Doom - 10 Years Later

Post by trog @ 03:49pm 11/12/03 | 77 Comments

Doom, id Software's classic first person shooter which helped define the genre, has reached a new milestone with its 10th birthday. In the absence of having the time to pay it the homage it deserves, I've written up a quick history of my memories of the early years and how significant a role Doom played in directing my life so far.

Fortunately, a few other places do have the time to give Doom some extended hero worshipping: GameSpy have their own coverage up, and GumbyNoTalent pointed out that Doomworld are running a feature over the next few days looking at all the things that have kept Doom kicking.

doom

Latest Comments

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trog
Posted 03:51pm 11/12/03

(Gumby, sorry to lock your thread but I had that just about ready to post and was just trying to finish spamming together that history)

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Mantra
Posted 03:55pm 11/12/03

Trog can be so cruel...

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natslovR
Posted 04:04pm 11/12/03

1993 and still using bbs's. Ha!

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Boxhead
Posted 04:05pm 11/12/03

dwango5... wow...

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GumbyNoTalent
Posted 04:14pm 11/12/03

Nice read Trog, got all misty eyed remembering December 93 and the Doom release. Luckily I was working for a company that had a 60 seat novell network and we regularly had 8 player Doom sessions after/during and before work, funning thing was there was only 2 Admins and me the other 5 where all from the engineering workshop, they were all completely blown away with it, I sold alot of 386's that year.

We eventually organised a match against QUT computer department, which on of mates was heading one of the departments, this became a fortnightly regular at my work. I also used the Redcliffe Library BBS to play at home on my 14.4 modem in some death matches, un fortunately my enthusiasm far exceeded my ability.

A few years earlier I was blown away with Wolfstien 3d but Doom was a whole different Kettle of fish, I had played 1 on 1 games since 88 using Modems and null Modems on my AtariST but to have 8 people all playing in the one game, FARKEN AWESOME. In 93 I was already a 14 year veteran playing computer games starting with my ZX81 in 79 then my TRS80 in 1980 but nothing blow my mind as much as that first Doom 8 player session.

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trog
Posted 04:22pm 11/12/03

1993 and still using bbs's. Ha!

I spurned the Internet, until I got free access at Uni

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Primal
Posted 04:24pm 11/12/03

well.. that explains why trog flames/nukes/bans anyone who puts doom down.. :P

doom, bakestone, wolf, systemshock, quake.. all good old games..

the quake3 demo was the game which really blew my mind at the time..

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Sancho
Posted 04:25pm 11/12/03

hey gumby can i ask how old you are?

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Opec
Posted 04:28pm 11/12/03

Gumby is older than Jim. That's all you need to know.....

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Haklin
Posted 04:37pm 11/12/03

ahh good days..oldest memory i remember of doom was getting a mate of mine (who now works at internode) to load it up on my 486 using 10 or so floppy disks..being only 20 now i was just getting the hang of msdos back then:P

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GumbyNoTalent
Posted 04:38pm 11/12/03

38 and I believe Jim is older and a few other are older. I have a group of mates, a core of 8 that have been playing computer games with since our C64 days in 84, and 2 since TRS80 days in high school.

PS we still get together every 2 months for a lan session.

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natslovR
Posted 04:38pm 11/12/03

I spurned the Internet, until I got free access at Uni

Free internet - Was there any other kind back then?

OT: networked doom rocked. My first lan was death match doom round robin - Winner took home $120. 20 people entered.

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GumbyNoTalent
Posted 05:15pm 11/12/03

hehe the gamespy coverage points to doomworld instead of http://www.gamespy.com/articles/december03/doom/memories/

EDIT: fixed now I see

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trog
Posted 06:06pm 11/12/03

linking is a lot harder than it looks

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blahnana
Posted 06:12pm 11/12/03

I played anyone I could find in .au who was willing to stand to the challenge.

Though that really consisted of hanging out in #doom waiting for people with a .au on their address ;)

Still. Between us GreatSage and I managed to defeat anyone who rose to the challenge.

