From the Wolfenstein People... Part #1
A Wolf3D-addict gets his first taste of DOOM!!!
***
Commander Keen, King's Quest, DOOM, Wolfenstein3D, Wolf3D, id and Apogee* are all copyrighted cool names and things owned by other people.
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DOOM. The final frontier. The eye-opener jewel that gave the world a lesson in game design... And gave over-protective parents a new reason to hate computers... Um... Well, I was a Wolfenstein-3D addict at the time. (I didn't have money for the registered version, so I played the shareware over and over and over again.) At one stage, I was sure, I could complete every stage with my eyes closed.
It was one winter's morning, when one of my pals brought two 1.2 meg floppy disks to school.
"DOOM version 1.2. Disk 1 of 2. Shareware," it said on the first one.
"DOOM?" I asked, frowning, my thoughts immediately drifting off in the insecticide direction. The only DOOM I knew at the time, came in green and blue aerosol cans, and was available for both airborne- and surface insects.
"A game about fly spray?" I asked sheepishly.
"No, silly! It's id's software's latest game!" he corrected me.
I thought to myself, "id... id... ummm... Oh, yeah, you mean Apogee?"
That name rang a loud and clear bell in my mind. And not just bells... Snippets of German dialogue, blazing machine guns, and the occasional dog barking, too.
"Wolfenstein 3D's people?" I asked.
My friend nodded, "I got this new game for my birthday, but I don't have a floppy drive..."
"Oh, I understand," I thought to myself. He was using me. True. But in a nice kind of way. At least I could take a look at the new game before he could. I smiled at myself.
Then it came, "Could you please copy it to stiffies for me?"
"Okay... I'll ask my father to copy it at his work. He has a fancy computer there... 486. He has a floppy AND a stiffy drive there," I replied bragging.
I slipped the disks into my diary and let the day take it's course.
***
By the afternoon I got home, I had already forgotten about the disks. I sat down at my comp, before doing my homework, and listened to some old ROL files on my Adlib-compatible Sound Blaster. They sounded rather crappy, even at the time. CMF files sounded a lot better. Just a pity I had 500+ ROL files and only 3 CMF files. MID files weren't invented yet. (As far as I could remember, anyways...)
At around 5pm, I finally got round to my homework. I opened my diary and out fell two floppies. "Oh, yeah. DOOM," I reminded myself.
I lovingly reminded myself that I was actually there to do homework. So, I went right ahead and did the right and honourable thing... I went back to my PC.
I had a 386sx at the time. A yellowish XT keyboard, an old Genius Mouse (I still have use for by the way). A "revolutionary" 8-bit mono Sound Blaster with a lone, crappy speaker that sounded best when turned off. But all in all it was a mean PC at the time.
Anyways, I inserted the first disk and tried to install DOOM. It required a whopping 5 megabytes(!). I had to delete Commander Keen AND King's Quest to free up enough space to install it. Luckily, the installation went smoothly. Fifteen minutes later, a offish dark magenta install screen greeted me.
I squinted.
"Start a network game... What for?" I asked myself. Why would anyone want to play DOOM from a network drive? I mean! 40 meg IDE drives were the norm. I'm sure anyone desperate to play could pinch off 5 megs to install this game. Those silly people at Apogee!
I was overjoyed to see that the game supported my sound card, naturally. Guess it was the only sane thing to do... Let's to the game!
***
The usual assortment of flickering text startup screens greeted me. (Apogee's games always started that way.) Two things caught my attention, though. The game didn't complain about me having too little memory. And even stranger, was, there wasn't a single reference to Apogee... Very strange. (The game took ages to load, and gave me time to ponder all the strange messages...)
"Refresh Daemon?" I read aloud, "Don't they mean Refresh Domain? Dunno. It must be a new super-technical term. Don't ask me, I'm just a wannabe Pascal programmer!"
Ah! The game started.
"WOOOW! Look at that title screen!" I saw some guy in strange armour fighting off some pretty ugly monsters with two guns at the time. "Kewl," I thought.
I was well acquainted with Wolf3D, so I immediately pressed the Enter key to start the game. New game... Episode 1... Knee Deep in Dead. The Shores of Hell...? Inferno ?!? "Hey! What kind of a game is this???"
"Hmm... Hurt me plenty should do just fine for now. I'll probably do nightmare by next week..."
"Okay, here I am..."
A strange moment of silence passed as my eyes absorbed the rich, oozing grahpics...
"WWWWOOOOOOOOWWWWW@@!!!!!!"
I nearly choked, "JUST LOOOK AT THOSE GRAPHICS!!!! HOLY MOTHER....!!!!"
My eager hands itched to start playing... "Oh, bugger. Blooming hell it's slow!" I thought to myself, my face dropping in disappointment.
"It's slow... But look! The hand moves from side to side! Your head moves up and down! Floors! Ceilings! Non-intrusive scenery! Hell! This is gaming perfection!"
And so, I decided to test the vicious looking gun I held in my hand... And it was then, I learnt my very first lesson of DOOMing...
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!"
"Oh, s***... Those barrels explode. Darn."
A quick flick of the Space Bar soon had me standing in that same room again. To my surprise I saw that I hadn't lost a life. "I have unlimited lives? Cool!"
Consulting the options menu, I soon learnt that pressing F5 made the game run a lot smoother. (And made me feel more at home too, since it closer resembled Wolfenstein... Especially the gun.)
Soon, I was merrily frolicking down a narrow passage, bobbing my head to and fro as the gun moved from side to side. I opened a door, and nearly leapt off my seat as two armed zombies came at me! I started firing Wolf3D style... No good. Seems that in this game one had to aim! "Darnit!"
I fried away frantically as the face at the bottom of the screen turned from a healthy gold to a Wimpy-Burger-Ketchup red. Yucky!
I DID manage to kill the two zombies. And, as I expected from Wolfenstein, they dropped me some ammunition clips. "Thankyou very much!"
Marching triumphantly down a narrowed passage, I soon came to room filled with pools of green acid. "Okey... Um... Don't walk there... Hey! Men with flamethrowers! Aaaargh! Bang! Bang! Bang! Die! Die! Die!!!!!"
With some luck, I killed the men (I later learnt were called Imps), and the remaining soldiers with a whole 3% health to spare... A great disappointment filled me as I realised, the imps didn't drop their flame-throwers like the SS Guards in Wolf3D did. It's just me and my pistol it seemed.
I accidentally stepped into the acid and died.
"Hey! This DOOM isn't bad!" I said to myself, "I wonder how it would look on a 486..."
For some inexplicable reason, I felt like drooling.
"Maybe I should go finish my some homework," I thought. But then I shook my head, "Nah, homework can wait another two hours. First, I want to see what's behind that brown door..."
TO BE CONTINUED...