Wolf3D, Doom, Quake: share your stories

Hopefully, this first post of mine will be a good one. I have a few quick-yet-hopefully-entertaining tales of these three classics, and I'll present two of them here (long-windedly, I'm afraid):

Wolfenstein 3D
I got my first computer in 1993, when I was 14 – a clunky old 486. As a gift a friend's brother gave me a copy of Wolf3D, which said friend and I installed and played well into the night. We finally retired, and less than an hour later he was thrashing on his air mattress on the floor of my room, talking in his sleep. "You! You... Fuck you, Hitler, you bastard!" he yelled, oblivious to the world.

"You get him, pal," I replied, laughing. "You tell that Nazi bastard who's boss!" My friend flopped around for a bit more like a fish on a pier, uttered a few more obscenities at the Fuhrer and finally settled down.

Doom
"There's a new game coming out," my friend's brother said with a grin. He was driving us through the early-evening countryside, through the trees and into the series of hills where his own family called home. It was only a couple of months after I'd started in on Wolf3D. "Wolfenstein is going to seem like nothing," he said.

My interest piqued, I asked him to continue. "Doom" — the first time I'd ever heard the title of the game — "is going to have all sorts of crazy things: lights that flicker, better layouts, stairs—"

I stopped him. "Stairs?"

"Yeah, and windows too. Different elevations with doors and whatnot."

"Oh, man," I breathed. I was really getting excited. To a 14-year-old living in the country, this was a big deal. I was picturing the scenarios. In truth, however, I didn't really know what to expect. I certainly didn't expect the game to have the impact it did, on my own life as well as on others'.

When Doom was released on shareware later that year, all of my friends with access to a PC grabbed a copy. The funny thing was, none of us had internet connections at the time, yet we managed to get our hands on crudely decorated floppy disks and pass them around.

Playing that first episode of Doom — still my favourite movement in the entire series' span — was one of those memories that always stuck with me. Everything my friend's brother said was true; there was the lighting, the stairs, the windows...

The windows.

More than anything, Doom's ability to provide not only constricted corridors but sprawling, if crude, vistas was what hooked me on the game. To this day, when I see the hills in which we drove on a misty, grey day, I think first and solely of Doom. Of "The Hangar." Those grey, craggy cliffs of Phobos have always meant "home" to me, because of this particular correlation. Entirely because of this, I have a hard time letting go of Doom. (Not that I'm particularly trying.)

By the time I made it to Map 8 of the first episode, I was entirely captivated by the game. When those two Barons of Hell greeted me in surprise, I let out a bark of fear and promptly died, too scared to play properly. I grinned like a kid grins after coming out of a long, perilous water slide, and jumped back in.

After I got the full game, Doom was a full-fledged phenomenon, but it wasn't until Doom II that I managed my very first deathmatch. Once again it involved my friend's brother, who humped his PC tower and monitor to my place for a game. After all the hassles that constituted trying to set up a network game on a PC in 1994, we played for as many hours as we could. I remember my first deathmatch death, at the tender age of 15 — I took a rocket in the face from the complete opposite side of Map 13, "Downtown." My opponent was camping on top of a building. It was fantastic.

My interest in the game continued in earnest for many years. I built WADs; I even created a comic as a school project that illustrated the game's meagre storyline. Somehow, I figured out how to play the voice sample from Doom II backwards — the one that proclaimed that to win the game, I had to beat someone named John Romero. That was the first time I ever paid attention to that name — which, of course, has led me to here.

I hope the rest of you, especially any of the older members, have some entertaining tidbits regarding these titles. They certainly were a big part of my life, and still are, so let's hear them!

[Cheapy]

i thot bak then in wolf3d they sed "hut sarge", "pee stopper", "my name is", "be gone" and "ow, im captain nemo!"

[Malchik]

Hey. Another ontarioian. Welcome!

[youspeakmylanguage]

Wolf3D - First saw it, played it - blown away. Played through it, but for some reason lost interest after a month or two. Went through all of it again with Spear of Destiny.