Boy, those were some days. Always got my heart pumping. I don't seem to care as much if I win or lose these days. Sometimes it happens, but not much. I must be getting old.

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trog
Posted 06:15pm 11/12/03

psycho.wad! Man, that's the last level I remember playing over and over again; that was such a fun level

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Creepy
Posted 06:17pm 11/12/03

mmmmm

e1m5 music

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plok
Posted 06:25pm 11/12/03

sersetup -com4 -dial 12345678 -deathmatch -skill 4 -nomonsters

Then spend about an hour on the phone talking the newbie you found on some random BBS through his modem.cfg file...

Of course, the above is clearly not a game with trog, who always insisted on the plasma spamming skill 1 princess setting.

ipxsetup -nodes 4 -nomonsters -skill 4 -warp 7 -deathmatch

Looking for a node b******..
(|) (/) (-) (\) (|) (/)

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thraxjor
Posted 06:25pm 11/12/03

dame I remeber when I played doom with my brother we would race throught the game like mad man, than my old man brought home a IPX cable and few network cards and I was so blow away at CO-OP :)

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blahnana
Posted 06:31pm 11/12/03

Haha you respawning megasphere pimp with your lamo deathmatch 2 rules.

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Creepy
Posted 06:34pm 11/12/03

Deathmatch 2 was/is for gimps

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plok
Posted 06:40pm 11/12/03

True doom mastery remains so tantilisingly close for you blah, as it ever has done.

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gale
Posted 06:50pm 11/12/03

theres nothing like re-living the glory days of gaming....

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stewbie
Posted 06:59pm 11/12/03

Yeah for sure i remember back when i bought the doom shareware, those were the days.

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ara
Posted 07:06pm 11/12/03

I remember coming into #doom with snail and all these crazy queenslanders asking us to dial them for some MoDooM.

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Jerds
Posted 07:44pm 11/12/03

Nice work, trogdor.

Yeah, I remember the day. Doom II was my debut into the competitive gaming scene, winning $100 for coming first in a 24 person competition at Southern Cross Uni, Lismore.

Only one guy used the mouse - he swore by it. Everyone laughed at him.
He beat everyone... Except me. :)

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Creepy
Posted 08:08pm 11/12/03

Ah...those were the days...when you could rule with teh keyboard..

And +mlook was but a twinkle in Carmack's eye...

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Top Dog
Posted 08:22pm 11/12/03

Another 10years until DOOM III's Release

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Andrew
Posted 08:56pm 11/12/03

doom, the start of my love for fps games, even my dad played it!
Man it rocked hard on my 386SX with 8mb of ram, but when we got it upgraded to a 386DX, it only came with 4mb so it didnt work quite well :(

I 7-8 years old and i loved it, i do belive its the game i have played the most.
Unfortunately i never played it multiplayer, the first multiplayer games i expereinced where Quake and D3D, back in 97, but meh, i thinki i played Doom over ipx about a year later tho...

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Deadly-Fly
Posted 10:13pm 11/12/03

Doom broke my LAN virginity to. Me, my mate and a guitar amp for a speaker... ah the memories :)

I don't remember anything about the setup, all I remember is shooting rockets and killing s***.

Is there any server support for doom?

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trog
Posted 10:21pm 11/12/03

I remember coming into #doom with snail and all these crazy queenslanders asking us to dial them for some MoDooM.

Yeh, and you cheap pussies would never pick up the gauntlet!@#

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ara
Posted 10:29pm 11/12/03

Yeh, and you cheap pussies would never pick up the gauntlet!@#

I believe snail called Blah up and schooled him, then told me the queenslanders were easy meat so i didn't bother.

I called Chunk international once and he schooled me good.

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trog
Posted 10:35pm 11/12/03

hahaah you got beaten by chunk!@#?!@$!

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plok
Posted 10:47pm 11/12/03

Heh, that is pretty bad. Snail was a decent player in that blah and I wouldn't be too unhappy if he managed to stay on about 1/2 our frags.

