My Top 100: #35 – Doom

 

Every time I play games on a new platform, I seem to fall in love with whatever I happen to play first.  Besides the obvious pack-in title (like Mario-everything), there was always that one random game that I’d play and enjoy the crap out of, simply because I hadn’t experienced anything like it before.  Even if it was terrible, I can still go back and play it for a quick nostalgic trip down memory lane.

For me, the NES had Excitebike and Renegade.  On Game Boy, it was Golf and Mega Man in Dr. Wily’s Revenge.  When the Super NES came around, I was introduced to Joe & Mac and True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club…  and the list goes on!

Even the first few times I played a Virtual Boy demo, I wanted one pretty badly.  Red Alarm may be headache-inducing now, but I’d still do anything to re-live those initial moments of pure bliss!

Y’know, before my eyes started to burn and the headache set in.  But before then… BLISS!

So, when the Atari Jaguars and Panasonic 3DO’s of the world began pimping their 3D games and realistic graphics, I started feeling quite jealous.  I knew these consoles were way out of our price range, and that it would be a while before I’d get my hands on some of the popular games everyone seemed to be raving about.

 

 

Then, on Christmas morning in ’94, my views on gaming took a bit of a jolt.  We got our first family computer, a Compaq Presario CDS 520.  Right out of the box, it seemed like the possibilities would be limitless.  Microsoft’s Encarta ’94 was an entire encyclopedia with colour pictures and videos!  ON A DISC!  Whoa!!  We also had a phone line hooked into the back of the PC, and we could make calls from it if we wanted to!  Crazy!

Of course, it also opened the door for me to play a few games I had been wanting to try.  My dad bought the Electronic Arts Top Ten Pak, which included a variety games for both he and I to enjoy (Indianapolis 500 was the best, by far).  I made my own game choice at our local K-Mart store – a cheap shareware disc containing partial games, one of them being Doom.

Finally, it was mine to enjoy!  Of course, it was shareware, so only one of the game’s episodes was available to play.  Knee Deep in the Dead had plenty to offer though, so at the time, I pretty much considered it the full game.

It was the first game I played on my PC that didn’t come with it, and it blew my mind.  Where Mortal Kombat shocked you with violence alone, Doom offered up the one-two punch of blood and gore mixed with satanic imagery.  On top of that, it had music and sound effects that set the mood better than any game I had played up to that point.

 

 

It was the simple things about Doom that I enjoyed.  While some kids I knew played it and revelled in the amount of gore, or the havoc they could wreak with a BFG (and snickered at what BFG actually stood for), I was thinking of strategies to take on the hordes of baddies in certain rooms.  I’d also walk up against every single wall in eachlevel, repeadly tapping the spacebar in the hopes of finding doors to secret areas.

There was a much more intriguing game under the surface, but all people could talk about was the violence.  I don’t know how many of the secrets I actually did find, but I played through Knee Deep in the Dead and Commander Keen 4: Goodbye Galaxy enough to wear that poor old 486 out…