Introduction

The one that started it all

Wolfenstein might be the granddaddy of FPS gaming, but the genre really didn’t establish itself until John Carmack and company followed up Wolf with Doom. Those of us who are old enough to remember Doom remember it well – the motion sickness, the raw fear induced by the gurgling and roars of imps and cacodemons, the awkward transition from keyboarding to mousing, and the joyous rush of actually being able to blast your friends.

I wonder...

Entering hell

Big trouble in little china...

I still fondly remember my introduction to multiplayer PC gaming in fall of my freshman year at UC Berkeley back in 1995. Some of my dorm-mates were discussing getting LAN cards and stringing coax up and down our hallway to set up our own network (yes kiddies…back in the day LAN cards were not standard equipment, and the Berkeley dorms didn’t have built in Ethernet).

Dave: “Hey Bob, wanna get a LAN card and set up a network with me, Dan, and Elias?”

Bob: “What’s a LAN?”

Dave: “It’s a way to hook up our computers so we can play Doom against each other”

Bob: “Wait…you mean…you can do that? We can actually shoot each other and stuff?”

Eat it, dog boy

Uh oh

Hose 'em down

Doom over the years

I was such a newbie in those days. Doom has come a long way since then, becoming the best selling FPS game ever, including all its sequels and incarnations, across generations of different consoles. Remember Doom for 3DO? Atari Jaguar? Super NES? A couple years ago, Doom was even ported over to Windows CE, making it possible to play portable Doom on PocketPC based PDAs. Most of those devices aren’t designed from an ergonomic sense to play games, however, so FPS addicts looking for their fix on the go were still itching for better solutions. Just to head off any flames from anti-console types out there: Yes, of course you can play any FPS on a laptop these days, but you obviously can’t whip out a full PC with mouse on the bus, or the subway, in a doctor’s office, on a cramped, coach-class airplane seat. The GBA slips right into a shirt or jacket pocket – it’s a true portable gaming solution. The same cannot be said of a laptop, period.

With the release of the Gameboy Advance last year, gamers finally had a portable gaming platform powerful enough (approximately the power of a Super NES) to run Doom effectively. How is it? Since this is the site that Thresh built, I won’t waste time describing the storyline or gameplay of a 9 year old game that we’ve all played and beaten 1,000 times over.

But for the benefit of the four people reading this who have never played or heard of Doom before: Doom is a 2.5D (not quite 3D – there’s no true up and down Y axis) first person shooter. You’re a space marine on the Phobos moon of Mars – a dimensional gate has opened between hell and our world, wiping out your entire squad on the base. You’re the last one alive – you’ve got a gun. It’s time to kick ass.