Doom 64 wad gzdoom series#

There are many other, more talented voices out there who have paid significant lip service to the immortal and influential series, so I will just give a brief overview.

Doom 64 wad gzdoom series#

To describe how DOOM 64 departs from the DOOM series in this surprising and effective way, we first have to understand what makes DOOM, DOOM. In this video, we’re going to explore how DOOM 64 manages to reimagine DOOM from a straightforwad action shooter into a moody, atmospheric, and beautiful experience to hell and back. DOOM 64 is DOOM, made unfamiliar, surreal. You might think not, but lighting and atmosphere are perhaps the biggest leaps forward that DOOM 64 takes over its predecessors, and these relatively simple systems to implement on the then new hardware of the Nintendo 64 managed to do more than make DOOM 64 feel fresh, it made DOOM 64 great. What if the biggest change you made was not to the game’s mechanics, but to the game’s atmosphere? Would that be enough to make DOOM feel fresh? But the thing is, how do you make a game feel fresh while reusing most of that game’s look, design, mechanics, weapons, and enemies? Working in the same system that produced not just DOOMs 1 and 2, bu thousands of WADs, or fan made maps. In interviews the game’s designers Timothy Heydelaar and Randy Estrella write that the hardest part of creating the now cult classic, DOOM 64, was trying to make the franchise feel fresh again.

It had been four years since the original game had come out, and DOOM clones had grown beyond just emulating their progenitor, they were expanding and updating it. Welcome, to DOOM 64.įour years is a long time, especially in the video game industry, and time was the problem Midway Games ran into when they were tasked with making a new DOOM game for the Nintendo 64. The corridor is long and narrow, warm light, like from a campfire, filters in from multiple directions as you ask: “where am I?” You continue down the hallway, open a door filled with zombie soldiers, you start to take them out as a Pinky flanks you, you turn to run but you get shot in the back and die. You dispose of them quickly, as you move into the next corridor another enemy surprises you. You turn to see two soldiers, suspiciously in blue-lit cages. You see a window into the vastness of space above you, light pours in from the ceiling onto a familiar weapon below, but before you can think you hear the unholy growl of grunts. The colors are off, darker than you expect. You wake up in a abandoned space facility, it’s familiar, but something’s not quite right. You can also watch this instead of read it here: