Pazuzu (Wings of Possession) (PAZUZU.WAD)

PAZUZU

WINGS OF POSSESSION

by T. Elliot Cannon

aka "Myscha the Sled Dog"

T. Elliot Cannon has a brief but promising Doom II authorship that was cut down in its prime by being hired to work on Unreal at the recommendation of John Anderson of Master Levels For Doom II fame. He released the raw, cramped, and switch-crazy Iditarod; the charming architectural delight of Odyssey;  and then published the lone but formidable Diabolos, all three PWADs being uploaded to /idgames in 1996. His last known single-player idtech1 creation was this: Pazuzu (Wings of Possession), a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, similarly released in 1996, about a month after he interred the rest of his known single-player maps.

Diabolos (DIABOLOS.WAD)

DIABOLOS

by T. Elliot Cannon

aka "Myscha the Sled Dog"

A lot of Doom WAD authors from the '90s went on to work in the gaming industry. We're very familiar with names like Dario and Milo Casali, Tom Mustaine, Sverre Kvernmo... but less so with dudes like T. Elliot Cannon. TEC authored eight of the original Unreal's 38 single-player maps but started out cutting his teeth on Doom II. If you aren't much of a WAD archaeologist then Cannon's name will probably be unfamiliar. His biggest legacy as far as community recognition is concerned is as one of the founding fathers of The Talosian Incident, but he also authored some deathmatch levels, including contributions to Team TNT's Bloodlands and Grievance. Myscha--his handle is based on the name of one of his beloved dogs--didn't end up authoring any maps for TALOSIAN, but if he had, then we'd have some very different things to say about it, based on Diabolos. This is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released in 1996.

Odyssey (ODYSSEY.WAD)

T. Elliot Cannon went on to have a relatively robust career in the video game industry beginning with Unreal, but he got his start--like so many others--with Doom. It appears that Cannon's heyday was focused on the period where the community was anticipating Quake. I initially thought that the Ancients Series marked Cannon's first forays into single-player level design. These maps appear to have been individually released at earlier dates and then were packaged together and re-released as Odyssey, perhaps around the time that TEC authored Iditarod. Both PWADs were uploaded to /idgames on 07 Apr. 1996. After looking at the .TXTs for his deathmatch packages for SLEDDOG and GRISHA, however, I am inclined to believe that the true production order was something more like SLEDDOG, IDITAROD, most of Odyssey, and then Grisha. Unfortunately, with the death of Compuserve, there's no log of Cannon's original releases, and the deathmatch packages do not appear to have made it to /idgames. Odyssey as it exists here is a five-map minisode for Doom II, replacing MAP01-MAP05.

Iditarod (IDITAROD.WAD)

T. Elliot Cannon made something like seventeen single-player levels for Doom II and eleven deathmatch arenas before being recommended to Epic Games by John Anderson aka Dr. Sleep and being hired for Unreal. Both Iditarod and Odyssey were originally released on Compuserve, I believe, which makes an absolute timeline difficult to pin down, given that Compuserve shuttered its doors more than 20 years ago. I originally believed that Cannon made the individual levels of Odyssey first and then cobbled together Iditarod during the anticipation of Quake. After experiencing Iditarod first-hand, I wasn't so sure. Both PWADs were absolutely created by the same person, but I found it difficult to believe that Cannon built the carefully-crafted Odyssey first and then cranked out Iditarod. Looking through packages of his Deathmatch levels that I obtained after I initially wrote these reviews, it would seem that the true order of production would be SLEDDOG, IDITAROD, some of Odyssey, and then Grisha, all of this occurring in 1995. Both SP PWADs were uploaded to /idgames alongside Diabolos on April 7th of 1996. Iditarod replaces MAP01 through MAP10 of Doom II.

TNT: Revilution (TNTR.WAD)

In 2009, Whoo opened the doors for TNT2, what was to be a spiritual sequel to TNT: Evilution. What followed was one of the longest and most protracted and most importantly PUBLIC development cycles in the community. Somewhere along the way, Steve Muller aka "Kyka" took the reigns of development along with a few other forum regulars who really wanted to see TNT2 make it to completion. I distinctly recall playing a gorgeous TNT2 demo map from Xaser. His teaser generated a lot of buzz for the project, but certain folks including a late-returning Whoo looked at the direction that Kyka had taken TNT2 and were vocally...dissatisfied. Somewhere after all the name-calling and aspersions, when the project heads could speak a bit more civilly in public, there was a project split in 2014, founded upon some sort of a level draft where levels were split up like dividing property during a divorce. A bit more level-headed than the divorces I've heard talk of, really. This is where Revilution's story begins, as a TNT2 spinoff.

Cavemen (#CAVEMEN.WAD)

CAVEMEN

by "Sphagne"

Some folks wish that the first two Community Chests had been more exclusionary. Its original call to arms did not specifically ask for maps that had not previously been released, which is why Sphagne, Gene Bird, and Daniel Trim ended up submitting some of their previously-released maps to CCHEST, with Gene Bird sneaking a few (as well as one original!) into CCHEST2. The vast majority of Sphagne's material was concocted prior to him approaching the Doom community, during a period spanning 1995-1999, and then bulk-uploaded in August of 2002. The author claims that Cavemen, a MAP07 replacement for Doom II, is his ninth map, though it's the seventh in the running that was made available on /idgames. For those keeping score at home, the 1st and 3rd levels have never been (publicly) seen.

The Real Crusher (CRUSHER.WAD)

THE REAL CRUSHER

by "Black Void"

The original Community Chest was an interesting hodgepodge of folks who had already had long and storied careers, like Rex Claussen, Stephen Clark, and Samuel Villarreal, as well as authors like Sphagne, Gene Bird, and Daniel Trim, who had released a bunch of solo levels over the previous year or two, some of which found their way into the collection. Black Void doesn't really fall into either of these categories, instead standing alongside Simon Broadhead and Will Hackney as one of the less-defined contributors. Black Void is sometimes remembered for Captain Mancubus, a Doom II episode that they created alongside another author named Epyo. This, however, is The Real Crusher, a MAP06 replacement for Doom II released mid-2002.

X-treme (demo) (EAXT.WAD)

X-treme is a two-level demo of a megaWAD project that Erik Alm declined to finish, released months after he published Scythe, late in 2003. If Alm had finished out the whole thing then it might have ended up as a gold standard for masochists the world over. As it stands, EAXT is whispered among consumers of ultra-hard mapsets, with the likes of gggmork theorizing whether or not it could be completed in a single segment run. As it turns out, yes, it can, but few speedrunners are willing to cut their teeth on it. The only person willing to do so on MAP02 appears to be stx-vile, whose record you can see played on Youtube.