Metal is many things. A material hard and coarse in nature that by forging it in fire becomes sharp enough to cut through anything in its path. The music that bares its namesake is equally cutting and exudes an unyielding attitude that seeks to separate the posers from the true acolytes. Metal is the sentiment of not blindly following the rules, a path less taken to the darker side of the street. In videogame form, there is no nothing more metal than Doom.

The creators of Doom, id Software, were always hellbent on changing the perception of PC gaming in the 1990s. Games of the time were rigid and slow in comparison to their console counterparts. The graphical fidelity was technically superior on PC, but no other developer could nail movement in a game like id. The team had made a name for themselves with their Commander Keen series (which came about after a failed Super Mario Bros. 3 PC demo) along with the genre defining Wolfenstein 3D, but nothing topped Doom. In an era that was already soaking with “tude”, Doom established an identity all its own. The moody lighting, the grotesque monster designs, the signature push forward combat, and all the MIDI guitars a Soundblaster could handle; Doom looked and felt a cut above everything else in 1993.

In December of that year, Senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl held a hearing to publicly condemn the inclusion of violence in videogames sold in America. The bulk of the arguments sought to portray the videogame industry and its developers as deviants seeking to corrupt the nation’s youth. Id Software responded as if to raise the largest middle finger imaginable, by releasing Doom to the world the very next day. A quarter of a century later people are still talking about it.

“I am greatly proud of the fact that Doom is one of those things where everything that has a 32-bit processor has had Doom run on it, and I think that’s been one of the great aspects of having it be open source.”

– John Carmack, Co-Founder of id Software

But Does It Run Doom?

Even before establishing the company’s Mesquite, TX headquarters in suite 666 of the Town East Tower, id Software saw the potential to disrupt the PC space with their business ethos. There had been multiple retail releases of Doom beyond its initial mail order only release, and id also licensed the Doom game engine to other developers, and the result was Heretic (metal), Hexen (metal), and Chex Quest (definitely not metal).

Id was keen to their fanbase’s desire to create custom levels to their previous game Wolfenstein 3D, so the incorporation of a more modder-friendly design was integral to Doom’s codebase. The game’s WAD (Where’s All the Data?) package file system allowed for the easy installation of custom levels. Only needing to install a single-file also allowed …read more

Source:: Hackaday