This Week In Retro: DOOM (1993) (Patreon)

December 10, 1993: *racks shotgun* "Moon's haunted"

by Diamond Feit

Mars. The Red Planet. The God of War. Ol' Crimson Cheeseface. Save for our own sun and moon, no celestial body has held greater sway over the imagination of human beings. Ancient cultures spotted Mars in the night sky, Renaissance astronomers observed her features with early telescopes, and for decades modern scientists have launched probes across the vacuum of space to analyze her composition.

For all the differences between Earth and Mars, the two planets share a few similar features. A "day" on Mars is only slightly longer than a day on Earth. Mars has Earth-like seasons, with a temperature range that overlaps ours; while it gets quite cold on Mars, the highs never exceed a level of human endurance. Earth has one large natural satellite, while Mars has two smaller moons.

These commonalities, along with Mars' relative proximity to our planet, have long driven writers to imagine scenarios where humanity might one day set foot on Earth's smaller, drier neighbor. In the year 2000, two competing Hollywood studios gave us films about astronauts exploring the possibility of colonizing Mars only to uncover existing life-forms in place. The reverse is even more common, with The War of the Worlds, Mars Attacks, and many other stories focusing on Martians sending vessels to Earth—although in those tales, the new arrivals carry ray guns.

30 years ago, a very different vision of Earthlings on Mars debuted on personal computers around the world. A spiritual sequel to a game about killing Adolf Hitler, id Software's new shooter proved so successful that the entire first-person genre would closely mimic it for years to come. Despite its science-fiction trappings and Martian setting, DOOM features no aliens whatsoever, instead pitting one man against an unholy army from another dimension.

As outlined in the game's instructional manual, DOOM takes place on an unspecified date in the future where humanity has already set up shop on Mars. The player assumes the role of a space marine stationed with the Union Aerospace Corporation, a "multi-planetary conglomerate" that's so large, it gets to have members of our armed forces work security detail for its facilities. In turn, the UAC has granted the military free use of the company's lunar bases on Phobos and Deimos.

Millions of miles removed from Earth, our scientists experimented with teleportation between Mars' moons, successfully sending supplies from one satellite to the other. After years of research, a sudden distress call from Deimos reported that the gateway had burst open with "something fraggin' evil" attacking the staff. Deimos promptly disappeared from the scope. Contact with Phobos was lost soon thereafter. The marines rushed into action, launching from Mars up to Phobos to investigate the disturbance. The player character ends up as the last man to enter the base after the rest of the squad took the lead, met with heavy resistance, and stopped transmitting.

DOOM begins with our hero alone on Phobos, armed only with a simple handgun and 50 bullets. While every map holds its share of fresh weapons, ammunition, and health pickups, this default loadout stays the same for the rest of the game. Any found items will carry over from one map to the next, but dying means restarting a map from scratch. Players may save their progress at any time though, making the game as relentless or deliberate as they like.

Most of the story as outlined above is nowhere to be found while playing DOOM beyond a few sentences of text wrapping up each of the game's three episodes. However, the layout and design do their part to make the player undergo the narrative as intended. The first episode, set entirely on Phobos, unfolds across a series of industrial environments. Computer panels line the walls, buttons and switches open sealed doors, and electronic key cards unlock restricted areas. The first enemies players encounter are zombified soldiers who attack with firearms, later joined by humanoid beasts such as brown imps and pink demons. The final map of the episode unfolds into a giant red star and introduces the Barons of Hell, a pair of muscular bruisers who look like a cross between a satyr and a minotaur.

In Episode 2, the player teleports to the lost Deimos base where the invading forces have clearly begun to redecorate. Skulls and ghastly faces have replaced mechanical switches, writhing human remains are on display as objets d'art, and something has scratched pentagrams all over the floors. The enemies grow more ghastly with the first appearances of flaming Lost Souls and the hissing Cacodemons, both capable of flying over obstacles. The climax pits the player against a hideous fusion of monster and machine called the Cyberdemon which stomps its way around an open arena as it unleashes a stream of rockets from its built-in arm cannon.

Episode 3, appropriately titled Inferno, takes place in Hell. Yes, literal, actual Hell, where Deimos ended up after the teleportation experiments brought our universe and the afterlife into close contact. These final levels abandon human construction in favor of blood, flesh, and fire. Keys become skulls, walls move on their own, and none of these structures carry the OSHA seal of approval. Waiting for the player at the end of it all is the Spider Mastermind, a devilish fusion of exposed brains, spindly metal legs, and a gatling gun.

Retronauts listeners who heard my episode about DOOM-clones already know that I first saw id Software's previous shooter, Wolfenstein 3D, while abroad in France. The symbolism of visiting the beaches of Normandy and virtually mowing down Nazis with a machine gun on the same trip was not lost on me at the time. I grew up reading about World War II and hearing stories about the Holocaust and suddenly in high school I found myself touring the front lines of history. Wolfenstein 3D drew upon that inner spite I felt for fascists and molded it into a gleeful arcade-like adventure where the Master Race could do nothing but eat lead and cry about it.

DOOM takes a different approach, blending science-fiction, horror, and heavy metal into a game that's equal parts glee and gore. The image of the player character's face in the game's UI—a holdover from Wolfenstein—doubles as a status and mood indicator. His visage grows bloodier and more disheveled as he takes damage, but he also grins when he gets new armaments and grimaces when unloading a rapid-fire weapon. The text messages announcing each pickup reflect this, adding exclamation points when the player discovers a gun and occasionally editorializing. Should our marine get his hands on a chainsaw, the game tells the player to "FIND SOME MEAT!"

The weapons of DOOM deserve more attention, actually, because they're just as crucial to the game's storytelling as anything else. Like the slow rollout of enemies, players will initially obtain pedestrian firearms like a shotgun or machine gun. The first episode contains nothing remotely futuristic even though you're supposedly fighting monsters on a base orbiting Mars. Yet the further a player progresses in DOOM, the crazier the weapons get. Episode 2 features the energy-based rapid-fire Plasma Rifle, a laser gun that lays waste to Hell's minions while emitting a high-pitched shriek with every shot. Episode 3 offers the delightfully-named BFG 9000, a massive cannon that consumes mammoth amounts of ammo but each time you pull the trigger, everything on screen dies. All of these tools have their place and can take down even the biggest baddies in the game with the right moves.

I didn't get to play DOOM until 1995 when my college roommate gave me a tour of the original game and its sequel on his PC. He also introduced me to the extraordinary world of fan mods which added new weapons, levels, and enemies; I spent as much time with those haphazard creations as I did id Software's official version. By year's end I bought PlayStation DOOM because it was more accessible than getting my hands on a decent home computer. I couldn't install any mods, naturally, but with two consoles and two TVs I could get some friends together for cooperative demon slaying. Witnessing another Doomguy race across the screen, knowing full well my pal Ben was at the controls, gave me a debilitating case of the giggles.

Therein lies the magic and versatility of DOOM. To concerned parents and uptight senators of the 90s, DOOM looked like a murder simulator; the game would reenter the headlines in 1999 when rumors persisted that the Columbine killers used homemade maps to practice their massacre beforehand. Yet the real DOOM experience is cathartic and even humorous, an interactive splatstick romp. Hell's flunkies may frighten at first glance, but you can run circles around them, bait them into attacking one another, then turn whoever's left standing into red paste with a well-timed rocket. If you ever run out of ammo, you can always resort to punching fiends in the face like Bruce Campbell does in Evil Dead 2.

Speaking of versatility, it's been three entire decades since DOOM debuted and the fan community continues remixing and reshaping the game in new ways. Total conversion mods such as MyHouse or DOOM Infinite completely transform the original to the point that little of id Software's masterpiece remains, and yet these pieces only work because the core gameplay of DOOM endures.

Which brings it all back around again to the subject of Mars. Given the speed at which human beings went from first launching capsules into orbit to landing a vessel on our moon, most people assumed we'd be well on our way to selling Martian condos by now. Mission to Mars, one of the films I mentioned earlier, was set in the year 2020. That timetable hasn't held up and I may not live long enough to see a person walk on her surface but I'm still convinced manned travel to Mars is a question of when, not if.

Whether it happens in this century or the next, I'm equally certain that the moment we arrive on Phobos or Deimos, we'll have the marines on standby. Hell, since the propensity to port DOOM to absolutely any system large or small shows no sign of slowing, I'd wager that at least one astronaut will boot up E1M1 within minutes of landing.

Diamond Feit lives in Osaka, Japan but is forever online, sharing idle thoughts about video games, films, and dessert.