25 Years of Doom

It is crazy to think that Doom is now 25 years old! The main reason this is so crazy is that it must mean that I am old as dirt because I vividly remember Doom first coming out.

When Doom was first released I did not have a PC, my dad had one in his office, but I did not. I was a console gamer, but a few kids at school had PC’s and Doom was all they would talk about. I also remember Doom being a big deal in gaming magazines at the time.

A friend gave me a copy (that was how Doom was spread around where I lived, it was like some kind of virus!) and I took it to my dad to try on his PC….. of course, it did not work on my dad’s weak PC!

I played it a little at friends’ houses, but my first experience with Doom was really the Super Nintendo version of the game. Which some people may find really sad, but I did not care, I freaking loved Doom on the Super Nintendo. I put the SNES version of Doom on my SNES Classic when I hacked it and man it has not aged well, but I still have fond memories of that game. I actually got Doom on the Super Nintendo just before I got my PlayStation, I think it may have been the last big game I bought for my SNES. Of course, I could have just waited and got it for the PS1, but let’s not dwell on that.

Another version of Doom that I have fond memories of is Final Doom for the PlayStation. I got this for Christmas in 1996 and while I loved the SNES version of Doom and I played the hell out of it for a month, once I got my PlayStation I kind of left Doom behind. Then on Christmas morning, I opened up a PlayStation shaped gift and it was Final Doom! A game my parents bought me on whim because they remembered how much of a fuss I made over the game last year. Final Doom is my Doom! The time I put into Doom on the SNES was nothing compared to how much I played Final Doom. I remember getting yelled at to come down for Christmas lunch. My parents did not understand that I was kicking some serious demon ass and I had no time for turkey and mash potatoes!

I never went the route of PC gaming until around 2010. So my next experience with Doom was Doom 3 on the original Xbox. This was a real change of pace from what I remembered with Final Doom. It was slower, more story driven and I actually really liked it. I enjoyed playing through Doom 3 and the expansion for it, whose name escapes me as I write this. I remember being blown away by the graphics as there was no way the PS2 could have run a game that looked like that.

Doom was, of course, rebooted a couple of years back and it was a huge success. I loved the new Doom, so much that I have it on both PS4 and Xbox One. While it does not have an official date yet, I have really high hopes for Doom Eternal when it comes next year.