ea Speedmap 3 (EASPD3.WAD)

EA SPEEDMAP 3

by Erik Alm

There's a sidestory to a lot of these authorial careers who had their heyday in the early '00s that I've been glazing over. 2001 was the birth of the community speedmapping event, I mean insofar as it was officially documented on /idgames. Whether it was Doomworld, NiGHTMARE, or SargeBaldy, people came and did the best that they could within 100 minutes. Erik Alm apparently never applied to any of the DWSPD festivities but he was a fixture of both NTSPD and SBSPD. ea Speedmap 3 was actually created for NiGHTMARE's #3 session in December of 2001. Alm's connection died while he was submitting it, though, so rather than let it go to waste, he uploaded it to /idgames in early 2002. EASPD3 is a MAP01 replacement for Boom-compatible ports.

The theme for the session was to create a tribute to - not a recreation of - your favorite Doom or Doom II level with a few exceptions. No boss or secret maps, of course; "Entryway" and "Dead Simple" were understandably off the table; and nothing from Knee Deep in the Dead. Alm's chosen subject was da kewlest Doom II level ever, "The Spirit World". I'm pretty fond of it, too, so I'm happy to see Erik take a whack at it. I guess that the line between tribute and recreation blurs a bit when you're strapped for time, though. To draw a comparison to music production, I would call this a remix of MAP28 in a punchy, hardcore style.

I say this because there is obviously a sort of "good parts" thing going on with the layout and areas. The first and most obvious thing is the huge arachnotron / Spiderdemon cavern, albeit at a smaller and more cramped scale. One of the traps is an obvious homage to the ridiculous revenant cabinet with a similar sympathetic closet on the tunnel segment. The mancubus wing looks like it's had the most work done in detailing and it's a pretty cool shrine for a c.2002 speedmap. It's evocative of "The Spirit World" without really resembling any particular area, though it immediately brought the rectangular lock-in room with the columns to mind.

It's still decidedly Alm, though. This level has no less than three Cyberdemons, one of which is a hilarious rude surprise at the mancubus shrine. Another is a simple, locked-in gate guardian who you know you're going to have to fight. The last is an exit guardian in a room reminiscent of the big granite cinder cavern where you fight the arch-vile. There are, appropriately enough, a few archies here as well. It's a challenging level for its short duration, to be sure, but you have a lot of wiggle room. I did this all in one go and I did a lot of risky things like run from the revenants and through the mancubus shrine to what looked like an easy plasma gun grab. The resultant infighting was pretty good, though.

One big boon - Alm has an invulnerability artifact stocked alongside the bountiful shell / combat shotgun stash in the arachnotron pit. You could use it to make headway in clearing the floor but if you save it for the dive into the final room it and the BFG turn the overall encounter into a turkey shoot. I dunno what a "normal" run of this level would look like. Alm supplied a demo that consists of grabbing all the keys and waking up every monster, then using the influence of the invul to crowd surf to the BFG so that he could mop up most of the free roamers. If this setup seems too crazy then difficulty settings are included and they do a pretty stiff job of hacking stuff down for a nice, "Spirit World"-themed romp.

ea Speedmap 3 was a pretty fun mini-adventure and a nice little nostalgia hit, even if it's been ravaged by steroids. I imagine that the selection of people who want to play a hasty, slaughter-like remix of "The Spirit World" is pretty low but, for those that do, it is here.

THIS IS NOT THE GREATEST PWAD IN THE WORLD

IT IS ONLY A TRIBUTE