DOOM - First saw it, jaw hit the floor, played it constantly for months. Discovered that hours upon hours of DOOM, combined with Slayer and Sepultura and a dark room can definitely screw with an male adolescent mind. Lived it, loved it (and still do). Will be indebted to John Romero for life for giving me such a great f*ckig game. Never got into deathmatch.

For the record - I had pirated copies of the complete Wolf3D and DOOM complete games. Repayed id and Romero (since he was still there) back by buying and paying full retail for Spear, DOOM II (the day it came out - my first preorder), and 2 or 3 copies of Ultimate DOOM (I kept lending them out, never to see the discs again). and later Quake (both on PC and N64). I think I bought Romero a wheel on his Ferrari before he left id.

[Bad Sector]

I think I bought Romero a wheel on his Ferrari before he left id.

Do you know how much a Ferrari wheel costs? :-p


I've seen Wolf3D for first time in a friend's 286. I can't say i was impressed because somehow, it seemed "natural" to me to see such a game. And anyhow, i don't really remember being impressed by ANY game back in my early gaming days.

As of DOOM.... i saw it in a magazine. Screenshots of skulls in fire (lost souls) and such in a 3D environment. I was wondering how someone could play (and enjoy) such a game... again i was used to side scrollers and arcade games. So in all games i was playing, i could see the character.

It wasn't too long before i played Wolf3D: my friend gave it to me. It was the shareware version, but since i knew nothing about shareware, full version or even piracy (keep in mind that software wasn't copyrighted work in Greece until early nineties), i just though that i had to finish the first episode in order to play the rest (which made sense). I grasped the idea and started running in these walls (always with the SHIFT pressed). My friend couldn't watch me; he was gettng motion sickness (btw, i've learned later that i have a problem in my eyes and i don't "see" the depth and perspective like most people do - probably this is why i never had a sickness problem with any first person game).

I don't remember when i played DOOM. It was after Duke Nukem 3D, i think. When i bought my first "good" PC at ~1997, it contained Duke Nukem 3D and i spent lots of hours playing that game.

As of Quake.... i first saw the shareware in a local cybercafe. Again, it didn't impressed me because it seemed "natural". However i got impressed with it when i realized that the head that just popped from an ogre after i killed it, wasn't always facing me . Well, that was around the period i was starting to be interested in 3D.

I think i'm getting impressed only when i know what it takes to do the things i see in games .


Btw, both me, my sister and a friend were thinking that the soldiers in blue uniforms in Wolfenstein were yelling "Big Bubble" . When she saw my mobile 3D engine the first thing she said was "that like the Big Bubble game!" .

[Zn]

Hahah. Big Bubble. They're saying "Schutzstaffeln", that's what SS stands for. It means "the state security service". I don't know why they're blue though.

[Boone]

Back in 1992/3 my dad bought the first family PC.  I pissing myself with excitement as I could finally play GoldenAxe,  Prince of Persia, Lynx( a helicopter game), Super Off Road and F-29 Retaliator.

What took us by surprise was that there was already a game on the PC's hard drive...

Myself:  "Whats this?"

Brother:  "Wolfenstien3D..."

Game: "CHHHHHHHHHHULLLLLLLLLLLNKKKKKK-KSSHHHHHHHKAAAA"

Brother: "DID YOU HEAR THAT!"

Myself: "Bloody hell!"

Game: "AUCTION!"

Brother:  "What the hell was that?!"  

...the rest was history!

But to be honest,  me and my brother totally digged WWII movies as teenagers - especially one film( forget the name) where a pilot is  kidnapped by Nazis and wakes up in a german hospital or something where all the patients are captured allies.  Anyway,  he falls in love with a german nurse(she was lovely!) and they escape together - riding into the sunset on one of those old german military bikes!  What with Wolf3D at the same time - it was a time I would never forget.

