Yukio Ide's Doom Maps

[T-Rex]

Although the Japanese Doom Community seemed to have popped up during the mid-late 2000s, but making their presence known since 2016 with JPCP, I couldn't help but wonder if Yukio Ide might have planted the seeds for the Japanese Doom Community. For the uninitiated, Yukio Ide is, or was, a Japanese Doom mapper who believe it or not, had designed maps back in 1996 and 1997. I took a look at those maps and found most of them to be rather strange, especially the ones with sound replacements. Some vary from having interesting ideas to being crudely made. Nevertheless, they're playable for the most part, but they have the design tropes that are typical with 1994 wads. He seems to be a huge fan of the anime and manga Oh My Goddess! since he would gush over the character Belldandy (presumably his waifu), and to some degree Neon Genesis Evangelion.

 

Here are Yukio Ide's output of Doom content if you all want to check them out yourselves. A couple of them are music compilations too.

 

Mariko Kouda DOOM ][ (a modification edition)

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION SEPHIROTIC TREE DOOM ][

EVAN DOOM (AYANAMI DOOM) for DOOM II

SUZUKA DOOM(F-1 DOOM)

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION Music Collection. Version 1.0

Belldandy DoomII (Test Edition)

Christmas DOOM 2

Christmas DOOM

Sailor Moon Music PWAD. Music Collection.

GODDESS NET BBS DOOM for DOOM II

Belldandy Doom (Test Edition)

KEN DOOM ][

[PasokonDeacon]

You'd have to ask Tatsuya Ito and others if they were aware of Ide's creations, whether during the '90s or after.

 

Otaku and Doom, a match made in...well, 1990s Japan. That's not surprising at all, given how many PC hobbyists would also have been big TV/manga fans. The majority of Western Doom modders were high schoolers, college students, etc. who geeked out over D&D, heavy metal, and edgy comics/cartoons. And the early batch of DOS-based editing tools (also available to Windows9x adopters) were usable enough to create a bunch of maps, resources, DeHackEd patches, and so forth. We could just laugh and guffaw at these, but it's still cool to see what a sliver of the larger community was working on.

 

Most of these files look too slight to dig any deeper, but this part of the GODDESS NET BBS DOOM textfile intrigues me:

 

Quote

* What is Goddess Net *

Goddess Net BBS in Osaka Japan. Goddess Net on-line Japan.
Goddess Net BBS, Fri-Sun 10:00 PM-2:00 AM Japanese Time, (0722)61-5413.
Along with many other D2/Heretic/Descent Levels and Editors.

 

I don't envy our chances of digging up any BBS archives from a non-Tokyo otaku BBS dating to 1996/1997 (and I'm generally more keen on finding the earlier Japanese PC-focused examples), but here's something worth a casual search. One would have to convert that title into JP characters (alphabetical or kanji) to get useful results, I suspect. This likely would have been similar to other PC game-centric Usenet groups like rec.games.computer.doom, just on a regional BBS system instead.

I'll also note that the Suzuka mod references a famous Japanese racing circuit, which makes it the outlier here, though, again, not unlikely for anime otaku to also enjoy motorsports. If the author was indeed from the Osaka area, then Suzuka would be local by Kansai standards.

[LadyMistDragon]

I somehow doubt the Yukio Ide 'planted the seeds' as such, he certainly contributed I believe because some of the JCP mappers like Tyousen show some off-the-wall, yet structured tendencies of their own. Maybe one of the few who had more than 1 or 2 /idgames uploads.

 

However, @thestarrover did upload a Japanese shovelware disc of maps that seemingly never got uploaded to /idgames. They're mostly deathmatch but there is one single-player map made by a user with the simple name of MT called Advanced Unknown Mariner World that we'll just say has a very proto-Kama Sutra feel when it comes to the combination of claustrophobic combat with numerous attempts at Doomcute. It's not really as out-there texturally as some of the JPCP maps, but at the same time, there are some traits it contains it shares in common with the maps Bad Dream and maybe Yullie's Emobodiment of Maliciousness.

 

Honestly, Goddess Net seems like it would be a good source of other things happening in the Japanese community of the 90s, such as it was. I'm not otaku enough to translate any of it, sadly.

[PasokonDeacon]

AUMW? AUM World, as written in the text file? Sounds like some kind of Aum Shinrikyo reference, which is maybe a bit tasteless but definitely morbid enough for a Doom WAD of this vintage. (Since they're giving it an elaborate English title vs. a transliterated JP-to-ENG one, I'm assuming there's some kind of in-joke or pun happening here.) The map itself seems like a rough hunk of fun, with plenty of congestion to handle and mean traps abundant.

