Happy Birthday Doom!

The game that revolutionized the PC first person shooter was released 13 years ago. And some could even argue that it was this game that was the impetus behind many upgrades in the early 90’s. I remember upgrading PC’s from the 486SX-33 to a 486DX-66 for customers at my first computer job simply because people needed to run this game faster.

From the Reg here:

Doom, the game that defined the first-person shoot-’em-up category, turned 13 yesterday – an appropriate anniversary to mark the debut of the SCI-FI and horror-themed title. The game was made available to the public, via an FTP site, on 10 December 1993.

Developed by Id Software, Doom wasn’t the first first-person shooter – Id’s own Wolfenstein 3D holds that accolade. But Doom introduced features that ensured the popularity of the genre: complex lighting and shadows, rooms that aren’t aligned to a simple grid, indoor and outdoor combat zones, staircases and moving platforms, network play, and a customisable map format.

I remember going to my brother’s house where we would play this game over a laplink cable. What would invariably start out as cooperative mode always ended up in deathmatch. Most fun was when Heretic, another similar ID game came out. When fighting in Deathmatch, you could cast a spell to turn your opponent into a chicken. But the chicken was not powerless- it could fly around very quickly and peck the ankles of your opponent, and if the chicken pecked enough, it could actually kill him with its beak!

I wonder if Doom will run under my Vista beta? Hmmm….