For me,  Wolf3D was a far stronger game than DOOM or QUAKE.  Sure it was primitive and crude in comparison to those games but neither of those games had Wolf3D's outrageously loud chaingun!  Also,  the story was solid enough to set the atmostphere for the player and it was just so damn fast - even on slow machines!

[Zn]

Someone should do a real remake of Wolfenstein 3D.

[Boone]

Regarding Doom.

When I first played this game I was actually disappointed.  It wasn't as fast as Wolf3D,  it had no story to it,  and even worse - the chaingun sounded..."boring".  And those fucking Imps were outstaying their welcome...

However, the more you played DOOM the better it got.  With a new PC( the jump from a 486SX to a PentiumII was gobsmacking! ) I could play DOOM in hi-res "640*480"!  Also, no slowdown whatsoever.  It was now the real deal...

As the years went on,  I began to find that DOOM was the champion for PCs.  Consoles no longer had a monopoly on the games industry for fun!  New games popped up such as Tie Fighter,  Tomb Raider,  Sim City 2000, Myst,  Jedi Knight...the PC was the dog's bollocks when it came to games!

To sum it up, DOOM has been a compainion to me as I matured through my late teens and play it even now.  

A work of art.  Full stop.

[Boone]

Regarding QUAKE.

Oh dear.  I heard so much about this game but when I finally got my grubby mits on the shareware version - a total disapointment.

Jerky animation,  no music,  awkward aiming controls...no fun.

I did not pursue to purchase the full game as I came across DFII: Jedi Knight insted...

Only since picking up MASTERS OF DOOM( I read it just before DOOM3 was released ) did I decide to look at the Shareware again and see it through slightly different eyes.

The textures were surprisingly georgous,  as was the level design.  It was never as successful as DOOM but it was huge step forward for cementing the FPS genre.  

A work of art once again...

Yeah, the complains run rampant even to this day regarding Quake's colour palette. Jokes among the gaming elite of "a hundred shades of brown" never sunk in for me. Even more so now, since I'm employed in a creative field, I find Quake's visuals quite perfect. As always, art direction is more important than sheer horsepower. Not to sound pretentious, but a master can do more with a few strokes of black on a canvas than an amateur can with all the paint in the world.

Furthermore, I know Quake's development was less than cohesive, and the final hub structure was an afterthought, but I thought the mix of styles in both the level design and texture use worked well.

Though a lot of folks praise Quake only for its multiplayer, I had a fantastic time playing the single-player mode one hot summer on an overheated Windows laptop. Its configuration — for whatever reason — didn't give me the benefit of playing the CD audio, so I had to go through the game without the benefit of Trent Reznor's groundbreaking soundtrack.

I still play Quake to this day, on my wife's iBook, because its unrealistic POV and sense of motion still "feel" so good. It's not "right," but I find it immensely satisfying.

I do have one caveat about the game though: I never like those exploding blob creatures. And a real story sure would have been nice.

[warlordQ]

When Doom first came out, the internet was un-heard of in Australia... and the only computer i had was an Amiga... i constantly read about Doom in magazine articles, everybody loved Doom... but even back then i didnt see any screenshots of Doom, except for the front cover... it was insane reading about Doom and not seeing what it looked like...

Then a freind of mine, his wife worked at a school...  the schools staff were allowed to take the computers home during the schools holidays to prevent the computers being stolen... my freinds wife took one of the computers home during the schools holidays... it was a 486 DX-4 100 with Windows 3.11... Anyway my friend was busy playing chess and getting his ass kicked on the novice level.. at this stage he wanted to smash the computer...

When i showed up we fired up Wolfenstien, we played that for 10 minutes then i got bored of it... the schools PC was a mystery bag just waiting to be explored, it had a lot of software on it, so we went through everything... then i found the doom game... we never played it before, so said lets have a look at this one...

