DOOM -- The game that changed everything

Orignally posted July 5, 2020


I know what you're thinking after reading the heading. This will be yet another of the thousands of reviews of how great DOOM is. You're right it will--but hopefully with a different approach. If you're wanting a regular old DOOM review, just look around your favorite search engine for one. You can see the gameplay and hear the famous E1M1 music that most people that would be on my site already know about.

One thing about DOOM personally is it's the only game I never quit playing. I played DOOM in DOS, I kept playing it in Windows, I have versions on the Xbox and the Xbox 360. It was unique in that it never got old. Aside from that, what made DOOM for me wasn't the fact it was the game that made FPS popular, or that everything after became a "DOOM clone". Sure it's great at these things but there were already loads of Wolfenstein 3-D clones coming anyway. FPS gaming had already arrived.

For me, what made DOOM special was the multiplayer and the customization. DOOM was the first game I ever played with someone not only on another machine, but in another house across town! Screaming for no one to answer the phone while staring at a screen like this were common in my house.

DOOM is what made us young school-age kids spend weekends at friends houses trying to figure out how to hack together a null modem cable with whatever knowledge we could piece together from smarter people or what we'd seen in a computer book at the bookstore. It was 1994, the Internet wasn't common enough yet for most people to think to go look it up there--and it might not have been easy to find anyway.

Full Customization -- The WAD File

DOOM also introduced a lot more of us common nerds to being able to do anything from build their own levels to fully revamp the game from the bottom up. Born was the WAD file and with whatever editor tool you could get your hands on along with a simple command line option to load the file and you have your own levels. I specifically remember spending a lot of time in a tool called DoomEd. Not the official id Software tool either-- it was some fan-made Windows tool. Looking around for modern tools, it seems like Doom Builder is the most prevalent map editor. So, for the purposes of this review, instead of just playing DOOM and saying it's fun and great--I'm going to make a new level.

My first thought is, WOW! When I did this in the past it was much more tedious. My computer wasn't all that happy running DOS games in window and I was on Windows 3.1 at first. So, I would have to make tweaks, save the WAD, exit Windows, and load it into DOOM. Just to find out I had screwed it up and get to go back to Windows to fix, rinse, and repeat. Here, just 30 minutes in, I have a little entry room and a crude curved staircase.

Not only does Doom Builder show you floors, ceilings, brightness, etc in real time--it even has a 3D viewer!


All of those hours spent trying to line up textures and design the style of a room by going back and forth from the game are a thing of the past! After several hours (I probably spent 6-8 hours on this from start to finish) we have a new level!


I of course had to try it in my very old non-Ultimate version of DOOM in DosBox. It didn't even work right on an older version. So, moved the newest version of Ultimate DOOM over and it works great. I highly suggest if you've been living under a rock and want to play DOOM for the first time, check out the original DOS version for nostalgia sake--then just go play it in a modern port like ZDoom instead.



Here's my finished level up and running in regular old DOS DOOM v1.9 and it works great!

If anyone wants to try out my level, it will be included in a download link below. Also included are some other relevant things I referenced. Below that some cheat codes, because in this era if you weren't cheating you weren't trying!

Links and Downloads

Cheat Codes

Thanks for reading!