Devalaous

Eternal Doom is what immediately comes to mind, most of it is in castle maps (with occasional modern day maps, due to the timetravel themes). I recall Herian 2 also having castle stuff, due to its mixed 'Doom, Heretic and Hexen' textures.

Should do the unused tracks as a bonus :p

The hidden little Map 33 is cute. No gameplay, but cute.

Map 4: 'The Genome Labs' - Its a nobrainer maptitle that I didn't change from MtPain27's review, because its exactly what it says on the tin. If your playing with my patch, give a big thanks to @Quill for the fixed midi. Without the patch, the midi has massive periods of silence, generally resulting in IDMUSing to something else. As for the map itself, oh boy. First up is one of those impressive swinging doors made from sector trickery, I normally miss these as I often have my overlay map up as I approach them. It leads to a rare ammo stockpile, and you'll need it, for theres a slaughter on the lab floor. There are what feels like hundreds of zombies, imps and demons, mixed in with arachnotrons in a giant hallway connecting various parts of the lab together. Dont go too crazy blasting, as you'll still need the ammo drops, and theres a point where you cannot come back to pick it up again. Once the dust is settled, you'll find your way to the very first occurence of the now-staple 'monster silhouette in a glass tube', frequently featured in Skillsaw's work. These early versions are different though, you can see wires connected to the creatures. There are five switches to press, one of them permanently locks out a secret with a megasphere and the wads first rocket launcher (Not that you'll have any ammo for it), the rest open up various locked rooms in the lab halls. Make sure you save that invis sphere, you'll need it for a rude encounter where your flanked at the top of a viewing platform with arachnotrons on both sides and many zombies. You'll hear a cyberdemon down there, one of the experiments in the facility. The Equinox company is up to no good, as per the usual corporation in the Doom universe. (All universes?) Make sure you have all the pickups you can get from the lab floors now, as you cannot return from this point on. Lowering down into the lifts will give you a rude pain elemental, then you'll be in the 'Plutonian Halls', full of, you guessed it, chaingunners and revenants. This will eat your shells and bullets like mad, and you wont get much resupplying from now on till the end of the map, so make every shot count. Near the end you'll get to the worst point of the map, a lift up to the cyberdemon testing pit, where he can oneshot you at the top of the lift. BPRD's trolling nature is well known, and its on full display here. You get an invis shpere right before, but its not much help. Right before this fight you can get a plasma rifle, but you'll have at most 120 cells, not enough to kill the cyb with, but if you land all 120, he can be taken out with the SSG rather quickly. You can also just run from him, which is likely intended. Back into the Plutonian Halls, you can goad the chaingunners and revenants into fighting each other to help save ammo, and you'll need to, as theres a spot with three mancubi and a hell knight coming up, and I was at 14 shells, no cells, and 200ish bullets at this part. At this point I needed to chainsaw things to save ammo, and I had to chainsaw a chaingunner in a risky move, then get ambushed on all sides and lose a lot of my health and armour while I chainsawed imps, demons, a pain elemental, and even a surprise revenant(!). The home stretch is past here, and I got everything in the last corridor to infight, leaving just a hell knight to SSG (Dont chainsaw a hell noble unless its Doom 64), and you'll be wowed by the vast stockpiles of cloned hellspawn in a gargantuan 'warehouse' of sorts, with catwalks with zombies sniping you from both sides. Run up to the lever and pull it, and you'll set off a selfdestruct after two warnings. Make sure to back up into the alcove, or the explosions will kill you and force a pistol start on he next hub map. You do NOT want to lose your stockpiles in this wad. Very neat map on an aesthetic level, and the midi, when fixed, does set the mood well. The gameplay is not my cup of tea, but it DOES make me play outside the box and think up solutions I'd normally not bother with. I can see why most players quit at Map 4 though.

I really need to get moving on completing the old DBPs so I can play these newer ones closer to release. This one looks great. I say that every time I know, but moon theme is always neat.

