People's first experience with DOOM

[Rowsol]

I was about 8. My friend had a packard bell, 60 mhz I believe. Shareware Doom, no windows, only DOS. There was a post it note with a long string of letters that were needed to launch the game.

Also the first time I played Warcraft was on that computer.

Funny thing, I'm watching the show ER and I'm on the second season. On one of the episodes (S02E07) they are playing Doom II in the reception area. Goes to show ya how big Doom was.

[Sinael]

@Awesomeface879 - i call BS on your age. 10 years-old do not type like that

I played Wolf3D when i was 5, it was around 1993, on my friends PC, then my parents got them some p-133mhz, 32Mb RAM that could handle doom, and then it started, in glorious year 1996. It came with pre-installed Doom, Doom 2, Heretic and Quake. Quake blocky monsters terrified the shit out of me (I believed a grunt was a walking locker with teeth, i swear), so I quited it to return back only in '99. Heretic though was my first 'game love'. Played it to the death. I was not as impressed by Doom 1/2, but still played them, and sometimes even skipped school because of them. Never knew what strafe or mouslook were until Unreal Tournament '99 .

Then I found out there were a source ports, and I started with Legacy, then jDoom, Doomsday and after that zDoom.

[SladeEXE]

My first experience was when I was young and I would go over to my aunt's house because they had computers. One of my cousins computers had the Doom shareware on it.

[kodi]

Three years old and in my father's lap. I'd handle shooting with the spacebar while he'd move around with the arrow keys. Never scared or upset me for some reason, it was always just a make-believe game to me.

Good times.

Edit: Oh, and I clearly remember the release of Qtest! Pretty mind-blowing even to little me at the time.

[SlapTheFish]

My Dad was playing it on the PlayStation, he paused it and walked away. I went over, un-paused it, and fired the shotgun.
A LOT of years later, I started reading about Wolfenstein 3D, which led me to Doom. I really wanted to play it, but I couldn't.
Fast-forward three years after that, my Dad bought Doom 2 and Medal of Honor Airborne for five dollars. I played it for ages!
Then, about two years after that, I bought it on the PlayStation.
It's like a circle thing that's circular!
(For a while, I thought Doom 64 was Doom 2 )

[scalliano]

(For a while, I thought Doom 64 was Doom 2 )

No, Doom64 is Doom 3

My first experience was Christmas Day 1995 on the (fanfare) Mega Drive 32X. Even at that point the system was unreliable and the game had a habit of not loading the maps when you hit Start
, but I enjoyed it for what it was worth. Then in February 1997 my 32x packed in completely, rendering my copies of Doom, Virtua Racing, Virtua Fighter and After Burner Complete uesful as little more than doorstops, so it was Christmas the following year that I got my Playstation and the first game I owned for it was - you guessed it. The first time I got a rocket in the ear from the Cyberdemon I didn't even know what it was and I was absolutely terrified.

I still maintain it's the best contemporary console port of Doom and the reason I have Hodges' audio on auto-load these days.

[justin_see]

My brother had brought the shareware home shortly after it came out and after that we had immediately got the full version. We had a 386SX at the time, (that thing was cool. I had got it from my aunt who was a graphic designer, it had a black and white battery operated hand scanner and a tape drive amongst other neat stuff). The only other games I had been playing at the time on the PC were Monkey Island, Loom, and Wolfenstein- pretty much. People today don't realize that Doom really was a "heart pumping" game. There was nothing else like it. The first time you would see an Imp or a Demon you would freak out and get killed. After that we both got in trouble for Installing Doom on the brand new 486 computers in high school. I remember playing with some classmates and the one inner city kid would keep saying "This shit is just like NY!! POP! POP!".

[Wills]

My first experience with Doom was way back in 1995 or so. Sometimes I would stay at my babysitter's house, and her son would let me watch him play Doom. I remember thinking the imps' snorting noises were really really scary.