Straight away i was hooked!!! this game rocked from the start... it ran fast, everything was so responsive, and it felt like you were in the game...  we played it on the hardest level... level 2 was just awesome, anyway i mistakenly ran through the center to grab the green armour then a sworm of guys just nailed me in an ambush... awesome!!!
Mind you we were playing Wolfenstien 10 minutes ago and now we are playing Doom... The inivsible black things scared the shit out of us.. we couldnt work out that they were, but we almost had a heart attack whenever we came across one...

When Doom came out on the Playstation, that was just wild.. i had the playstion connected to the HiFi, the improved sounds just crept me out... It was also my first experience with Multi-player and death match... we connected two playstations with the link cable and played Doom ( with just the one CD ) and we played DeathMatch quite a bit...

Although it was a hassle carting my TV around to my mates place all the time, but Doom sure made up for it... awesome stuff!!!

Actually just today i fired up Doom and noticed a switch in the amour room at the very start of level 1... ive played doom for all these years and i just noticed it now ... when i pressed that switch, a door opened in the first room and i could go outside from the starting point...

[Heroinzeleid]

My brother had DOOM 1&2 on a bunch of seperate 3 1/2 in. floppy disks that his friend made for him from his copy of DOOM 1&2 that we used to play.  I was 7 and our computer's soundcard was broken or something, so I played it with iddqd and idkfa with no sound all the live long day. Fun stuff. I remember seeing the box at one point in time and seeing another DOOM marine standing with his back towards cyberdemon in a screenshot on the back. So, being 7, I thought that the game was somehow perpetually multiplayer and that the dead DOOM marines I saw laying around some levels were some other unfortunate players. I'd always get pissed, because I could never find a live one.  

[Chubz]

Wolfenstein 3D was actually not much of a thriller for me when compared to Doom/Doom 2.

I can remember shooting Nazi's before even knowing that they were Nazi's... to me they were just soldiers that I had to fight.. I also remember playing the Beavis & Butthead mod and thinking that it was pretty neat.

Doom and Doom 2 hit me around the same time, and I absolutely fell in love with the game... the music, the monsters, and the levels were all shockers for me and kept me hooked.  I can remember the first time I saw the Cyberdemon and nearly crapped my pants... rockets began firing my way and I never could beat him because I'd make the stupid mistake of stepping right into the way of one of them.  Doom 2 was definitely my favorite out of the two because of the new type of level design... Barrels of Fun sticks out in particular, as well as the secret levels containing flashbacks of Wolfenstein.

Quake was never a large part of my PC gaming collection.  In fact, I never played Quake.  Yeah, you can laugh all you want, but my PC was never powerful enough to play it!  I had my Wolf/Doom PC until probably 1998 or 1999, and until then I had never really kept up with gaming or even cared about anything besides the PC games that I had on my outdated PC.

The only Quake that I've ever really spent time with was Quake 3, and I've played hardly any of Quake IV.  Quake and Quake 2 are both new to me, and although my cousin did have Quake 2, I didn't see him play it much.

Doom and Doom 2 are what really made me a PC gamer.  With just Wolfenstein, I probably wouldn't have spent as much time with the PC.

[DoomFan]

Well, it all started on my 7th birthday. One of my parents' friends decided to get me a joystick for my PC, and lo and behold, it came with the retail copy of Ultimate Doom. When I played it for the first time, I was hooked. Before Doom I really didn't play the computer much, maybe some minesweeper (randomly clicking on the tiles) or some other basic games. But Doom changed all of that for me. All I did for a long time was play Doom. And not just by myself, but with my dad, too. We would spend many nights where I would sit on his lap and shoot while he moved around and aimed, or vice versa. Or take turns. I remember later, when I was in third grade, my dad was teaching me the multiplication tables, and he would bribe me with Doom. "Learn the 7 table, and you can play Doom," he said once. 10 minutes later, I was shooting some imps. I also remember quitting a tae kwon doe class just so I could have an extra hour playing Doom after school. It's what really made me play games in the first place. And for that, I am eternally grateful to Mr. Romero and the rest at id software, because I know I would have turned out waaaay different if it hadn't been for Doom. And life would certainly be a lot more boring.