Map 2: 'Equinox Transport Facility' - So named as it is clearly a transport hub for the entire Equinox facility, leading to a Hangar, Storage Facility, and Genome Lab. We will be back here three times over the wad's course, as each location activates while the other two are disabled. Unlike BTSX, you get a bit of combat each time you return. Due to the brevity of these, I will be skipping the day dedicated to one andp laying it attached to the next fullsized map, to optimise my time spent. Map 3: 'The Canyon' - Part 1 of the Genome Labs, this map takes place in the entry passages to the facility proper, where an underground ravine divides the area, that gives the map its unofficial name. Maybe I should change it to 'The Ravine'? iirc Canyon was MtPain27's name for it Back in my past, this is where I could get to before the wad got too hard for me. I was wowed by the early aesthetics, the facility torn in two by volcanic activity, with fragments of the floor scattered around and many doors inactive. You get to see outside and see rainfall, which was jaw-dropping back then. Its more convincing than Revolution's version too. This is where you really have to be concious of your ammo and weapon efficiency moving forward. Plot your shotgun use so you dont pick up drops at 97 shells, switch to the pistol or chaingun after two SSG shots on a caco, lining up zombies and imps, etc. I made a fatal error of missing the SSG early on, and had to go through a dark maze full of demons (Brightmaps really helps here, as you can see the eyes and avoid as many bites as you would otherwise) with the regular shotgun, that took me from 100 to 40something. At the end? You get a chainsaw. BPRD knew what he was doing there, he is known for trolling. Embrace your inner psycho and use it on the horde that lies below, there is a secret to get a megasphere to offset any and all damage you take during your rampage. There is also hidden access to the first chaingun, which in this wad, is TWO chainguns, to make that beefy pistol sound worth it. At the end, you come across embryos, thus you have reached the Genome Labs proper.

Rage Doom and DoomCenter E1 Contest are up, and this means the entire backlog ive ever had is now complete, and all those missing links in the OP are filled. I'll undoubtedly find more old wads to bring into the modern day for delvers of dusty forgotten history, but for now, im pretty much done and more focused on actually playing the game. Biowar and Equinox are this month's Megawad Club's picks, and both have patches here, so im getting to not only use them, but also more people will find them.

He does have some maps older than Equinox out there, but only on his ancient website which is somehow still up. There's a mini campaign called Doomed Lands iirc, and a one-off serious map amidst his jokewads. I meant that because Map 2 is a tiny BTSX style hub, I'll be doing Map 2 and 3 together in a few days time, because im not firing up GZDoom just for a single tiny map

Equinox is known for being pistol-start and UV Max unfriendly , so im playing more cautiously from the onset Map 1: 'Equinox Facility' I chose this name instead of the default Entryway that MtPain27 used as the level name, as you are standing right in front of said Equinox facility This opening shot wowed me and countless others back in the days when it was released, from a visual standpoint this level is outstanding, especially for its release year. I'll never forget the secret on the beach down the cliff, the footsteps leading to a wall with a secret cave hideout, and the second secret of hidden treasure chests. But what happened to the person who walked in? One set of footprints that only go in.. Could be there's yet another passage (in-universe) we don't know about in there. The facility proper is large and imposing, and full of enemies, yet using the pistol alone here feels much better than it should thanks to the pistol replacement graphic and sound effect. And use it you must, as Equinox is infamous for ammo shortages. Pace those shots to keep it at high accuracy, you'll need the bullets. A secret leads to a soulsphere, backpack and a bunch of shells, but I still advise against going ham with the SG, unless your pistol starting (Which is whole new tier of pain in later levels). Real marines turn off the lights of the entire facility with a secret switch and go the rest of the level in near total darkness :) I love the little PCs, back then who could predict how small and thin our modern PCs would become? There is a softlock I found on the left side of the map, theres a raised platform with a switch that you can walk off the side of and be stuck without a jump key bound. I'll be back in two days, as the Transport Hubs are not really full maps.

Took a break yesterday as I was absorbed in the Kingdom Hears steam release, and didnt feel like stopping just to play one level of Doom before relaunching the game The final stretch was enjoyable! Map 16: I had Julien-K's Killing Fields in my head as I played this. A neat level that fully fills its Map 28-slot equivalent, this had a lot of opposition and tricky nonsense, like a maze of that spawncube texture. I never once felt actually threatened though, and the outside 'field' needed more enemies in it. The standout moment was when a lone baron across a chasm got into a fight with an imp, and the imp managed to dodge its attacks for *ten minutes* while hurting the baron many many times. Alas, this legendary hero imp who joined forces with me fell eventually. He will be remembered for his valor. Amusingly, that baron *still* had enough HP to take 5 SSG shots. Map 17: The penultimate level, this one felt like a TNT finale alright. Start off immediately in a cyberdemon duel, where you can flee into one of two offshoot areas on the hunt for keys, as theres a red key switch in the central cyberdemon arena. One of the areas starts you off with an archvile attacking youso you have to move quickly, right into a horde of cacos and chaingunners, plus a Pain Elemental. You have to go back and forth between the two offshoot areas to get both keys. Once you do get both and can go to the red key area, theres a well-placed Spider Mastermind across a canyon with no means to get up in her face with the BFG for a one-shot, but she still goes down easily enough with plasma rifle, once all the surrounding monsters are dealt with. Still better placement than pretty much any id placement. The timed jumps to get to her platform to exit is a pain. Map 18: A great IoS fight. As is customary with TNT-style wads, theres some light normal level gameplay at the start, such as an area with floating revenants to snipe you, while chaingunners distract you. Also the opening? A real man uses that berserk to kill everything up till at *least* the two barons on the awkward stairs. The actual IoS fight itself is great, no bullshit lifts and wrestling with autoaim, RNG, and rogue cacos and lost souls, just a mad dash to pull all the switches before getting overwhelmed, then leaping inside the creature's mouth to blow it up from within. Two archviles will try to stop you inside, and killing the internals always kills you in the process, so thats the end of Angry Potatoman. As a whole, Biowar was kind of neat, and doesnt overstay its welcome with a drawnout 32 maps, like 32 Hours in Pain, a similar era TNT megawad (Harbin, Pcorf and Kristian would be somewhat tied together later on, amusingly). The megawad club was the chance I needed to push myself to actually finish it, as painful as the one map a day restriction is. For the next wad Equinox, my patch gives it widescreen graphics, a fixed Map 4 midi, and some impromptu fitting level names partially taken from the Dean of Doom episode. I'll probably play it in two-map bursts most days, as it tends to be broken up with smaller psuedo-hubs like BTSX, but the hubs actually have content. Map 2, 5, 8 and 11 are the hub maps, so plan around them

