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17 Hell-Raising Facts About 'Doom'

Some BTS details about the game that invented shotgun exorcism.

17 Hell-Raising Facts About 'Doom'

October 23, 2021

PC gaming in the early ’90s was crazy. Things happened so fast, you had no time to blink. One day you were helping a pixel with feet punch pixels with teeth, and the next you were fighting demons face to face in glorious 320x200, 256 color VGA. We don’t need to tell you that Doom changed gaming forever -- we’re here to bring you juicy behind-the-scenes stuff. (And to tell you that Doom changed gaming forever, because we’re that kind of people.) So start humming that E1M1 theme and read on…

17

Just four guys invented first-person shooters. While Doom wasn't the first game to give you a POV shot of the game world, it did become the blueprint for the genre, set out by the founders of id Software - John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack. — Source: PCMag

16

Doom could have been an official Aliens game. According to John Romero, id Software was offered the license to Aliens. They decided to turn it down, however, as they didn't want to take someone else's directions about what they could and couldn't do. — Source: Doom Center (via archive.org)

15

Stephen King was (very indirectly) related to the development of Doom Some -game textures (mostly architectural gargoyles) were scanned from the photo book Nightmares in the Sky, which features text written by King. — Source: DoomWiki.org

14

The name Doom came from a Tom Cruise movie. What you got in there, Cruise's character is asked in The Color of Money, about his pool stick case. Doom, he replies, and proceeds to kick ass at the game. That... was how I viewed US springing the game on the industry, John Carmack has said. — Sources: Doomworld, Movie scene on YouTube

13

Dungeons and Dragons was a big influence. Doom's cacodemon is the head of an Astral Dreadnought, as it appears on the cover of the D&D book Manual of the Planes. Also, aspects of the game came from a long-running D&D campaign the dev team was playing. — Source: DoomWiki.org

12

The Doomguy's grunt of pain is a dude taking a dump. Most of the iconic Doom sounds are stock effects, often creatively edited- demon growls are usually animal sounds, but the cacodemon dying sounds like roller blades, of all things. And when the Doomguy takes damage, a snippet is played of a man straining himself on a toilet. — Source: decino on YouTube

11

Doom aimed at being Aliens meets Evil Dead II. The reason you get a chainsaw is because Ash has one. — Sources: Doomworld, DoomWiki.org

10

Doomguy’s face was on screen even before Doom. Catacomb 3-D was kind of a proto-Doom id Software made for another company to fulfill contract obligations. The main character’s face on the screen (among other things) then carried over to Wolfenstein 3D, and finally Doom. — Sources: IGN, Gameplay on YouTube

9

Sources: Bethesda, DoomWiki.org

8

Doom

The Doomguy's hands belong to artist Kevin Cloud. Cloud was hired to lend a hand to lead artist Adrian Carmack. He ended up lending his appropriately hairy arms to the Doomguy, to punch and blast demons back to Hell in a manly way. — Sources: Bethesda, DoomWiki.org

7

The Spider Mastermind is Freddy Krueger's brother (sort of). BUWW The ugly boss was built using steel and foam rubber by Gregor Punchatz, an FX artist who worked on RoboCop and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. Most other monsters were posable clay sculptures. — Sources: Bethesda, DoomWiki.org

6

John Romero posed for the cover illustration A model was hired for reference photos, but the guy couldn't manage to look like he was fending off demons. Frustrated, Romero took his shirt off and grabbed the prop gun to show the illustrator what he wanted. Or, as Romero puts it himself, I AM THE DOOMGUY. — Source: Rome.ro

5

The Icon of Sin exists because there wasn't time to create a new boss. The new enemies in Doom II were easy they were either based on other enemies, or made for the first Doom but unused. A boss is a different thing, so level designer Sandy Petersen thought of just hanging a demon texture on a wall and releasing the game on time. — Source: Donanım Günlüğü

4

Doom's music was inspired by metal groups of the time. Such a metal game concept needed an appropriately metal soundtrack. Developer John Romero gave composer Robert Prince some Black Sabbath tapes to take inspiration from, and Prince also took cues from Alice in Chains, Slayer, Soundgarden, and others. — Sources: Doom Wiki, DoomWiki.org

3

Doom exists partly thanks to the U.S. Air Force. If Doom can run on anything today, it's because it was optimized for PCs not really intended for anything more graphics-intensive than a spreadsheet. To achieve this, John Carmack used software techniques developed by the USAF in the '60s for flight simulators. — Source: Ars Technica

2

Hell is in... New Mexico? The game's first episode canonically happens in a moon of Mars, but the sky is a stock photo taken in Yangshuo, China. The sky graphics for episodes 2 and 3 come from Utah and the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, respectively. — Source: decino on YouTube

1

Doom was originally more ambitious than the game we got. The initial Doom Bible (written by developer Tom Hall) describes a game with several named characters, an elaborate gameplay, and an ongoing storyline told with cinematics. Most of the features were never implemented, basically because they had to release the game at some point. — Source: Doomworld, The Doom Bible (via Doomworld)

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