both the original Doom and the Thy Flesh Consumed episode (which makes me one of the few old-school Doomers who never played the original three-episode game when it first came out). I first learned about Doom Wads through the RGDOOMED book that I got at Barnes and Noble forever ago, and ftp.cdrom.com was a common internet destination both at school and at home when I was able to get a computer that could run the game.

 

It's truly amazing how far Doom has come since those heady early days, and what a 30-year-old game series is capable of with modern hardware and software.

[DiavoJinx]

I think like many who were playing Wolfenstein 3-D in the 90s, I was all over wanting the next FPS (before First Person Shooter was used, obviously before "Doom clone" was used) by id.

 

Why did I keep playing it? It's fun, and it has so much replay-ability even without the zillions of .wads I eventually started sampling and then started making on my own.  Well-balanced gun spread that even Quake 2 benefited from copying, and Heretic did well by translating to the fantasy genre, is another good reason..

 

I still enjoy it in 2024 because with source ports, it *still* is fun.

[Caffeine]

A childhood friend told me about it and let me borrow the shareware disks. I had previously played Wolfenstein 3D so I was familiar with FPS games already, and Doom blew me away. It had real 3D stuff like stairs and lifts! Also, a rocket launcher which made imps make squishy sounds.

 

I convinced my parents to mail away a check, and received a box with a stack of 3.5" disks in the mail. Later on I bought Doom 2 and Ultimate Doom from a software store.

 

A while back I was getting rid of ancient computer stuff such as serial mice, null modem cables, and floppy disks. I do wish I kept my original Doom floppy disks, even if I have no way of reading them anymore. Oh well. I still have my original WarCraft 1/2/3 CDs in a binder somewhere, though.

 

Be grateful for Steam, kids.

[QuaketallicA]

I feel like I've already answered this question before in an identical thread.

[Astar]

This picture.

This cool bastard shooting a shotgun, holding it with one hand like a fucking Terminator, caught my attention in the 2000s because... Holy shit, just look at this cover - at that moment it was almost the coolest PS1 cover I've ever seen.

 

And since I loved horrors since childhood, my attention was captured...

[Weird Sandwich]

I first remember playing Doom through the absolute GOAT, the Games for Windows 95 demo disk:

 

https://archive.org/details/odyssey_20201219/cover1.png

[Drago]

My dad constantly preaching it as the best game ever made, and one day during lockdown i just got bored i guess.

Here i am, still stuck on doom 2 lmao.

[oneselfSelf]

I was in 6th grade and I was browsing through a "unblocked games" site on my school issued laptop when DOOM caught my eye. I had heard of it but never played it at all. Upon loading it up I found that it was the DOOM shareware version, emulated through Adobe Flash. No music, no mouselook, just the pure DOOM experience and I played the shit out of it. I was actually so desperate to play the other episodes that I emulated the GBA port of DOOM through a browser extension. It was a pain but it was more DOOM for me to play. Even played a bit of the DOOM II port as well.

A similar thing had happened with Quake, I only ever got to play the shareware release through a Chrome Web App called "WebQuake" that wanted donations to unlock the option to add the rest of the game. I don't think that ever happened but surprisingly it worked pretty well. It even had a easy way of being able to play CO-OP and Deathmatch but nobody wanted to usually because I kept kicking their ass.

I didn't get to fully experience DOOM or DOOM II the way I wanted to until I got a Raspberry Pi. I had also discovered Heretic, Hexen, Freedoom, and even Chex Quest through it. I even started mapping through the Eureka Editor, although I wish I could recover the map I had created on it. Since then I've just played a lot of DOOM. and Quake. Actually just a lot of shooters.

[Milkeno]

Doomslayer being in fortnite

Edited April 30 by Milkeno

[enigma101]

I found Doom through a dodgy free games website that I found to play Blood on. I played Doom and Doom II then tried to download them from another dodgy website and ended up getting a virus. I eventually just got a steam account and got them both, as well as the Master Levels. Pretty much started making maps as soon as I bought them.

[LegendaryEevee]

Friends I was in school with set up 3 computers and we played DooM II together via LAN party.  Those were amazing nights and set up my eternal love of slaying demons for the sake of humanity ever since.

