DOOM

DOOM is a first-person shooter developed by id Software and released in December 1993. Its brief premise places the player in the role of an unnamed space marine stationed on Mars. After a teleportation experiment opens a route to Hell, demons invade the bases on Mars’s moons, Phobos and Deimos. The marine fights through the installations and eventually enters Hell itself. The game’s manual supplies much of this narrative; the levels mostly communicate it through their settings, enemies, weapons, and progression rather than extended dialogue or cinematic scenes.

Players move through three original episodes: “Knee-Deep in the Dead,” “The Shores of Hell,” and “Inferno.” The first takes place in the Phobos base, the second on Deimos, and the third in Hell. A fourth episode, “Thy Flesh Consumed,” was added to the 1995 release known as The Ultimate Doom. Its levels and episode titles helped establish the game’s stark contrast between military installations and demonic environments.

Combat is built around a distinctive arsenal. The marine starts with a pistol and can acquire weapons including a shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, plasma gun, and the BFG 9000. The chainsaw is a close-range weapon, while explosive barrels and environmental hazards can damage both the player and enemies. The game includes several recognizable enemies, such as the humanoid former humans, the floating Cacodemon, the horned Baron of Hell, and the cybernetic Spider Mastermind. Keys, locked doors, switches, and hidden areas make exploration part of each level’s challenge.

DOOM became notable for its technology and distribution as well as its design. It used id Software’s custom engine to create fast, textured 3D environments, though its architecture was not fully three-dimensional in the modern sense: rooms could not be stacked directly above one another. The shareware release made the first episode widely available, while players could purchase the remaining episodes. This distribution helped the game reach a large audience through personal computers and local networks.

Its multiplayer options included cooperative play and deathmatch, allowing players to connect over networks. The game’s WAD files stored levels and other game data, and id Software’s later release of the source code enabled further ports and modifications. That openness helped sustain a long-lived community of custom maps and total conversions. DOOM’s influence is visible in the widespread use of “deathmatch” for competitive multiplayer and in the enduring convention of calling fast first-person shooters “Doom clones,” even as the genre developed far beyond the game’s original form.