TO GET STARTED:
DOOM is a 1993 first-person shooter published by id Software that arguably defined the entire first-person shooter genre, to the point where the genre was known as "Doom Clones" in the early-to-mid 90's. It's influence can't be understated; arguably most modern games of today can trace their roots back to this ever-important FPS.
DOOM's original 1993 cover art is on the right. Fun fact: John Romero, one of the creators (and probably the most well-known of them) posed for the cover art. It was drawn by Don Ivan Punchatz. As Romero put it: "I am the Doomguy."
Despite being over 25 years old, it still holds up as a game that plays surprisingly well; especially if one imports more modern conveniences to make it more palatable to the modern gamer. And if that isn't enough, there are literally tens of thousands of custom maps made for the game; in fact, there are so many that the doom community (which also exists) runs an award ceremony for the best ones each year. And there's never been a shortage of competition for it.
So join us. Become the Doom Slayer of old.
DOOM II MAP26, with the player wielding the Super Shotgun, the best video game shotgun ever created.
OKAY, HOW DO I PLAY IT?
Getting a 1993 game to run on a 2019 machine is rather unfortunately difficult, but it's by no means impossible. Here's the two-step (okay, maybe more) guide:
To start off, you will need to find a copy of the DOOM IWAD (Internal WAD) files. The most legal and least complicated way to acquire them is to purchase them on steam, located here. If you want in on the modding scene at all, you should grab everything in that steam bundle.
Should look like this. Grab the bundle.
Thankfully, DOOM is arguably one of the easiest games of this era to actually get to a playable state, owing mostly to the fact that id Software released DOOM's source code, which resulted in the creation of what are called source ports, which allows DOOM to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which it was not originally compatible, because unless you are running MS-DOS or an emulator such as DOSBOX, you're not having much running the original 1993 version of the software.
SOURCE PORTS
Vanilla/Chocolate Doom
+Limit Removing
Playing Doom just like it was played in the early-to-mid 90's.
Click Here!Boom Family
Boom, MBF, PrBoom(+)
90's gameplay combined with conveniences from the 2000's, such as crashing less.
Click Here!ZDoom Family
+GZDoom and Zandronum
Free from old traditions, the sky was the limit. Then we started the space flight program.
Click Here!