[AtomIsTired]

 

[Helton342]

I knew about DosBox before i even knew how to read.

[TheGreenZap]

Back in the 90s this was THE game to play. I was a gamer and loved it. That's where I started.

Year's later, I realized to my surprise that Doom was still going. What keeps me going is all of the new maps you can play these days. So much fun.

[Rykzeon]

From tracing what engine Blood and Strife used. I also played Duke Nukem because of this.

[OnionTaco22]

No idea. I saw Doom 2016 on sale in Christmas 2022, and despite not knowing much about the series, I still bought it.

[maxmanium]

An interest in playing historically significant video games.

[Doom64guy]

The mod levels in idgames Archive, particularly the non-mainstream ones (i.e. Doom 64, HacX, Strife), made me want to build levels in those engines someday.

[Skullzrawk9]

The first time I played Doom was at a friend's place. He had Doom 3 BFG: Edition on his Xbox, and we couldn't play Doom 3 together, so we ended up playing Doom 1. Later in high school, I found shareware Doom on some free games website and thought "Oh yeah, I remember this game". I ended up playing it throughout high school on the crappy school-issued Chromebook (usually during class) and finished all of Knee-Deep in the Dead. Later I picked up Doom 3: BFG Edition for myself and played through the rest of Doom 1 and some of Doom 2 & 3. Then, when I graduated high school, the aforementioned friend got me Doom 2016, and that game rocked. Ever since, Doom has been one of my favorite game series to come back to.

[The_MártonJános]

Discovered the original Doom and Doom II iWads back then in 2004, rather late after release. In fact, the Doom version was v1.1 which among other things didn't have the E1M1 secret shortcut and the zagged "attic" secret with the item pickups, or had the controversial symbol in E1M4 and the switch opening the door to the red key in E2M2. The Doom II version I'm not sure about, but it had a jarringly high gamma setting which I don't even remember trying to reduce even though it bothered me a lot.

Since I played other FPS'es before - Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein 3D - I immediately got immensed. Soon after/around the middle of 2005, I had a brief fall back in interest which resparked once in June 2009, I got the Doom 95 executable which also had Final Doom. During my (re)introduction to Ultimate Doom, I was baffled by the changes made to the maps and kind of believed I was being gaslit all along.

Come nearly 15 years later, still going strong.

[Gianluco]

I remember randomly buying DOOM 2016 in around 2019 and finishing it fairly quickly. Then, a couple of years later, I got Doom Eternal and fell in love with it, so I decided to go back and play the og games. When I found out about modding, I started trying to learn how to make levels and stuff.

[.zwxn]

I got introduced to DOOM back in 2012 thanks to The Ghoul's Forest, upon finding out it was a mod for a certain game called "DOOM", I went on to try and play it, and my first experience with the game was a port someone made in Adobe Flash back in the late 2000's. Then in that same year I decided to download the actual game, and since I didn't know anything about source ports nor did I know how to setup DosBox, I ended up downloading and installing Doom95 (I was still using Windows XP back then, so I remember the game running without many compatibility issues, aside from the regular issues that port has). I remember getting pretty far into the game, even though I didn't finish it at the time. Then in 2016, I had my interest for the game reawakened by the Vinesauce DOOM Mapping Contest, since then I finished the first two games and still play them regularly to this day, along with many wads and mods.

[Trigsy]

What got me into Doom? It's kind of complicated, partially because I'm younger than Ultimate Doom. I'm older than Final Doom, but I didn't get into any of it until I was already an adult. I'd heard Doom referenced here and there* for years, but my first direct exposure was to Mick Gordon's OST for 2016. As far as how I actually got into playing classic Doom, I'm not exactly sure how I got to point B (here), but I think point A was the Doom video by Ahoy. Ahoy also has videos on Wolfeinstein 3D and Quake, and I've got the three of them saved to a playlist called "id's Unholy Trilogy" or something. It's a wonderful thing to turn on when I'm having a bad mental health day.

