Seven years ago, I had this idea of cataloging my favorite WADs from Doom’s entire history. When I first set out, that history already spanned 19 years. Now we’re at 26 — and I’m looking back to realize that the most obvious WAD of them all still isn’t on this list. Over the course of 50 episodes, I haven’t at any point talked about the one WAD that kicked this thing off; I’ve never reviewed DOOM.WAD. Of course, everyone else has. In the Year of Our Lord 2020, you can probably find a thousand discussions, reviews, essays, and videos on
Tag: John Romero
Tech Gone Bad
John Romero is back, baby — and he’s brought a new Doom level with him. No, you didn’t read that wrong. Over twenty years after the game came out, Romero’s back with a freshly-baked map. Maybe the first of many, if we’re lucky. [Edit: We were.] Welcome to Tech Gone Bad, though “E1M8b,” the WAD’s file name, may be a more fitting title. This is Romero’s take on Phobos Anomaly, one of only two maps in Doom’s first episode that he didn’t make himself. Being E1M8, it’s a classic showdown with the Bruiser Brothers, only with a twist. And much
The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here: In Which I Somehow End Up Talking Mostly About Doom
I admit this without shame: for me, Alice in Chains is — like a disturbing number of things in my life, come to think of it — forever tied to my experience with Doom. Everything comes back to Doom. It is the great wellspring from which all nerdlove flows. When it comes to Alice in Chains specifically, Doom was that pushy matchmaker friend, pestering both parties despite all protestations, dragging them closer even against their will — until Alice in Chains and I came to realize we’d loved each other all along. That was sort of a weird metaphor. Okay, let
Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me About Dangerous Dave?
Seriously… this game. Seriously. Where have you been all my life? I’ll admit I’m biased toward liking Dangerous Dave. I have a kind of pseudo-nostalgia for this early era of PC games, in all its 16-color, PC speaker glory. I say pseudo-nostalgia because I wasn’t even around for it when it was going down. It really wasn’t until Doom that I came onto the PC gaming scene, but there’s still this warm, fuzzy feeling that creeps up on me when I load up these older games.
DOOM
Is your nostalgia center tingling yet? How about now? Doom is one of those games that almost anyone, gamer or no, has heard of. And if you played it back in its prime, you probably have a lot of fond memories. I don’t think anyone would argue if I called it one of the most beloved games of all time. There’s a staggering amount of stuff to talk about when it comes to Doom: its frenetic, balls-to-the-wall gameplay; its technical achievements that revolutionized PC gaming; the parade of sequels (of varying quality) that followed; its identity in the late ’90s