Happy birthday to Doom! Happy birthday to Doom! Happy birthday dear old Doomy, happy birthday to Doom!
Hooray! Classic FPS Doom has made it to the grand old age of 21, and that’s cause for some serious celebration. He’s all legal to drink now in his home state of Texas, but instead of his family cracking out the beers, they’re revealing some unseen art work from the creation of the seminal shooter.
John Romero, one of Doom’s chief designers, has been sharing a huge library of images on his Twitter. They provide a fascinating insight into the world of game development in 1993; a time when clay models were scanned into computers to make characters, a day when pencil sketches became textures, an era when the BFG shot so many projectiles that it slowed down computers. We’ve embedded the best of the tweets here, but do check out the full feed for the whole library.
Cyberdemon model scan, circa 1993. pic.twitter.com/yqdF5p0Ry7
— John Romero (@romero) December 10, 2014
BFG version 0.9, circa 1993. It shot out tons of multi-colored plasma balls and slowed down the computer. pic.twitter.com/mUlmukAkwL
— John Romero (@romero) December 11, 2014
Did you know the Pinky demon was drawn over a video scan of a dinosaur toy?? IT IS TRUE. pic.twitter.com/cBlTLZSthZ
— John Romero (@romero) December 11, 2014
Almost finished cleaning up Adrian's sketchbook scan and about to make a new wall texture, 1993. pic.twitter.com/c9nTQWCd1k
— John Romero (@romero) December 11, 2014
Freshly cleaned-up background of the DOOMGUY clay model, 1993. pic.twitter.com/hsqHLR7CNo
— John Romero (@romero) December 11, 2014
A bigger scan of the Spiderdemon Mastermind, 1993. pic.twitter.com/kE0FaNG3qH
— John Romero (@romero) December 11, 2014
So raise a glass to Doom, for he’s a good ‘un. We did the same one year ago today where we discussed our memories of Doom. And hopefully it won’t be long untill we can relive them in glorious modern-day-o-vision thanks to id’s new Doom.