 

What kept me playing after I beat it? I was pretty late to the party, so when I started playing I already had the understanding that the community content is where classic Doom lives, whereas the collective singleplayer campaign is a mostly static thing. After I beat it, I felt like I was ready to begin. I felt like I could finally participate in discussions about Doom. I also felt like I could branch out into source ports and such, instead of playing Doom in a relentlessly vanilla way. Of course, now I understand that few people still bother with the DOS versions, because source ports come with a lot of different advantages depending on which one you use.

Why do I still enjoy it? This goes hand-in-hand with why I kept playing after beating the game. MyHouse.WAD blew my mind. I'd long been partial to the Build engine**, because I found that I strongly preferred the campaigns and gameplay of Shadow Warrior and Blood over Doom's. But apart from optimization, Build doesn't have shit over GZDoom. In GZDoom, I can play Blood and Doom at the same time. Doom itself is simple enough, technically speaking, that just about anybody can learn how to make levels for it. That makes it all the more flexible for those talented few who make outstanding levels, textures, sprites, music, sound effects, etc.. And the benefits of the community go beyond a steady stream of new content to play, of course. I imagine I'll pick up some friends from around here over time. When I get started with mapping, this community will be the main source of feedback, as well as where I'll look for collaborative opportunities. Even the software, which I use to play Doom with my specific operating system and hardware, ultimately originates either from here or from the ZDoom forums. With Freedoom, you don't even need to own Doom to play Doom. When you surround yourself with people who are passionate about something, the appeal of that thing tends to be augmented. Why wouldn't I still enjoy it?

 

Spoiler

*The only reference that I can actually recall, for whatever reason, is from the movie Wild Hogs. It's a comedy which takes place primarily in a small town, and at one point the police chief(?) emphasizes how ill-equipped their department is by saying something like "For arms training, they just told us to play Doom."

**I mentioned Shadow Warrior and Blood, but the Build engine is probably best known for powering Duke Nukem 3D, which itself served as the base for some later Build games. Some of those are Redneck Rampage and (much later, in 2019) Ion Fury. Later still (2022), we got squad-based A.W.O.L., which is free to play. I feel like I should add that protagonists of Build games will not shut the fuck up, and I absolutely do not prefer that to Doom. Otherwise, very cool.

[kalensar]

Mine is pretty funny and roundabout.

 

1994-- Before Doom 2 release. Played Doom shareware

1996-- Heretic

2005 --- Doom 2

2020-- GZdoom and modding.

 

Been going strong since 2020. Learned how to make mods and mainly focus on playing and helping other modders on projects.

[Skronkidonk]

I remember watching my dad play games a lot whenever I was younger and for a while I remember him playing Doom on the Xbox 360. I remember whenever I would watch my dad play it, being fascinated by the lack of jumping and vertical looking and also how grainy and unique the game looked compared to games I grew up with. I was too scared to get very far in the game but eventually me and my friend Co-op the game and it left me wanting more. So I bought Doom 2 and I still wanted more.

A few years go by and for whatever reason my brother had Final Doom on his steam account. I tried it and got my ass kicked because I loaded up Plutonia and I was using the arrow keys and control to shoot. Around the same time I looked up the hardest Doom map on youtube with my dad and I found "Dark Dome" in Alien Vendetta. Then I realized that Doom had a fan made map scene, and eventually whenever I got my own computer I played Final Doom and started playing all of these amazing WADS people have made.

[vanilla_d00m]

1990s.

 

My cousin had it on the old PC.  My friend around my house had it on the Playstation, i use to watch and lay down and get tired.  I didnt know what motion sickness was.

 

He had street fighter, resident evil.. neighbors had mortal kombat.  I didnt like DOOM at all though when i was a kid, i thought it was too scary. 

[Scripten]

Way back in about 1996 or so, I was an elementary schooler with my own pc that my dad put together for me. He installed a few games on it, and didn't really filter them for content or intended audience, so I had copies of all the Commander Keen games alongside Doom95 and Duke Nukem 3D. I never really did much with DOS Doom, but I played through the shareware constantly. Eventually I lost track of it, but I was already a fan (even drew some "concerning" pictures in my school journal, but I just thought it was cool) and when I had access to my own rig again, I was back on the Doom wagon. I started playing ZDoom around 2002-2004 or so, after discovering modding/mapping with SRB2, and went on from there.