With all the uncertainty and stresses we face at the moment there's still room for distractions that are well worth it. Case in point, one of the key founders and developers from id Software's rise in the 1990s, and one of the creative leads on the original Doom - John Romero - playing DOOM Eternal. Developed and released by id Software in 2020.

This is John firing up the campaign for the first time, playing on Ultra Violence. It's wholesome ripping and tearing.

Romero worked at id Software from its inception in 1991 until 1996. He was involved in the creation of several milestone games, including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth and Quake. He served as executive producer (and game designer) on Heretic and Hexen. He designed most of the first episode of Doom, a fourth of the levels in Quake, and half the levels in the Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny. He wrote many of the tools used at id Software to create their games, including DoomEd (level editor), QuakeEd (level editor), DM (for deathmatch launching), DWANGO client (to connect the game to DWANGO's servers), TED5 (level editor for the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny), IGRAB (for grabbing assets and putting them in WAD files), the installers for all the games up to and including Quake, the SETUP program used to configure the games, and several others. In his keynote speech at WeAreDevelopers Conference 2017, Romero named this period Turbo Mode, in which he emphasizes having created 28 games, in 5.5 years with a team consisting of fewer than 10 developers.

For the full Twitch VOD - head here. It's awesome being able to watch one of the creators of Doom learn the re-imagined mechanics and have fun with Eternal -- even if that first Arachnotron encounter takes a while. It's the sort of entertainment we need right now -- after completing a Glory Kill he notes "that's a lot of health for killing stuff".