Retronauts Episode 143: Doom
Added 2018-03-13 01:45:05 +0000 UTCDoom is back in the public consciousness thanks to the stellar 2016 reboot, but when was the last time you thought back to the 1993 original that changed the face of PC gaming? From the fascinating behind-the-scenes development stories of plucky computer geniuses/Diet Coke addicts, to the sheer impact it had on the gaming landscape, there's enough going on with Doom to fill an entire podcast series—yet we tried to fit everything in a single episode. On this installment of Retronauts, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, Jeff Green and Gary Butterfield as the crew rips and tears their way through a discussion of a game that truly launched a genre.
Comments
Like Bob, I've played Duke Nukem 3D more then Doom/DoomII/Final Doom. I've actually played Doom 64 more because I prefer the presentation and soundtrack more.
Bork
2018-04-15 18:39:20 +0000 UTCThis was great! And I'll give a shout-out to the PS3 Doom collection as well; I played through it a couple years ago before the new Doom came out, and was amazed at how satisfying it still is to use that shotgun.
Zack Handlen
2018-03-16 13:26:45 +0000 UTCHere's a fun little story about John Romero and the BFG 9000. Like most people (as mentioned in the podcast) I assumed the BFG basically worked a lot like the rocket launcher in that that it was a projectile that caused a huge explosion on impact damaging things in the area around it. It's quite a bit more complicated than that, and a bit counter intuitive. Here's a post on Steam that explains it much better than I can: <a href="https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=113150999" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=113150999</a> I only read up on it after I actually played John Romero in a Doom 2 tournament back in the early 00s at a Dallas area gaming tournament which he attended as a guest. I advanced through a few rounds with a primary strategy of using the double barreled shotgun at close range, but when I played John he pretty much exclusively used the BFG and outscored me by a factor of 4 or 5. His strategy was to get the BFG then find a corner where two hallways intersected. He would then look down the hallway to see when I was coming towards him, shoot the corner near him with the BFG and then I would die, with the projectile having hit nowhere close to me. Turns out (as outlined in the Steam post) the BFG calculates most of the damage done via hit scan at the moment when the projectile hits, but emanates form the player in the direction the projectile was fired. So he shot at the corner with just enough of a lead time that he could strafe into the hall and get me in the cone when the projectile exploded next to him on the corner. I don't know if how the BFG worked was as widely understood then (though this was after the release of the Doom source code) but John certainly knew how it worked ;) He was very nice guy in person, taking time to talk with me and shake hands afterwards.
Kyle
2018-03-14 16:42:01 +0000 UTCMy favorite doom clone growing up, and I'm embarrassed to admit, was Interplay's Redneck Rampage. As a kid who could only play kid-friendly games until I got a PC, playing an M rated game with violence and language was just so rebellious to me. Looking back, it's just the worst. Terrible humor, terrible visuals and just not fun at all. Still, I have a weird fondness for its terribleness. I wouldn't recommend it though.
Phazonmasher
2018-03-14 13:35:35 +0000 UTC
