things in doom that weirdly scared you back then

[nathanB404]

what were some things in doom that weirdly scared you/creeped you out as a kid?

 

for me its the retro face Easter egg death scene in doom 2016. I understand its a call back to the  classic 90's doom games where doom guy's face would be displayed on the bottom center screen of the UI in Doom 93/Doom2. But as a young kid back in  2018 who didn't know much about the classic doom games. It caught me by surprise when I accidentally found out about it.   

 

Something  about the facial expression. And the fact doomguy's decapitated head just just falls and bounces on the floor like that. It really startled younger me for some reason.

[Robo_Cola]

^For me it was pic related,

The first time I encountered it was the GBA port of all places, long after I initially played it on the PC.  I think it happened after hitting a barrel at the end of E1M1 and immediately grabbing a medkit.  Shocked me so bad I immediately turned the game off and thought it was haunted LOL.

[Doom-X-Machina]

PC speaker sound effects.

Terrifying.

[DNSKILL5]

When lights went dark or flickered for sure. How you could hear enemies making roaming noise but couldn’t see them, unsure of when they’ll attack. The first time I encountered the Hell Barons was a big one. I remember a friend was there watching when I got through that map and he told me the next day he had nightmares about that level and the music. Anyone who thinks Doom was never meant to be at least somewhat shit your pants worthy is just in denial. 

[RataUnderground]

I don't want to believe that it's been 8 years since the new Doom was released and now there are adults who remember it as a "childhood memory". It's just... wrong.

Anyway, as a child, Doom scared me because of its darkness. It looked much more real on those CRT monitors with a resolution of 320x200, because imagination is more powerful than any modern sourceport.

[VICE]

>Thread about things that scared you about Doom as a kid.

>OP is talking about 2016 Doom.

>Lol

 

That one wall texture with the horned face that just stares at you with red eyes really spooked me out as a kid playing Doom circa 1999.

Nowadays I use it as an easter egg in a map I'm making. Circle of life.

 

 

Edited April 15 by VICE

[ChaingunChaCha]

Everything! As a child back then it was a super realistic hellish horror game. The darkness, the sounds, the traps etc were all nightmare material to me. It wasn't the arcadey game we look back on today. Playing with just keyboard and not knowing you can run or strafe added even more terror to it.

 

But specifically, the E1M3 blue key trap always made me turn the game off in terror.

[Zerofuchs]

Nowadays it's intimidation factor is WAY down, but when I was a kid hearing the Cyberdemon stomp around just outside of the room and knowing I didn't have ammo for it... nerve wracking stuff.

[Mystic 256]

The dark wooden area of E2M6

E2M6 overall is a bit liminal and strange

[Plerb]

The secret anti-piracy screen that shows Doomguy commiting s*x, dr*gs, and yes, even sw**ring. When I was 6 years old and saw this I literally went outside and screamed "SMH!!!!!!!" skyward. I couldn't believe Doom could be such a n*sty adult game aimed at an adult audience.

[xdarkmasterx]

5 minutes ago, Plerb said:

The secret anti-piracy screen that shows Doomguy commiting s*x, dr*gs, and yes, even sw**ring. When I was 6 years old and saw this I literally went outside and screamed "SMH!!!!!!!" skyward. I couldn't believe Doom could be such a n*sty adult game aimed at an adult audience.

 

[nathanB404]

18 minutes ago, Plerb said:

The secret anti-piracy screen that shows Doomguy commiting s*x, dr*gs, and yes, even sw**ring. When I was 6 years old and saw this I literally went outside and screamed "SMH!!!!!!!" skyward. I couldn't believe Doom could be such a n*sty adult game aimed at an adult audience.

Yeah when doom guy started chugging down a bottle of whiskey during the ending of doom eternal, that got me to want to try drinking whisky but then I realized I lived in the states and the legal age of drinking was 21 and I was 20 and my mom wouldn’t allow me to get booze so I began to felt *eternal* depression

 

literally 1984 

[GuyMcBrofist]

Lost Souls scared me the most as a kid. They fly straight at your face and felt meaner than the other monsters.

 

I remember one instance where I was wandering around in a map, lost, I turned a corner to see a Lost Soul go into a teleporter. I immediately noped out of the game because I didn't know where it went.

[RHhe82]

The imp snorts coming from somewhere in E2M2. The textures where the are faces stitched together for example at the end of E2M4. Back in 1994.

[ObserverOfTime]

The monsters in Doom 2 used to freak me out when I was a kid, generally speaking. The sound of heavy breathing somewhere always had me playing with the lights on and the door wide open, which didn't help because I was still sitting in the basement. Usually I grabbed a friend or two so I wouldn't have to be alone whenever I could. Of course none of us would admit it. We simply took turns playing after every death.

 

I remember being unreasonably afraid of the Arch-Vile, he was always too fast and way too scary for me to the point where I'd simply close the game when I heard the wake-up sound. I used to scream like a little girl when that mofo came around the corner. Made me not want to play Plutonia because the game was full of 'em. And those freaking Cacodemons were thoroughly unsettling, it didn't help that they could fly. I never felt safe when they were around. I couldn't tell you exactly what year this was but it was in the late 90's. Gotta ask my dad when he got his first IBM PC, that would have been about the same time I played Doom for the first time.

