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Fifteen Years Of Doom
The Ballad of "Robert Jones": Arcade Tickets Were His Currency

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ShaggE: Cracking Eggs Of Wisdom
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
I celebrated early by buying the XBLA version, despite it being something like my fifth copy of the game. I hadn't played it in a few years, so I'm enjoying the hell out of it all over again.

Now... XBLA Doom 2. Make it so, MS.
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SansSanity
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
I first played Doom in 1996, when I bought my first super awesome P1... 100MHZ. I had also had an amazing 16mb of Ram, which was 4 times what my dad's DX2 had. Ahh the days... *sniff*
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rainofwalrus
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
I remember playing Doom 2-player over the Internet via IHHD (Internet Head to Head Daemon). It basically fooled each Doom client into thinking a modem handshake had been established. It lagged like crazy, but it was the beginning of Online match-making. you used IRC to find opponents. ah, #doom brings back some wopping efnet memories. so many great BOT wars.
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Tracert
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
One of my most vivid gaming memories is being a really little kid and getting super excited to rent the red Doom SNES cart from the corner store. After I got it I ran home to play, got through roughly 45 seconds, and then was immediately too terrified to go on. I paused the game and then just sat there, petrified, for what seemed like hours but was probably more like 5 minutes. I didn't know what to do. So I just sat and stared at the pause menu.

Inevitably, I started to cry. I remember being bitterly disappointed because I knew that game was supposed to be totally so cool and I had been looking forward to this thing for days on end and now I was just too scared to keep on playing. I remember feeling really ashamed of myself for not being brave enough to go on. So I cried.

After a while, my big sister came into the room to find out what was wrong. She figured out what had happened, gave me a hug, then sat down beside me. I guess she didn't know what to do either, because nothing happened for a little while. Finally she picked up the controller and started the game from the beginning. And then we played that fucker, together. For hours. She didn't even like games, and being a teenager I'm pretty sure she had other things she wanted to do at the time. But she stayed and played my game with me and then after that I wasn't scared of it anymore. That afternoon is simultaneously one of the worst and best memories of my childhood.

Happy anniversary, Doom.
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JustThisGuy
12/10/08

@Tracert: Aw! That was inexplicably heartwarming! Sounds like you have a great older sister.
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ScruffytheJanitor
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
Should Doom also be credited as the first of 1 gazillion space marine shooters?
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rainofwalrus
12/10/08

@ScruffytheJanitor: No.

@RockyRan: No again.

Space Hulk was first.
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mariospants
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
There's something about that first game, the bobbing of the point of view, the graphics, the sound... somehow even Mirror's Edge with the physics turned on fails to capture the same magic.
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LllusionX Mailed the Fission
12/10/08

@mariospants: no, not physics, it's phys-X!

but yes, i agree, they definitey knew what they were doing, good game elements have been lost in translation over the years.
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Daisuash can´t comment and doesn´t know why :(
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
I remember this was the first game i played on a PC entirely when i was like 12. The days every new PC came with demo discs and PC gaming was more of another thing your computer can do to entertain you, instead of the i have a bigger di--, ahem, gaming rig than you in order to see realistic plastic in the game. I miss those days.
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Narishma
12/10/08

@Daisuash: Not really. Believe it or not when Doom was first released it only ran smoothly on powerful PCs (for the time).
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rainofwalrus
12/10/08

@Narishma is correct. Doom was the third major game that FORCED users to upgrade their PCs or buy new ones outright! The most important component needed for Doom was a math co-processor. It was the difference between Doom the Game and Doom the Slideshow.

the games that murdered home computers before Doom were Falcon (flight sim) and Links LS (golf).
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Daisuash can´t comment and doesn´t know why :(
12/10/08

@Narishma: @rainofwalrus: I know those facts you talk about, what i meant is that Doom was good because it was released in a time PC gaming had not taken itself so seriously and started to push computers to evolve according to them instead of the other way.

