So I just got Doom for the SNES...

[Ultraboy94]

This version of Doom has mixed views, some look at it as one of the worst console version, other think of it as one of the best, especially considering the relativley limited power of the SNES.

There are some major and minor differences that are unique to this console version. For a major difference there are no flats, instead solid colours are rendered as floors and ceilings instead, like in Wolfenstein 3D. I would say this is the most major difference, but when in gameplay this does not affect much.

The controls are quite good for a console in my opinion, each of the 4 buttons doing a different action and having the shoulder buttons for strafing works relatively well (however nothing beats the keyboard and mouse still). The controls are occaisionly sluggish but I find this is when a lot of things are being drawn on the screen at a time.

The automap isn't missing from this version, and is one of the only console versions to include all of the enemys and weapons, as well as most of the levels. One of the odd differences though is that you cannot access episode 2 on I'm too young to die or Hey, not too rough, and you cannot access episode 3 unless you are playing Ultra-violence of Nightmare! skill levels. This is annoying but they may not have been able to fit all of the enemy placements for different difficulty settings on later episodes on the cartridge or something.

Some sounds are missing or altered (It sounds odd listening to a pinky making imp/zombie pain sounds when the cacodemon makes the normal demon pain sounds, the plasma rifle and rocket launcher sound terrible with standard projectile fire, and what happened to the chainsaw and BFG? For some reason I prefer the shotgun's slightly quicker firing sound to the PC's version, though!)

The game has no demos, instead when the title screen dissapears the game puts you straight into control on episode 1 in Hurt me plenty difficulty, which was a suprise to me the first time around.
The music in this game is some of the best of the console versions of Doom, some tracks even surpassing the origial MIDI's in my opinion.

The enemys have no rotations, and I feel that this is the worst part of the game, as it removes the sometimes "sneaky" attacks you can place on enemies. However, not many of the console versions did have full rotations.
Overall I would pick this game up if you have a SNES, as it is a relativley cheap game. The fact that they got this game working at all on the console is an acheivement and it dosen't remove much of the experience of Doom as you'd think. Also the Red/orange cartridge looks awesome if you are in an NTSC region (unfortunatley if you live in PAL territories like me the cartridge is just a standard grey.)

-(I aplogise if I have basically said everything over and if this post is in the wrong section.)

[Quasar]

It seems the per-episode skill level limitations were lifted in the Japanese version, because I have a ROM of it which allows me to play any episode in all the supported skill levels.

[eargosedown]

I actually hooked up my SNES a few months ago to play some oldies, and found this cart. I gave it a spin, and was a little surprised at how well it was done.

As a decent-to-well doomer (depending on who you're asking =p) I got thoroughly rocked on E1M9 on UV. That map was more or less impossible for me to finish.

It's almost like playing a mix between Nightmare and UV, since the enemies are always facing you.

It's worth a spin, I'll still take the PC one over it for obvious reasons, but it's definitely fun if you got a few hours to kill.

[PRIMEVAL]

Played this version a lot when I was a youngster. Scared me silly (though that was partially due to my dark, dying TV screen).

[Maes]

Ultraboy94 said:

This is annoying but they may not have been able to fit all of the enemy placements for different difficulty settings on later episodes on the cartridge or something.

Sounds more like an arbitrary skill-based motivational gimmick, than a space constraint problem.

At least on normal WADs, all objects are stored once per level, and then have a simple bit mask/flag that defines on which skills they appear. Sure, you can have monsters exclusive to one skill level and have totally different placements, but more often than not, the placement is the same and some monsters simply don't appear on lower skill settings). So if they have the (higher) number of monsters of tougher skills on cart, one extra byte per thing won't really matter, (and they don't have different formats for first/later episodes just to save one byte here and there...I hope).

[Ledmeister]

Ultraboy94 said:

However, not many of the console versions did have full rotations.

Of the console Doom games, only SNES and Sega 32X had the "always looking at you" enemies.

[Reisal]

This was my first real taste of the second and third episodes while I still had the shareware version back in the day, not to mention I love some of the music renditions (E1M3, E1M7, E1M8, E2M2, E2M4) over the PC MIDI versions.

[J-selva]

Quasar said:

It seems the per-episode skill level limitations were lifted in the Japanese version, because I have a ROM of it which allows me to play any episode in all the supported skill levels.

I read somewhere that even the NTSC version has all 3 episodes programmed to work with all the skill levels. This got discovered through using action replay (there is even the appropriate monster/item placement for E3 on the lowest skill level, for example). But it seems Williams company made it inaccessible by normal means...