After a very narrow loss to fubar on Dead Simple in altdeath (that's the flag you're looking for blah) I decided to convert to mouse like b2 had done.

I called several American's in the day, but the connection was pretty s*** back then. I split two games with Arcademan before our connection dropped in the third with him apparently ahead by a few frags at the time ("I was on 77.. what were you on?", "Around 80ish I think...")

pipx was a great little ipx emulator over the parallel port that gave a much smoother game than serial cabled games.

One of the great things about doom/2 was the lack of frag indicators for the other players. With 4 good players it made for an incredibly tense time when you get into the 90's (playing first to 100 then end the level). It always seemed like you'd hit a frag drought and all you'd hear is another dude racking up frag after cheap f*****g frag and you'd be all FUUUUCCCKKKK.... The amounts of adrenalin that those games of doom/2 generated time after time was obscene.

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Jim
Posted 10:50pm 11/12/03

heh, adrenalin
what a deathmatch newb

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ara
Posted 11:01pm 11/12/03

snail and i converted to mouse when this german exchange student came to our school one year toting a mouse and some skills.

after that, we saw the light and converted and never looked back.

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Dan
Posted 11:07pm 11/12/03

haha remember that time cpyr and I pasted plok and rukh in a team dm. That was awesome.

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Rukh
Posted 11:10pm 11/12/03

Damn I had so much fun back when Doom and later Doom were released. I remember when blahnana, b2 etc. came over to mine and plok's place in Indro and we lanned it up all night again and again (what the f*** was that uni thing again?)

I also remember the first time I played the Aliens: TC mod for Doom. The first and pretty much the only computer game I've played that's made me SCARED to enter a certain part of a level. That was such a great mod.

As trog mentioned, there were so many great maps and mods for Doom and Doom 2. I remember mucking around with DeHacked and creating the obligatory fully automatic super shotgun ;) What a cainer weapon!

A year or two after Doom 2 was released I remember playing on various BBSs taking on their "best" players and laughing when then they were obviously keyboarders. I had plenty of fun circling around them punching them to death while they slowly tried to face me to blast me with their shotgun or plasmagun ;)

Co-op....a nice change from deathmatch, though in truth it very quickly turned into a biased form of deathmatch ;) Lots of "accidental" kills and "accidental" reprisal kills ;)

Doom 2 is still THE fps in my book. Sure, it's pretty old tech now, and I need to dual boot to be able to play it, but it was just so much fun!

As plok said earlier, those 4 player first to 100 (and then exit) games were pure excitement. The not knowing how close everyone was to winning....hanging out near the exit in case you saw someone running to it with the intention of triggering it....avoiding stagrrr's no-skill rocket spam or Blahnana-of-the-Plasmagun... :P controlling or trying to control the super shotgun room in map01 ;)

Ahhh the memories!

Happy birthday Doom!

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ara
Posted 11:12pm 11/12/03

heh, adrenalin
what a deathmatch newb

plok always was easily excited, unable to keep cool under pressure.

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Creepy
Posted 11:20pm 11/12/03

Ahhhh

Dead Simple marathons in the wee hours...

*wipes away tear*

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Jim
Posted 02:17am 12/12/03

your gay

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Passenger
Posted 02:27am 12/12/03

and your cool :P

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maxe
Posted 02:31am 12/12/03

I love trog

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c0mpleX
Posted 09:29am 12/12/03

I was but 5 when Doom cameth out... but by the ripe old age of 7 I had mastered the "quick! parents are coming exit exit exit!" skill with my freinds (some old folks dont like their 7 year olds playing 'killographic :P' games).

Doom III.... *drooooooool*

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blahnana
Posted 10:32am 12/12/03

After a very narrow loss to fubar on Dead Simple in altdeath (that's the flag you're looking for blah) I decided to convert to mouse like b2 had done.

The sad thing is, I typed it, and I knew it was wrong, but couldn't think of the real one and the shame was awful, but I left it anyway knowing that someone would correct me, and it would invariably be mr perfect pants plok :P

Yeah, that's the one :)

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blahnana
Posted 10:34am 12/12/03

I was but 5 when Doom cameth out... but by the ripe old age of 7 I had mastered the "quick! parents are coming exit exit exit!" skill with my freinds (some old folks dont like their 7 year olds playing 'killographic :P' games).