[NightFright]

We played the shareware version of Doom on the PC of a friend of ours back in mid/end 1994 or so since we didn't have access to the internet back then and had no clue about how to obtain the game otherwise. I remember that we often only went to that guy to play the game. Hopefully, he didn't feel too exploited back then - no hard feelings! xD (It also wasn't too easy to get the game in Germany around that time, sometimes it was hidden on some disks, and it wasn't before I bought a Gravis Ultrasound some years later when I got my own copy of the shareware version from the GUS installation CD.)

Anyway, of course we couldn't believe how realistic the graphics were back then. It felt like you were really INSIDE that game, I think it was the same feeling they are now trying to bring back with Oculus Rift & Co. It felt as real as it could possibly be for a computer game around that time, and every level was like a new experience, we were almost celebrating the transition to a new map. Unfortunately, this effect is impossible to reproduce these days. I really wished I could feel that way again at least once more... we were discussing about strategies regarding how to get around the next corner or which weapon to use against which monster while one of us was playing. Also remember how we imitated the grunting of the Imps which we were unable to see yet. These noises drove us half mad, especially when playing in the night. xD
We were almost crying in frustration when we reached E1M8 and couldn't make it past the freaking Barons. Back then, it was actually hard to fire those five rockets at each of them, no clue why. We didn't have any experience with shooters yet and missed a lot with our shots, I guess - or we were just too scared and ran away most of the time, just making sure we don't get too close to those guys. ^^ And when we finally made it, reached the teleporter and just died, it felt like a huge setback. You came that far and then a horde of demons just tears you apart? Really? And how can there be more episodes after that if you are dead? Philosophical questions with little relevance today, but a lot of discussion potential back then!

One way or the other, it was a time I never want to forget and wouldn't want to miss for anything. Doom has been and always will be a milestone in computer game history, and thanks to a great community which continues to provide new content, it won't be forgotten ever. I am very grateful for that.

[Average]

My first blast at Doom was in 97/98. It was when the source code was released and I could finally run it on my Amiga. If I remember rightly it was a port called ADoom (there were a lot of ports in the beginning) and I could play it with my CD32 controller. Back then I hated PC gaming and it's reliance on keyboard controls so the controller support just felt right to me. Doom wsa never quite as stable for me as Heretic for some reason... not sure why.

It was good to play Doom back then but nothing would beat Alien Breed 3D on the miggy for me. God, I wish someone would port that game to the PC. Scary as shit!


EDIT: Spleeling

[Awesomeface879]

@Awesomeface879 - i call BS on your age. 10 years-old do not type like that

10 year olds who aren't dumb do type like that.

[BouncyTEM]

I can confirm this from my own experiences as a 10 year old geek.

As far as my first experience with Doom goes...I was three, and my dad had downloaded the demo a day or two after its release. He was playing it on his computer while I was nearby, and I reached out and tried to play myself. He decided to humor me and let me play it for a bit; after seeing how much I was enjoying myself, I got the demo on my PC [yeah, I had one as a 3 year old; an old one dad wasn't using anymore, but, none-the-less] too.

[edward850]

I was 3 at the time, so I don't actually remember anything outside of my half-brother setting up a new game for me to play it for what ever reason. (I appear to be competing with Hellser for shortest experience story. )

[Bitterman]

I remember blasting demons in Doom since I was a fetus...

I knew about Doom for quite a while. I don't remember when I'd found out about it, but immediately forgot about it. I learned about Quake 2 and had an urge to play it for some reason. Note that I was 10/11 in 2009-ish, so I probably should've been playing CoD with my friends. Eventually I played Quake 2, and it was so awesome. In 2012, I found out about Brutal Doom, and I really wanted to play it. So I got Doom 2, and have been constantly dooming ever since. I guess I should credit a mod I no longer enjoy for Doom. For some reason, Doom always seems to be replayable, I'll get bored, but I'll always return. It's also a shame I've never beaten Doom or Doom 2.

[Captain J]

some lil' words for me; when i was 12 years old, SNES doom was my first doom i ever played. also i quitted it for a long time ago after exploding the explosive barrels at the beginning.

ooh good memories.