People's first experience with DOOM

[ThomsonI]

My first experience would've been around 94 or so (I was about 7). Cousin got Wolfenstein 3d when it first came out, and I had the shareware version of that. Dad was trying to switch all the computers in the house to Linux, and the shareware of Doom was on one of the disks. He thought "this isn't that game Ian likes, but it's close, might show it to him," and I was hooked. He even set up one of the spare computers so it'd automatically load Doom unless you held the shift key while it booted. Perks of having a dad who's the kind of computer geek who will build computers from scrap parts from work.

Then around 98 or so, a friend came over with the Doom 95 port of Doom 2, which we installed. Couple of years later, Dad downloaded a good chunk of the /idgames FTP at work and burned it to a disk for a present (being stuck with dial up at home at the time, this was a Godsend).

[Marnetmar]

My first experience was around 2009-2010. I downloaded a copy of the shareware and, being unaware of DOSbox or source ports I ran it inside of the command-line on a win95 virtual machine on a windows 7 laptop.

Half of the time I couldn't even get it working, but when it did it used the PC speaker sounds and a really obnoxious soundfont where the guitars sounded like high-pitched bells.

[Ethril]

It was somewhere between late '93 and mid '94... I don't really remember much, since I was like 2 years old.
All I really remember is sitting on daddy's lap, playing on ITYTD, and using all the cheats (except I used IDFA instead of IDKFA because I wanted to actually get the keys and play through the levels and stuff)

In retrospect, he probably shouldn't have let me play games like Doom, and DEFINITELY not Duke Nukem 3d (even with the parental lock engaged), since I was just a little kid, but, well, I was just a little kid; I didn't really see it as anything more than "there are bad guys and you have to shoot them to save the world!", which is, y'know, exactly what it was. "Murder simulators" my ass, I'm probably one of the least-violent people you'll ever know, despite growing up on this stuff. :V

[ReX]

My first time was in early 1994, soon after the full release of DooM. My friends and I only had AT-486s running MS-DOS, with no proper sound cards & speakers. We used keyboards exclusively, and sucked hard when trying to dodge the Imp fireballs in the zig-zag nukage area of E1M1. And forget about trying to beat the Cyberdemon in E2M8 - I remember my heart pounding each time I "battled" the critter (which mostly consisted of me turning tail, running, and wailing like a little kid whose candy has been ripped out of its clutching hand).

By the time DooM2 was released, we were better prepared, and our playing skills had improved (even though we continued to use just keyboards). Heretic, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen, and other FPS games followed (including Wolfenstein 3D, heh). With the advent of the Internet & BBS (Walnut Creek, anyone?), we discovered add-on levels for all these games, and we were properly hooked.

Of all my friends who were die-hard DooM enthusiasts, I was the only one who took it to the next level, and in 1999 I began creating my own levels. Subsequently, I moved beyond mapping and into other aspects of DooM mods.

Good times.

[MetroidJunkie]

When I was 6 years old. My first experience with it was the Shareware version of Doom 1 then I moved onto Ultimate Doom and Doom 2. I was really bad at the game so I relied on cheats, even on Too Young to Die.

[Hellser]

I was about five since I started to play DooM. Throughout my life, I always kept a copy of DooM with me. 23 now, so yea.. that should tell you.

[Nate]

Being the resident old fart, I was playing it since shortly after it was released. I was probably about 15 or so. Someone on a BBS told me about it and I promptly downloaded the shareware. I only vaguely recall playing through it the first time, but I still remember the sense of wonder playing through it when it was still new. (E1M2 and E1M3 stand out in my memory). I vaguely recall discovering the secret exit in E1M3 for the first time and going "Wait, what?" On the other hand, I don't recall my first encounter with the barons at all.

I spent more time than I care to admit playing through that one episode. One of my favorite things to do back then was to go out into the outside area in E1M7 and shoot rockets at the zombies in the exit chambers. If I timed it right, the zombie would move out of the way of the rocket, just in time for it to explode behind him and fling his entrails out the window at me. Good times.

I eventually saved up enough money to buy the full version. I didn't even buy it because I wanted to play episodes 2 and 3, but because I already knew there were level editors for it. Buying a game is one thing. Buying an infinite stream of gameplay is something else entirely.

Funny enough, it wasn't until probably a decade later that I got Doom 2, nevermind Final Doom.

[Slic]

The game's release and my purchase of it back in '93 triggered a 72-hour spree, including 2 all-nighters. While t'd take entirely too much time/effort to describe the details of what even someone old(er?) and (more?) experienced in RL violence felt when playing the game. I remember feeling like.. it was very close to actual combat, but without the sadness, and pain of loss. Almost like I could see some of my old friends. Almost... As someone who narrowly escaped PTSD, I was very glad I found Doom/Doom 2. I think that, if such games did not exist (and still continue to exist), I would have succumbed/regressed back to PTSD, and then I wouldn't really be an actual person anymore.

I remember, back then I didn't think of using a mouse to be awesome, so I was strafing/firing/turning using a Gravis gamepad. Went through like 4 of those suckers before I finally saw the light that is WASD + twitch-aming with mouse.