All games should be "F10 y" and quit so fast. Of course you're left with a huge ascii ad screen (or thankyou screen), but what the hell. I usually flipped the big power switch on my 386 and raced for my bed. I tended to play in the early mornings :)

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dais
Posted 10:51am 12/12/03

I feel like such a newbie having never played multiplayer Doom. Respect

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GumbyNoTalent
Posted 10:56am 12/12/03

Just read the next installment on Doomworld top 100 wads and they still haven't mentioned the Simpsons WAD, that was the best WAD in my books, well not really but it made me laugh...

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dranged
Posted 12:54pm 12/12/03

I got raped by blahnana too. 100 to -13 or thereabouts. I think he converted me to mouse. :)

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trog
Posted 01:26pm 12/12/03

haha dRanged I remember playing with you once at b2s place; we had the two PCs set up in b2s room and there were more out in the lounge; I was sitting on b2s bed watching you play and at once stage you got smacked by a rocket and fell ass-backwards off your chair!@#! haha it makes me laugh just thinking about it

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Mortis
Posted 02:07pm 12/12/03

I still remember my first game of doom... went over to a mates house who had just got it. Basically shat my pants when I met the first monster, was totally hooked after that

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Jim
Posted 02:08pm 12/12/03

38 and I believe Jim is older

nah, I'm 31

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plok
Posted 04:19pm 12/12/03

Jim actually meant to say 32, given he was already 1 the day he was born.

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c0mpleX
Posted 07:34pm 12/12/03

Well i just bought Doom II on the GBA - and its amzingly good! Brilliant graphics for a handheld, with great textures an special effects (in fact it is pretty much just Doom 2 set to lower graphics on a 4 inch screen). Levels are also almost 100% accurate, give or take a few rooms or walls.

And i now realise just how good Doom was and still is - the combination of occasional genuine horror and adrenaline combined with brilliant weapons (chck-chck boom! NEXT! chck...) and poi-fect enemies actually makes it FUN for your fingers to ache so much.

I guess i figured that now we have games like Serious Sam with flashy gfx and hundreds of enemies Doom would seem boring and pointless, but revisiting it even on a handheld is a joy (i had to force myself away to play a few rounds of BF1942...)

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Jim
Posted 01:14am 13/12/03

with maths like that plok, it's no wonder you think you were always on top of the scoreboard

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Visser
Posted 09:03am 13/12/03

I didnt even have a computer then, and im still getting all nostalgic :/

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character
Posted 09:23am 13/12/03

with maths like that plok, it's no wonder you think you were always on top of the scoreboard

unless he's japanese ... don't the japanese count your age from you being 1 the day you are born? (correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that as some random fact we learnt in highschool, or even primary school jap, so either I, or my teacher am/was talking out of my/their arse)

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c0mpleX
Posted 09:33am 13/12/03

chinese as well i think

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BassMan
Posted 09:58am 13/12/03

i remember of doom was getting a mate of mine (who now works at internode) to load it up on my 486 using 10 or so floppy disks

I remember it being 3 or 4 disks? Remember they fitted the shareware (the entire 1st EP, "Knee Deep in the Dead" or something on one disk)...

I remember booting with HIMEMSYS so I could squeese in my mouse driver and still play the game. Remember how the right mouse button made you walk forward - using a mouse, you could play Doom while eating a samwich with your other hand. :)

As for MP, I remember mucking around with that DOS driven menu system beeping at me as it synchronised the various players. Mad fun once you got it going though.

Also for those that haven't heard it before (I've posted it in the past), a metal cover of the Doom theme by the guitarist in my band:
http://members.optushome.com.au/pbuttery/Andrew_Parker_-_Doom.mp3

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Jim
Posted 12:13pm 13/12/03

unless he's japanese ...

well he doesn't look japanese, but it would certainly explain his genetic deficiencies

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kyndig
Posted 06:53pm 14/12/03

Didn't know that pl0k was such an venerated player( I'm just a noob who played against him a little in RTCW), and sucks to anyone who thinks that a long playing career is a sign of loserdom. It's stuff like this that shows how gaming is an established pasttime.

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Rukh
Posted 06:55pm 14/12/03

You're confusing plok with pl0k. plok is old school. pl0k is not.

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Kimbo
Posted 10:38am 15/12/03

www.doomsdayhq.com - If your still game :)

I still remember doing IPX/SPX over the BBS system. The name of the system was Games Universe.

But thats another story.

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Kimbo
Posted 10:43am 15/12/03

But then it sort of went to Artifact Quake in 1998.

I also remember we just to jolt the school room's computer lab door and sneak in and have a few rounds of Doom in 95'

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intrik
Posted 01:09pm 15/12/03

Excellent read Trog, I enjoyed that - it reminds me of myself and friends, but on a much younger scale. SO 10 years ago i would have been eight, that would be around year 5?

I remember staying up with my brother till like... 11PM (like, really late :P )

Damn kiddies, at least it wasn't CS.

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Sparky
Posted 08:21pm 15/12/03

I remember the days of the Interactive Web up at Paddo (Lan Cafe, one of the first In Brissy too). Saturday competitions rawked, I was however still keyboard back then though, only switched to mouse during the Quake/D3d phase.

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Sephiroth
Posted 07:08pm 15/12/03

Nobody seems to have queried Gumby on how he could possibly have had 8 player games at his work, when Doom did in fact have a maximum playercount of 4 prior to the Doom 95 release.

*badoom tish* Thanks, I'm here till Thursday, try the veal.

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trog
Posted 07:15pm 15/12/03

I started to, then decided he must've had 2x4 player games going at the same time

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GumbyNoTalent
Posted 10:19am 16/12/03

Nobody seems to have queried Gumby on how he could possibly have had 8 player games at his work, when Doom did in fact have a maximum playercount of 4 prior to the Doom 95 release.

Good point, I'm old and my memory is fading, you youngins want to take my license away, I'll get the AARP onto you...

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Loki
Posted 02:33pm 16/12/03

Sifn't 12th man Doom2 Wad.
*push wall*

"Cheering in background... 'yeah he may be showin a tonne of courage tony but he's showin he's got no f***** brains if ya ask me'".

Doom2 Double-Barrel shotgun still remains the best weapon of any game to date, it had so much pizazz to it, awesome reload, sound and bite.

Co-op was what my mates and I used to play most :)
I remember beating a CyberDemon to death a with fists - damn did that take a long time :)

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trog
Posted 02:36pm 16/12/03

Sifn't 12th man Doom2 Wad.

heh, one of my friends made one of those - I wonder if the one you heard was the one he made? Do you remember what the noise was when you gibbed someone?

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alternate_ending
Posted 02:54pm 16/12/03

i stopped playing doom when i accidentally installed a corrupt version of a star wars mod, and it f***ed the whole thing, deleted episodes and stuff. After that, i couldn't get it back, so i gave up.

I never liked blakestone, tried 2 get into it a few times, but wasn't motivated enough.

What ever happened to apogee? A while ago i tried to track them down, and now 3dRealms distributes the shareware apogee games. Did they become 3dRealms or something?

Anyway, i just wanna say that Duke 3d never had anything on doom, it was 2 gimmiky.

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Sephiroth
Posted 11:07pm 16/12/03

Hehe Gumby. I'm no youngun myself, but you really old people shouldn't be on the road anyway.

*honks his horn*

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Monty
Posted 02:33pm 19/12/03

Shakespeare > Doom

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trog
Posted 02:59pm 19/12/03

haha, in yer dreams :)

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maxe
Posted 03:11pm 19/12/03

whos up for some massive co-op doom sessions when BPA goes 10gig next month?

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Axis
Posted 03:24pm 19/12/03

it wouldn't exactly be sucking down bandwidth...

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