BTW, back in the day, all the computers in my school, in my home and in my friend´s houses were capable of running Doom smoothly, i never met someone incapable of playing it in it´s computer...
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rainofwalrus
12/11/08

@Daisuash: lucky. I had to buy a new computer (my handmedown compaq) was too slow. no math-coprocessor. bought an AST for Doom. that AST was the last name-brand PC I ever bought. built my own from that point forward.
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Justin42
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
Time to drag out the ol' Gamepark32... or maybe the TI-89.. and play a good round of Doom.

Definitely revolutionary at the time, and I don't think anyone back then realised we were basically seeing the basic setup for a HUGE genre of games. That said, I really don't care for FPS games and how derivative they've become, but Doom is a true classic. (and it's hard to remember before Wolfenstein 3D/Doom, when a first person perspective was nearly unheard of)
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SansSanity
12/10/08

@Justin42: agreed!! I would just like to add that the genre was perfected by the Quake series... most importantly Q2. Pretty much since then its been a downslide to the point where L4D is my first FPS purchase in about 1.5 yrs
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DigitalHero
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
I still remember the joy of playing Doom II on my 486 DX 2 in high school. /cries

I miss the old PC days.
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Pangolin
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
Downloaded 10 Millions times?.. I think I knew about 2 people who had the internet back then...and they were twins.
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rainofwalrus
12/10/08

@Pangolin: were you old enough to even walk when DOOM shareware hit? The Internet was very large back then... you had AOL, Compuserve, etc. As well as BBSs, Usenet, FTP superservers, and IRC. PPP came very shortly after and the Web was born. I was in college when DOOM hit and you had to wait in line for hours to get in on a 4-way LAN match in our PC Lab.
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Boom! Turducken!
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
We need to remember not just what Doom was but what Doom inspired...and that is the Doom novels.
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Duin
12/10/08

@Boom! Turducken!: I loved those books for some reason. Good ol' Flynn Taggart.

I think I still have them in a box somewhere, at least the first two. They did indeed get odd, but the first couple were pretty decent fun reads.
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litrock
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
I remember thinking doom was one of those new games all those annoying people who didn't *really* play games played.

I still think that's mostly accurate. <_<
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pandafresh
12/10/08

@litrock: you're incredibly wrong
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litrock
12/10/08

@pandafresh: Hah. Doom was the original game that was just as annoying as the frat boys playing GTA. At least to me.

That said, I've since played Doom, and it was indeed a fun game. /shrug
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Absent Blue
12/10/08

@litrock: That game was FF7 for me-- one day you played games you were a loser, the next day if you hadn't played FF7 you were a loser.
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rainofwalrus
12/10/08

@litrock: people who really didn't play games? if you played DOOM back then, you were ahead of the curve, both technologically and brand new genre. it taught millions of kids how to "code" mods/levels, and definitely change the face of ALL gaming! (Even tho Japan still considers it a FACEBALL ripoff.)
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Edge of Blade
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
The next Doom game needs to and will probably be a huge departure from the classic Doom model. It's not going to be on Mars, the protagonist will be a girl, and Hell's Hell will be invading the first Hell and needs us to save them sparking a new era of friendly Hell/Earth economic relations where Hell exports pain in exchange for... water.
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thespyderboy
12/10/08

@Edge of Blade: Will the girl be born of both hells? Otherwise, I would actually be interested in playing that...
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kainzero
12/10/08

In reply to Fifteen Years Of Doom
when i played this game at first, it ran at 8 fps. and i had no idea that it was slow, i thought that was real game speed.

also, the shareware disk i bought at fedco had a virus on it and destroyed my lovable 386.
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Jazhuis
12/10/08

@kainzero: Did you remember to press the turbo button on your PC? </oldschoolsolution>
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SansSanity
12/10/08

@Jazhuis: heh heh.. touche, sir!
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SirGecko
11/03/08

In reply to The Ballad of "Robert Jones": Arcade Tickets Were His Currency
Why is Robert Jones an obviously fake name? My grandpa's name is Robert Jones.
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Owen Good
11/03/08

@SirGecko: No offense to your grandpa. ;-) But I could tell it wasn't the guy's name. It was calculated to be a name a lot of guys share, because it makes searching up someone very difficult.
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