Map 15 was oddly easy for a map so near the end. It does look nice though. The archvile near the end has a fun little ambush set up, first time players will likely be eaten on both sides by the sneaky demons that are woken up when you inevitably instinctshoot the vile in your face. Secret exit was pretty much totally unmarked wallhump level to access, figured the archvile platform from earlier that needs an AV jump to get onto was the key, seems no? Map 31 is where I realised I am using an outdated version of my own patch. The current version clears all the intermission text, while the one im using does not, and also 'fixes' the typo of the Secret level name, which I reverted due to the 'typo' being right there in front of you in the level textures. As for the level itself..hooboy, definitely the kind of thing one expects to find in a secret slot. Its pretty much 'look, its my favourite band at the time! *fanboy noises*' in another short hubspoke of challenges. It actually has both boss monsters too. I died to the opening chaingunner trap the first time, which is lessened if you get the secret invisibility. Blue room after it was more lethal than the other two rooms, amusingly enough. Cyb was easily taken down by getting him to attack the revenants, then sliding two BFG balls up his butt.

Map 14 is moody affair thats nowhere near the chaos of the previous map, but I still enjoyed it. These maps are getting very TNT-like as they go on, could probably retexture a lot of maps with the TNT iwad and have nothing amiss. The chapel got my Fuck-off BFG to cler out the horde...did not expect the baron to ambush me though. Or the second rise from the floor baron later on for that matter. The 6 chaingunner courtyard got me good. I see I wasnt the only one to think that! I nearly skipped today's map, as Kingdom Hearts came out on Steam today, but once I realised how bad the resolution is on the two movies on the first collection, I set the movie to play in the background for the unlocks, while playing Doom in the other window. Multitasking!

12 was pretty neat. Central platform with teleports to four visible buildings out around it, each with a mini-challenge inside. The excess of backpacks in the center caught me offguard, figured it was just two. 13 was pretty damn awesome. Long and winding, 300+ enemies, very 'Team TNT' feeling level. The titular prison itself was oddly difficult, kept getting revenant rocketed in a tight space with no room to dodge. The multiple returns to long lifts was a bit annoying, but it just reminded me of 90s classic jank and I cant fault it for that. The Gigerwalls were an interesting touch too.

I really liked 10 and 11. The attempt at making a dark forest in the doom engine worked pretty well, given the limitations, and the tensest moment was a spot where chaingunners were hidden in the trees over a ravine, only visible when they fired. The two spots where you can look out onto decorative tree areas was also neat, its like a dark grove inside a cave. The ice level after it reminded me of Hexen in a way, Herian in others, and was good fun. Especially the final segment: Berserk Potatoman punches many demons while descending an elevator

Map 9, Security, is an oddball in that it is also present in Twilight Zone 2 as Map 10. Something similar happens in Reqiuem, where a map in it was taken from Trooper's Playground, resulting in having to play the map twice if your playing through both. I quite liked this one, and since Twilight Zone 2 has the weird MS paint stuff as a major turn off, this version is probably the nicer one to look at. Just uh, dont mind the baby walls. Secrets were absolutely everywhere, defanging nearly every fight if you know where they are prior. Major points to the BFG secret in the tiniest cubbyhole that sics an archvile on your ass as its victim. Also points for Mark Klem's absolute best midi