Everything About Doom In Eight Minutes
Before Dead Space, before Halo, and before Aliens: Colonial Fuck-Ups, there was Doom, one of the greatest and most influential video games ever created. Also, it was one of the first games where I actually memorized some of the codes and gleefully walked through walls for probably hours on end. (At the behest of my good friends, no doubt.)
The always snazzy YouTube page Did You Know Gaming? focused a video on Doom (and its first two sequels), delving into not only its development history but also sharing details on everything from inspirations to enemies to weapons.
For anyone who hasn’t ever searched for Doom’s Wikia page, this video should please you to no end. I can’t imagine how bonkers I would have gone over this video had I somehow been able to watch it at 12 years old.
I’m kind of ashamed to say that I knew next to none of the information shared here and that I haven’t thought about Doom all that much since I last played Doom II almost 20 years ago. It’s always good to mix a little nostalgia in with your education, right?
For instance, I had no idea Doom was originally going to be an
Alien tie-in game and that id Software was actually corresponding with 20th Century Fox before id Software decided they wanted to be able to do anything they wanted.
Thus, they used some influences but passed on the aliens in favor of a “demons from Hell on Mars” scheme. Smart. Even smarter? A chainsaw and shotgun inspired by the Evil Dead series.
It was also interesting to see that, had it not been for creator and plot-basher John Carmack, Doom would have been a far different game where the story was concerned.
Luckily, Carmack didn’t shit on making soundalike songs for the games’ soundtracks and also thought it was fine to pepper other references into the game. I barely remember finding the secret rooms, but I know my friends and I never found the Castle Wolfenstein room, especially not the one with the swastika.
Now all I want to do is put aside my family and job and just dig into video games for a while. Like, maybe a month? Two months? I don’t need food or anything, do I?
