Return to Hadron Episode 2 - The Collider's New Clothes (HADRONE2.WAD)

Matt Powell aka "cannonball" made a splash in 2012 dabbling in both Slaughterfest 2012 as well as some scattered Ultimate Doom works. One of these - his speedy episode 1 - eventually became 2013's ConC.E.R.N.ed, a megaWAD replacing the original trilogy. 2014 drove E4 fetishists wild with Thy Flesh Turned Into a Draft Excluder. DRAFTEX was a leap forward in his craft and while it wasn't meant to be appended to CONCERN he passed the savings on to the player in 2015's Return to Hadron. E1 revisited the locale of his megaWAD's first episode while changing some things up to suit his developing gameplay sensibilities. In 2017 we were fortunate to receive the second part, The Collider's New Clothes. This one replaces The Shores of Hell and should play in any limit-removing source port.

Installation B (AP_013.WAD)

INSTALLATION B

by Alex Parsons

For better or worse this is the final standalone release in the World's End series. The levels spanned eleven individual publications with another two appearing within the original Community Chest. Alex had an epic adventure in mind based on the short, punchy descriptions and titles. He lost the thread around the same time that he started looking into a new theme, though, leaving us with a handful of small but competent techbase levels. Installation B, released in 2003, is a limit-removing level for Doom II. Parsons teased a "C" in the series but neither it nor the more relevant AP_10.WAD ever materialized.

Menkui (MENKUI.WAD)

MENKUI

by "Memfis"

If you've been following along then the fact that this level showcases textures from 2002: A Doom Odyssey should not come as a surprise. I've seen Memfis as an outspoken fan of 2002ADO and even surmised in my review of Beware of False Prophets that he might have tributed it at some point. This PWAD is right in line with an MO established in Requimem and then continued in MEM_OLD1, MM2MEM01, Relive X2, and ICARUMEM. I just hadn't guessed at this one because - as he admits - Memfis grabbed its title from a hentai manga. Menkui is an E4M1 replacement originally released in 2012 but not uploaded until 2014 and should play back in any source port.

Counterattack (MEK-CATK.WAD)

I have played a handful of Mechadon levels but they were all within the context of community projects. Granted, his outstanding work in larger pieces like Claustrophobia 1024 was why he was chosen as Doomworld's Mapper of the Year in 2009. A large portion - the majority, even - of Brett's material is actually created for multiplayer mapsets. This is a major aspect of his pie-in-the-sky project, Supplice. His single-player solo work is much rarer but he tends to use his powers for good, e.g. bailing out megaWADs in crisis. Counterattack is its own thing, though, a set born from his submission to the first Vinesauce Mapping Contest (this one's MAP02). The rest of the material was built bafflingly quickly and released in early 2017. There are about nine map replacements in all consisting of five normal, two utility, and two bonus. The set is meant for play in Boom compatible ports but the engine has got to pack some horsepower under the hood. It was specifically tested in PrBoom-Plus, ZDoom, GZDoom, and Eternity.

Out of Phase III: One Cloudy Afternoon (OPHASE3.WAD)

OUT OF PHASE III

ONE CLOUDY AFTERNOON

by Karthik Abhiram Krishna

2002 was KA's year. He made a technical leap forward with The Other Side of Phobos, a stylistic one in Congestion Control (featured in Doomworld's Top 100 WADs of All Time), and put a nice bow on his Out of Phase series. OPHASE3 is of course the third release of the trilogy, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Looking through the .TXTs it's clear that he was working with his brother Varun at this time as well as a team for a project called The Ninth Gate which would have been a full E4 replacement. The roster included Tobias Münch, Pablo Dictter, and Damian Lee (aka Lexus Alyus) so he also appears to have fallen in with good company.

Gestalt666's Town of Heresy (666TOWN.WAD)

GESTALT666'S

TOWN OF HERESY

by John "Gestalt666" Bye

By mid-1997, John was pretty much done with Doom. He would still contribute a few maps to The Darkening E1 but he had gone over to the Quake side after seeing Black Star Coven's first team release, The Talosian Incident. When the time came to open a relief valve, then, he opted to design something for a different idtech game - Heretic. Thus became Gestalt666's Town of Heresy, an E1M1 replacement. It's Bye's final solo release and caps off a career characterized by atmosphere more than anything in its level design. He also had a wild, unpredictable streak with bits like the computerized domain of CyberDoom and "The Living Maze" from Cygnus IV. 666TOWN is - for the most part - unlike any of these things.

Complex 867 (COMP867.WAD)

COMPLEX 867

by Simon "Volte-Face" Broadhead

Simon was a minor fixture in the Doom community from 2001-2004. He didn't make any maps and he was also in his early to mid teens for all of his authorial work. He had an entry in the DoomCenter E1 Mapping Contest, submissions in the first Community Chest as well as its sequel, and even participated in Exquisite Corpse. Broadhead only had a couple of solo releases, Hell's Arena in 2001 and Complex 867 in 2002. The latter, COMP867, is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Volte-Face suggests that the level itself is vanilla-compatible but recommends using a limit-removing source port.

Installation A (AP_012.WAD)

INSTALLATION A

by Alex Parsons

The original Community Chest took in submissions from authors who had previously released them, like Gene Bird and Sphagne, in addition to exclusive originals. AP differed because he published two levels in the collection - AP_015 and AP_016 - and then placed them in the running of his World's End series with his next outing in 2003, Installation A. It's an unusual spot in the timeline because CCHEST hadn't been released yet but they occur after this level, AP_012, and his last solo venture, AP_013. It's still dependably a MAP01 replacement for Doom II for play in a limit-removing port but... other things have changed.

icarumem (ICARUMEM.WAD)

ICARUMEM

by "Memfis"

Requiem, Memento Mori II, Phobos - Relive the Nightmare... and then Icarus: Alien Vanguard. It would be neat to see Memfis continue to check boxes of classic-era megaWADs after experimenting with their resources. It's something that I've actually thought of doing. Until then, here's icarumem. This one was published to the Doomworld Forums in early 2012 but, again, didn't make it to the /idgames archives until the 2014 June powerdump. It requires the actual ICARUS.WAD since it's used as a texture resource and should work with essentially all limit-removing source ports. Apart from the PWAD dependency it's also important to note that icarumem occupies the MAP24 slot of Doom II. It isn't thematically linked with "The Haunting". The author presumably enjoyed its slot's track, "Ghost In the Machine".