Reply To: What’s your DOOM origin story, and what Myths did you grow up believing?

[watchful]

#9528

My dad’s favorite BBS had a lot of shareware, so I recall getting Doom from there long before Doom 2 came out. It took a while to download on my 14.4 modem, IIRC. Then extracting and installing took a while too.

It was a blast and pushed my 486 (SX?) pretty hard. At some point I recall getting shareware CDs which always had Doom, sometimes even on the cover. One myth with them was that the CDs had *any* whole games. It was disappointing to realize they had nothing but shareware. Still, they were a lot more convenient when trying to install on my friends’ computers.

I also tried mods from the BBS and got warning messages about using them with shareware. Somehow one mod got past that and had some (all?) of the registered version when I only had shareware installed. Being taught to be very honest at all times, I dutifully called to report the WAD to the on-screen piracy reporting line. Only as I started making my own WADs did I realize it was just a quirk of getting mods running with the shareware. (I realized I could apply a registered patch to the shareware.)

Doom 2 came into my possession less than honestly while visiting a friend. We actually went to his friend’s house and borrowed his floppies despite his family being away from home. Doom 2 was fun but felt like an expansion pack, since so little changed. I expected to be able to jump, crouch, look up/down, or at least see more new content or story.

Around 95 I got my first legit ‘full’ copy of Doom by biking to the local Electronic Boutique. This was long before clerks would ask a kid’s age for violent games. Then I played it all afternoon when the parents were away.

My conservative parents were big believers in the satanic panic, so playing Doom required a closed door or very careful level selection when they were around. That’s also why I didn’t get legit copies sooner.

Thankfully my friends parents were more liberal or not around much. We enjoyed playing in the dark, on Halloween, and with Metallica or other heavy metal music blasting. We never really got multiplayer going with it, though we did eventually play MP with build engine games over modem and at school labs.

When Doom modding tools appeared on the BBS, I started making my own around 1995. It culminated in a short, themed level based on current events. While I was proud of the art I did in PSP to change enemies, it was overall in very poor taste. Thankfully that BBS passed away within a few years, and I lost all copies over time. Some things are better left in the past.

Many years later I tried Doom online with Zandronum and stumbled into a pretty sophisticated horde mode, before those became popular with games like L4D. It was surprisingly fun. In the past few years at my current job I’ve hosted a few team socials playing Doom: team DM, Chex Quest, SRB2, and CTF. It’s amazing how far folks have pushed the engine.