A History Of Violence

The story of DOOM and how it changed everything – as told by co-creator John Romero.

- Andy Kelly

In the winter of 1993, Dallas, Texas-based developer id Software released a game about a space marine killing demons, and a legend was born. Doom set the standard for the first-person shooter on PC and beyond, and was one of the first videogames to bleed into mainstream pop culture. It was critically acclaimed, technically groundbreaking, a sales success, and is still considered by a huge number of people to be one of the best games of all time.

Today, co-creator John Romero runs his own studio in Galway, Ireland. He’s currently working on Empire of Sin, a turn-based strategy game set in Prohibition-era America. This is a far cry from Doom, but the landmark shooter is never far from his mind. In 2018, Romero released SIGIL, a brand new Doom episode. And his Twitter feed is a goldmine of anecdotes, rare photos, and other Doom ephemera. But why, when so many other games from the ’90s have been forgotten, does Doom endure?

“It’s programmed really well,” says Romero, speaking from his studio in Galway. “And releasing the source code has allowed ports to keep it at a highly playable level. If you play it in DOSBox, it still feels pretty good. But it’s not as smooth as it is on today’s machines. I actually think it feels better playing it with a source port nowadays. There was a tipping point a while ago where people would swear you had to play the original DOS version, but now these source ports make it feel really good.”

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