Edited March 5, 2024 by PasokonDeacon

[stylo]

In terms of finding that old BBS board, I figured one may as well start with this Ide/Waizu guy. My Japanese is what you'd call baby level, tho.

 

This seemed the most promising initially:

http://www1.plala.or.jp/yuiyui/doom/doomwads.htm

 

I found it by googling 'いで　ゆきお ドゥーム', although 

A) There may well be a long vowel in the name

B) Which probably doesn't matter, as there'd be a number of Yukio Ides out there 

C) & I don't know the kanji for his name.

D) I also needn't have bothered with the hiragana name, as 'Yukio Ide ドゥーム' does the trick. 

 

Issue: google has preview text in Japanese, but when you click the link, you get 404'd and all the text is garbled. 

 

Running it through Wayback Machine, latest backup gets you the site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180104045206/http://www1.plala.or.jp/yuiyui/doom/doomwads.htm

 

but the text is still garbled. 

 

This site: https://forest.watch.impress.co.jp/fromml/199707.html

seems to be a collection of Windows programs circa 96-97. Two thirds of the way down the page, you'll find DeeP97, a level editor for Doom/Heretic etc, submitted by Ide's email address, as seen above. 

 

The next step would presumably be finding out the Japanese title for oh my goddess (easy—ああっ女神さまっ), possibly looking up Ide's alias Waizu (could simply be ワアイズ or わあいず, or it could be among other things ワイズ , although the latter combined with ドゥーム mostly gave me stuff about a wise crab. The former gave me more stuff about the game, mixed with manga/anime that have 'doom' in the title).

 

Once some of these pieces fit together, there'll be the issue of BBS stuff: I never used them, nor do I know how you scrape for old stuff from them.

 

 I'm pretty tired, though. Just got up from a bleh nap & it's getting late. I might try some more digging later. I'll keep you posted if I find anything.

 

P.S. 「ドゥーム」 is the Japanese word for Doom; they also apparently use 「DOOM」which seems accurate as the old Windows app site above uses English for 'D2/Heretic' et al. Happens a lot with games and such cuz, well, English is cool over there. We do the same shit. 

Edited March 5, 2024 by stylo

[houston]

On 3/4/2024 at 1:05 PM, PasokonDeacon said:

just on a regional BBS system instead.


BBS =/= telnet shell through direct dialup.

What the term more often means, especially in the Japanese netsphere, is any form of web forum. More often than not it means one hosted on what I'd call a "forum farm", a site like Fandom or Geocities, but hosting a bunch of web BBSes instead. Because of their often confusing (for a web scraper) layout and sometimes hostile robots.txt files, finding any archive might still be a complete crapshoot.

[PasokonDeacon]

2 hours ago, stylo said:

Running it through Wayback Machine, latest backup gets you the site:

https://web.archive.org/web/20180104045206/http://www1.plala.or.jp/yuiyui/doom/doomwads.htm

 

but the text is still garbled.

 

I'm reading the text just fine (must be different Shift-JIS encoding params on my browser):

 

Spoiler

 

The Doom II wads page is very incomplete vs. his /idgames submissions, but there's plenty of details about Yukio's multiplayer exploits throughout these pages. The "Tech" page deals mainly with deathmatch techniques, while AIUHLP3 and ISDN list general info/troubleshooting for modem set-up and online play. Most other pages deal with playing Doom online via specific source ports, plus one detailing match results and another listing MP maps (no links that I can see).

 

His links page turned up a couple interesting tangents, even if it seems Quake II had become the FPS de jour among his friends group by 2000/2001. One of the linked homepages has an extensive set of articles covering Boom, though the Wayback capture's garbled even for me. Another example is GO-ICHI's QUAKE Original Map Page, which seemingly hosted some single-player Doom II maps and scraps by the author (which sadly weren't archived). I'm sure there's plenty more hops to go along these links/webrings before the well of '90s/turn-of-the-2000s Japanese Doom fandom runs dry.

 

1 minute ago, houston said:

BBS =/= telnet shell through direct dialup.

What the term more often means, especially in the Japanese netsphere, is any form of web forum. More often than not it means one hosted on what I'd call a "forum farm", a site like Fandom or Geocities, but hosting a bunch of web BBSes instead. Because of their often confusing (for a web scraper) layout and sometimes hostile robots.txt files, finding any archive might still be a complete crapshoot.

 

One of Yukio's text files mentioned a NIFTY-Serve BBS he could have accessed via a pre-HTML terminal browser over dial-up. That service was essentially a license partnership between CompuServe (the corporation and their well-known BBS server/end-user infrastructure) and Nifty, a company formed from a partnership between Fujitsu and Nissho Iwai (Sojitz today). GODDESS-NET's maintainers paid for server space and network/timeshare cycles, of course. The BBS on Yukio's own website was entirely web-hosted, but we only know about that one via a later Wayback archive. Given the timing of when DOS/V and PC-98 owners would have jumped ship to Windows 95 (and HTML-compliant browsers/networking in turn), plus the fact that NIFTY-Serve only added Internet-to-BBS logins much later in 1997, I think Yukio wasn't yet referring to a web database BBS/forum.

 

Speaking of web BBSes, here's a decently captured one I've found while looking through Yukio's links.

[stylo]

Seems like you (& others who know about BBS stuff) have this on lock. I'm getting the idea that your Japanese must be more proficient than mine (perhaps my minor bit of digging was unnecessary); maybe I should have known from your username lol 

 

(And yeah, the garbled text was probably a browser thing; I was hopping around this stuff on mobile via safari)

 

 Best of luck with this excavation!

[thestarrover]

2 hours ago, PasokonDeacon said:

Another example is GO-ICHI's QUAKE Original Map Page, which seemingly hosted some single-player Doom II maps and scraps by the author (which sadly weren't archived). I'm sure there's plenty more hops to go along these links/webrings before the well of '90s/turn-of-the-2000s Japanese Doom fandom runs dry.

The wads are preserved on this Wayback Machine page. Thanks to @Mad Butcher who shared the link here

[Mad Butcher]

2 hours ago, PasokonDeacon said:

Another example is GO-ICHI's QUAKE Original Map Page, which seemingly hosted some single-player Doom II maps and scraps by the author (which sadly weren't archived).

Here is Lati2 from that page.

[PasokonDeacon]

Seems like I should keep working on my Wayback Machine skillz if I can miss these so easily. I didn't know about the earlier version of GO-ICHI's homepage (hadn't seen the URL in the weekend.wad textfile), so it's good to see these got mirrored all the way back in 1999.

Edited March 5, 2024 by PasokonDeacon

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Semi-relatedly, "KYOPI FIRST HERETIC WAD" by Kyosuke Inada is also of Japanese provenance, in 1995, and is apparently the first Heretic WAD to hit the idgames archive.  It seems to be the author's only WAD on idgames.

 

No idea what the popularity of Heretic was over there, but I do know that ShadowCaster had a port for Japanese home computers with translated manuals etc.  That might've been more thanks to Origin Systems though, I don't know.

[Dynamo]

I believe prior to JPCP, the most popular Japanese WADs were the "Sg - TroGun" (or Shogun Trogun) WADs played on Skulltag and ZDaemon. I still have a bunch of them, and I recall there also used to be a webpage for them. They were fun with wacky enemies (Wolfenstein 3D dogs with rocket launchers attached to their torso).

 

sg_trogun_read.zip (copy of a web page containing gameplay information)

sg_trogun.7z (multiple versions of the trogun mods that I have on my folder)

 

If anyone else has any information on them and their authors, feel free to share.

[taufan99]

20 minutes ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

Semi-relatedly, "KYOPI FIRST HERETIC WAD" by Kyosuke Inada is also of Japanese provenance, in 1995, and is apparently the first Heretic WAD to hit the idgames archive.  It seems to be the author's only WAD on idgames.

 

No idea what the popularity of Heretic was over there, but I do know that ShadowCaster had a port for Japanese home computers with translated manuals etc.  That might've been more thanks to Origin Systems though, I don't know.

RPGs with a Medieval European setting are quite popular in Japan since late 1980's (it's why most isekai titles, be they light novel, manga, or anime, have such a setting). However, judging by Doom's popularity over there, I think it's safe to say Heretic is extremely niche, if not virtually unknown among Japanese retro PC/DOS gamers.

[Catpho]

32 minutes ago, Dynamo said:

If anyone else has any information on them and their authors, feel free to share.

Correct me if im wrong, but I believe this is the old alias of Toooooasty. Was pretty funny when I found out that one of 2016's best newcommers was a vet :D No fault on the panelists ofc because I don't think this is documented on anything english speaking.

Dunno abt the website. SHOgun has a website tho.

[Dynamo]

49 minutes ago, Catpho said:

Correct me if im wrong, but I believe this is the old alias of Toooooasty. Was pretty funny when I found out that one of 2016's best newcommers was a vet :D No fault on the panelists ofc because I don't think this is documented on anything english speaking.

Dunno abt the website. SHOgun has a website tho.

Very nice, thanks! I had no idea about the connection either, but this webpage you linked seems to have the latest official version of trogun, which is very good for archival and documentation purposes.

 

EDIT: Besides the link Catpho kindly gave, here's two more:

 

http://srod.nobody.jp/mywads/mywads.html (SkullDemon's WADs)

http://onomutilok.blog.shinobi.jp/ (blog tied to SHOgun's homepage)