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  DOOM: Everywhere You Wanna Play Few games have been ported so extensively, but not all the ports were good. By Benjamin Turner | Dec. 9, 2003  The keypad overlay for Jaguar DOOM. Still got mine. NeXT / SGI / et all Advertisement
Jaguar Surprisingly, the first port out of the gate was a version for Atari's ill-fated "64-bit Multimedia Entertainment System," the Jaguar. Coded by id Software itself, DOOM for Jaguar was actually a pretty decent rendition of the game. Instead of being split into three episodes, the game's 20+ levels were arranged in a set order, with one being an original creation (just an enemy-filled arena, alas). The graphics were full-screen (which would prove rare in early DOOM ports) and the framerate was just a little iffy. Oddly, there was no music during gameplay; you'd only hear it between levels. An odd choice, but the silence combined with the oddly grainy graphics gave Jag DOOM a weirdly compelling atmosphere. The last highlight is that Jag DOOM supported networking; you could hook up two Jaguars for full-screen deathmatching. This was often prone to game-ending communication errors, however. Sega 32X One of the launch titles for Sega's ill-fated 32-bit add-on for Genesis, DOOM for the 32X was not a good port. It was the first version to run in a cropped window, a deficiency which would later appear in the 3DO and Saturn versions. Worse, and this is really bad, all of the monsters only had a single side -- no backs, no sides. This not only looked weird, but eliminated the "sneak up behind 'em" aspect of the real game. Nor could the monsters fight amongst themselves -- even the AI got cut down. About the only good thing about this version is that it's played with Sega's sweet six-button control pad. Also worth mentioning is that the game crashes to a C:/> prompt upon completion. Whether this is just another bit of bugginess or a little joke from the creators is unknown. I'd lean toward the latter, but who knows? Macintosh The poor, long-suffering Macintosh gamer had to wait over 18 months before playing DOOM, by which point its hype had faded a bit. Luckily, the Mac ended up with a pretty solid port that one-upped its PC cousin by supporting a high-res graphics mode. Only the best Macs of the time could make it run well in this mode, but it would be another year before DOOM 95 allowed for high-res DOOM on the PC. (Speaking of PCs, it was sometimes kind of hard to get PC-made DOOM mods to work with the Mac version.) Oddly, DOOM II hit the Mac before the original DOOM, which followed a few months later. It must have been hard playing the original DOOM for the first time (with its lack of a double-barreled shotgun and many enemy types) after being trained on DOOM II. PlayStation The developers actually tried to push the game forward a bit with PlayStation DOOM, adding features like colored lighting and a really, really disturbing CD soundtrack. It's also notable for combining the elements of DOOM and DOOM II into one giant mishmash of hellish action -- 59 levels altogether. The best point was probably that DOOM supported the little-used PlayStation Link Cable, enabling two-player deathmatch or co-op on the cheap. On the other hand, it didn't support Memory Cards -- what the hell? Still, it's not a bad version for a console, and only one would be better. And just to be complete, note that Final DOOM hit the PSX a year later, in October 1996. I don't think anyone cared, though. Next: Saving the Best (and Worst) for Last » Page: 1 2 |
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