Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

John Romero Releases New Level for Doom

Posted by Rampant Coyote on January 18, 2016

Yeah. This happened.

A new Doom level by John Romero himself. It is entitled, “Tech Gone Bad,” and it’s… pretty brutal. Here’s a video of a playthrough (on full difficulty, I believe):

Why? Why now? Is he “getting warmed up” for something else, as he hints in the instructions? What?

Anyway, I played through the level, using the Doomsday Engine with the higher-resolution texture pack. I can’t say I completed it. It is HARD. For one thing, there is environmental damage everywhere. From radioactive slime to cracks of lava appearing everywhere (and even a crack will hurt you) as Hell intrudes in reality. There are lots of switches to open up areas, and more than plenty of monsters, culminating in the fight with the two Barons of Hell as in the original E1M8 which this replaces. Anyway – in a nutshell, it’s a level that seems like it requires a lot of trial and error to learn, and then very skillful play to “win.”

DoomE1M8New1

Does this mean anything? I wouldn’t read too much into it. Clearly Romero wanted to exercise his old FPS design skills, and dusted off Doom to get back into that headspace. Maybe this was for a potential upcoming project, or maybe it was just because he was bored and nostalgic. Maybe we’ll learn a reason soon. Maybe there was no reason. Either way, we’ve got a new and at least interesting level designed by one of the original creators of the game, and a founder of the genre.

Yay for us!

You can grab the level here.

And if you are interested in the Doomsday Engine to easily add mods and play the game with modern conveniences – you can grab that here.

 


Filed Under: Geek Life, Retro - Comments: Read the First Comment



  • Maklak said,

    Thanks for recommending “Masters of Doom”. It was a good read.

    FPS aren’t my thing and this level looks so brutal, I doubt I could beat it with iddqd and impulse9.

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