Any discussion of the history of Doom WADs eventually arrives back at a single map from 1994 called Doomsday of UAC. But you might know it better simply by its filename:
UAC_DEAD.
Leo Martin Lim’s Doomsday of UAC is one of the earliest and most famous WADs ever made. If you can put on your 1994 glasses, it’s not hard to see why. The Doom community was ravenous for good custom content in that first year after the game’s release, and Doomsday was probably the best you could find. It towered, head and shoulders above the crowd, with a combination of a semi-realistic setting, cutting-edge visual tricks, and fairly solid gameplay. Even today, all you have to do is forgive the poor texturing and big empty spaces, and there’s a lot still to love about this map.
The text file sets up your premise: Hell has attacked from inside a UAC base in Jakarta. You’re sent via semi truck (for some reason) with five of your marine buddies to go stop the invasion. As you reach the base, demons attack the truck, causing it to roll over. Your friends are all carried off, but you’re left behind because you were in a secret compartment (for some reason).
You exit the truck and are immediately set upon from all directions. This may be the hardest sequence, with spectres difficult to make out against the dark pavement of the parking lot, and shotgunners pelting you from a decent distance. Once things calm down, you can survey the overturned truck, wheels still spinning idly — some truly impressive sector and texturing work that must have exploded brains back in ’94. From here you can enter the facility or go around back to the courtyard. A welcome desk awaits inside, with passages around to maybe the first ever Doom bathrooms. The courtyard, in turn, leads down into an eerie parking garage with a decent ambush for the unsuspecting victim. Two keys are found in these areas, which you can find in either order but are both required to pass through a security station complete with metal-detector/weapon-scanner checkpoint. Beyond that is a board room and some sort of executive office with a secret entrance to Hell itself.
The Hell portion of the map is where Lim really shows off his bag of tricks, mainly in the form of invisible sectors. You first descend deep into Hell, then up a haunting stairway made of thin air, marked only by candles running along its sides. When you finally reach the cyberdemon guarding the final key, he floats a few feet above the floor, surrounded by his new minions (your dead pals!!!) in silent repose until you defeat his baron guardians first. Once you’ve finished those last demons, you begin the long, quiet journey back to your starting location — a surprisingly effecting ending.
Doomsday of UAC is a story of firsts. Not only is it one of the earliest WADs made, it was one of the first WADs to aim at building a realistic place, the first time we got bathrooms in Doom (probably), the first instance of invisible sectors, and the first use of textures to create pseudo colored lighting, at least to my knowledge. Doomsday was massively ahead of its time, even in ways you might not expect. In the hallway leading to the exit switch, some environmental damage cuts off your path back to the rest of the map. You’re at the exit switch, though, so it’s not like it really matters, right? But Lim had enough forethought to add in a secret door that would take you around the damaged hallway and back outside — just in case you wanted to keep exploring before you leave!
Being first at so many things doesn’t make a great WAD. Doomsday is great because it’s great. It crafts a truly atmospheric journey by starting you off in familiar, real-life settings — before throwing you down into the literal pits of Hell. It’s the narrative element that stands out 25 years later: the care that was put into the small, simple story it tells through its short sequence of environments. Doomsday works wonders in that capacity, and it does it in style.
Every Doomer should give this WAD a play. Even if you’re some kind of robot and don’t get any enjoyment out of it, there’s a fascinating vision here of where we came from.
Doomsday of the UAC requires DOOM.WAD and runs on any sourceport out there. If you’re not sure how to get it running, this may help. And for more awesome WADs, be sure to check these out!