[The Zombie Killer]

My first experience with Doom was in around 2003, at around the age of four. I had the shareware version on this CD called "Arcade Game Mania II", it included the Simpsons Doom mod as well as some other games like Wolfenstein 3D which I enjoyed immensely.

For the most part, I never really made it past the first three levels, but I continued on, in 2009, I started buying this magazine called "PC PowerPlay", and the first issue I got had Doom as its game of the month. On the CD they had included GZDoom and a bunch of wads. Thanks to the mouse support, and ability to change the controls easily, I got much better at the game. I remember using this frontend called "The King Doom Experience" or something like that, because it let me load wads easier than my younger brain could normally at the time, and it had a list of cheats already there.

Since then, I've been a massive Doom fan, I got all (PC) versions of Doom, and even the patch to convert my Doom2 IWAD into the French version for completeness sake.

-TZK

[osjclatchford]

hell, back when the shareware came out! LOL

played the hell out of it and remember the major bug in e1m3 that left you falling forever if you lept down the middle of the toxin chamber just before the blue keycard bit. you know, back before it had a button to get you out! LOL this was also the version that had the swastika in the blue room on e1m4. near the yellow keycard bit...
id's kind reference of the humble origins of doom, wolf3d which I can also say, I got when the shareware first came out.

being a skinflint at the time I waited quite a while until I got the full version. in fact I was playing the two-level shareware of DooMII before I bought the first one!

I can clearly remember being wowed at the Cambodian sky texture for phobos, you know, just the fact that OMG THERES A SKY!!! bear in mind I'd only really been messing around in wolf3d shareware untill then...
and also shitting my pants when teleported into the final room after the baronfight, I was convinced there was a way to survive this at one point, playing that bit over and over again... wasted youth eh?

got so obsessed with doom over time, I can clearly remember making the old (well old now, they were brand new at the time!)metal wh40k spacemarine scouts as doom-guys and zombies for doom themed 40k game at my local gw store! LOL

[SanSkywalker]

I was 7, 8 years old (I have 15 years now) and my older brother found the Shareware version of DooM in some random gaming website, and then he said that back in the day, he and his buddies used to play a lot of DooM. So, I played the Shareware version of DooM for almost 5 years, without complaining, but when the Internet came, I finally found out how to have the full version of DooM, so I downloaded a .rar with ZDoom and the DooM 2 Iwad, and played it for hours and hours. Now I'm addicted to DooM, I totally love this game.

[Matt]

Duke nukem is creepier for me than Doom.

Seconded. "Okay, so the baddies have captured a bunch of people and subjected them to horrible degrading... something, and now they're there and they're all deliberately posed in sexual ways for the viewer's titillation? what, is this actually supposed to be some psychological sci-fi thriller where I am linked into the mind of some serial killer rapist or something? Or is this some kind of no-John-you-are-the-demons 'edgy' bullshit and we are really--fuck, this isn't fun anymore."


First heard about Doom, ironically enough, from the other kids talking at Sunday school about this cool new game. All I remember from those discussions was the pastor overhearing it and giving us a well-intentioned but way-over-our-heads reminder that the true violence lay not in the blood and gore but in glorifying the killing act.

A buddy of mine brought a pirated copy of 1.1 to our place (this predated Nightmare skill), and I wasn't an honest man (or capable of using any D1 modding features available in 1.2 forwards) until many, many years later when I picked up TUD at the local Electronics Boutique (they spelled out the entire name on the sign, that's how long ago this was).

Many years after that I got my first credit card and many years thereafter, my first chequing account, such things as might have let me register Doom a lot damn sooner.


I never learned to play without cheat codes until source ports, though - I found the mouse controls unusably low-sensitivity on the vanilla EXE and on my old 33MHz 386 with 4MB of RAM we would be frequently getting single-digit framerates unless I made the entire view smaller than the BFG weapon sprite, so it was either I could see things or I could point at them but not both.

[SLAYER1980]

I got Doom in '93. At that time, we had an awesome 386 DX with 8! mb of RAM and a 40 MB harddisk. I was hooked on Wolfenstein 3d but when my uncle returned from the USA (I'm from Holland by the way) he brought me a copy of Doom. My dad made me choose: either Wolfenstein with some mods or Doom installed (the latter had a file of a whooping 10 MB size) and I was only allowed a small part of the harddisk.

I regret to admit it, but I chose Wolfenstein.... Doom was too laggy! After some time I chose wisely, however! The volume of the Sound Blaster turned up, I enjoyed bashing those demons! I got sucked up in the dark atmosphere. Bought myself a MegaDoom CD with add-ons (Terminator Doom, Star Wars Doom, etc.) and time flied.....

[Tomicapo]

The first time i played doom i love for me is a really cool game.
Principaly because you can make your own mods, maps, monsters, weapons a big variety of things.

[amv2k9]

Not knowing mouse control was a thing. That was my first experience. And it was on Doom95. I'll leave others to regale how much of a joke that port was. I actually didn't play doom for a long time after that, and only rediscovered it recently through ZDoom.