[taufan99]

The whole SNES port. For instance, monsters have no rotating sprites, so they always look at you, no matter what. The lo-fi sound effects also help amplify the fear factor for me. Finally, the status bar face has a more pronounced blood color.

 

It still scares me whenever I even just watch someone play SNES Doom.

[JustHeziel]

On 4/15/2024 at 12:42 AM, nathanB404 said:

here doom guy's face would be displayed on the bottom center screen

 

Being 4-5 years old, I didn't want to look doomguys face If I got killed. The bloody (dead)face always creeped me out.

 

Also, in the same time frame, Imps and zombieman/shotgunner sounds were scary enough to me, to the point I was playing either no sound, or at very low volume.

 

The general ambience (visually) used to make me feel mildly uncomfortable constantly.

 

Same feelings about one of Mortal Kombat 4s endings (where either Shinnok/Quan Chi beheads the other, and his head rolls into the camera), and Metal Slug 3-4 zombie levels.

 

At some point, in high school, I tried again and completed for the first time Doom 1 and 2. Didn't beat TNT/Plutonia until later, and finished 64 when Eternal was released :) .

 

[GreenAnime]

the cacodemon, baron of hell and cyberdemon sprites used to disturb me as a kid considering how realistic and gory they look.

Edited April 16 by GreenAnime

[Li'l devil]

The dark E1M2 maze. Especially combined with the ambient section of "The Imp's Song".
Falling into the round nukage pit in E1M3 (on v1.0 shareware there was no switch there, meaning you can't get out) and watching the marine's face slowly getting bloodier as he dies.

The dead bunny cutscene after E3 terrified me so much as a kid so much that for a while I didn't want to play Doom 1 at all. For years after that it still managed to jumpscare me when I saw it.

"DOOM" (map 05 music) gave me an eerie feeling for a long time. "Demon's on the Prey" similarly made me feel uneasy.

The long tunnels on TNT map 04 Wormhole still make me uncomfortable.

In Doom 64, the entire Dark Citadel level.

I also played Doom 3 earlier than other Dooms, and it had more moments that scared me as a kid than all of this combined, but that'd be too many to list.

[Solmyr]

The ending screen with Daisy's impalled head, scared me so much as a kid i had to turn off the pc while looking away from the screen.

 

The pinkies and spectres also come to mind, getting eaten alive by a pack of hulking beasts especially in darker areas and by their partially invisible variants was the stuff of nightmares.

[Xim]

It's always been that last imp around the corner that I didn't see. Other than that I think it was the ambient zombie sounds.

 

For Doom 3 it was the lag on my crappy computer at the time. Now I could play it on my phone if I wanted to.

Edited April 17 by Xim

[ALilGrayBoi]

Seeing a pain elemental for the first time

[entropy122]

door close sound, imp jumpscares, the works

[nathanB404]

On 4/15/2024 at 12:35 AM, RataUnderground said:

Quote

I don't want to believe that it's been 8 years since the new Doom was released and now there are adults who remember it as a "childhood memory". It's just... wrong

.

Anyway, as a child, Doom scared me because of its darkness. It looked much more real on those CRT monitors with a resolution of 320x200, because imagination is more powerful than any modern sourceport.

Real

 

 

it makes me sad knowing in 2 years 2016 will be 10 years ago..

 

 

[yakfak]

i found hidden map lines terrifying

[mrthejoshmon]

 

 

A sombre track, an inhuman demonic mechanical noise, the sounds of stomping encroaching your position, spewing instant death...

[Valboom]

E1M5: Phobos Lab:

 

https://youtu.be/csRckQwn-tE?si=4j18Gy_QmrDZCMs8

Edited April 17 by Valboom

[DecoyZulu]

Getting absolutely rinsed by the one hitscanner or slashed by the one Imp that shut their mouth and completely blindsided me when I turned around.

[vanilla_d00m]

Many years ago,
 

When I played it at my cousins house, I got scared of how tall the walls where in the level and closed in.  I also played the snes version and the intro screen where it shows the marine scared me to where I had to run outside in my backyard to breathe and calm down.  It was night time, the snes version was bad.

 

The monsters only look ONE direction in the snes one, which is at you.  It also looks like they are ice skating.  I couldn’t wait to return it back to the video/video game rental store.  I thought that was the last time I would ever play any game like that again.

 

My parents had a really slow computer back then so it couldn’t run this game.  

 

 

Edited April 20 by vanilla_d00m

[DavidN]

It’s amazing that there are people young enough to have Doom 2016 as a “back then” memory, who are still coming to this forum and keeping Doom alive! Even if it makes me acutely aware of the passage of time.

 

The possibility of getting the Ouchface scared me so much that I used to play Doom in full screen even though the 386 obviously couldn’t handle it, and I’m still uncomfortable with it to this day. I first saw it in the demo for Toxin Refinery in the shareware version, but I can’t remember when I first triggered it myself.