Europa 3: The Dark Side of Vrack (EAEURO03.WAD)

EUROPA 3

THE DARK SIDE OF VRACK

by Erik Alm

Now here's an interesting piece of Doom history. This is an Erik Alm take on the Vrack series, as evidenced by the subtitle. If you're unfamiliar with Vrack - Fredrik Johansson's main claim to fame as an author - then the levels established a sort of orbital platform space station theme seen more recently in the Japanese Community Project. Europa 3 is also the third and final entry in Alm's EAEURO run, which began in 2001 and ends here in early 2002. As with the others, The Dark Side of Vrack is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II that is meant for play in a Boom-compatible port. Unlike Europa 2, it doesn't require the use of an independent texture pack.

The Anomaly: Part II (ANOMALY2.WAD)

THE ANOMALY

PART II

by Varun Abhirama Krishna

Varun is Karthik Abhiram Krishna's younger brother by about five years. The two made their /idgames debuts at around the same time in 2001, KAK with Ick (closely followed by Chaos Punch) and VAK with The Anomaly: Part II. They would eventually go on to tag-team a PWAD - 2004's Reanimated - but that is a story for another day. There's no way to infer exactly why but it's clear when comparing the two side-by-side that Varun was a more natural level designer than his older brother. I wager that you'll come to the same conclusion, whether or not Karthik's relative naivete is more interesting as an outsider perspective. ANOMALY2 is an E4M6 replacement for the Ultimate Doom and should play back in any source port.