1 Monster (1MONSTER.WAD)

We are more awash in limitation-based projects than ever, with 10 Sectors capturing the imagination of the community. When 1 Monster was conceived, Dr. Zin had 2 Sectors and Congestion 1024 in mind, though we've since seen 100 Lines and a whole host of resource-economy projects. What you don't see a lot of, though, are restrictions on enemy variety. Enter 1 Monster, a megaWAD where only one monster type is placed on each map. Every member of Doom II's bestiary is represented here, from the lowly zombiman to John Romero himself with his luscious locks of love. The project kicked off at the tail end of 2005 and then changed leads several times before seeing a final release in 2007. In its more or less final form, 1 Monster is a 25 map replacement for Doom II, to be played in Boom-compatible ports.

why Absolutely Killed is not available

For anyone coming to the blog and wondering why the review for Absolutely Killed is not available, I made a tiny edit to it--adding a tag for scwiba--and Google's friendly automated system decided to flag the review as spam. I'm appealing the auto-judgment, but as of this moment the review has been forced to "hidden" status. Supposing that a human looks at the post and then approves the appeal, I'll delete this post and we'll all pretend like this never happened. At least, until I do something dumb like edit the review to link, idk, something like a 1 Monster review.

Laitos (LAITOS.WAD)

LAITOS

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

Espi was one of fifteen different people who submitted levels to DoomCenter's E1 Contest for the chance to get a sweet, signed copy of The Ultimate Doom from the man himself, John Romero. Some of them went on to have rather illustrious careers in the community. Amusingly enough, the contest winner did not! Some of the contestants released their levels individually once it was over. Laitos--which was originally E1M8, not that this technically meant anything--has virtually doubled in size, if not more so. My understanding is that Espi revised this level several times. The final version (v1.4), published in early 2002, is an E1M1 replacement for the original Doom.

The One Level With All Those Teleporters. (TOLWATT.WAD)

THE ONE LEVEL WITH

ALL THOSE TELEPORTERS.

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

I think that there is a tendency in this community to think of classically lauded authors as being beneath a bit of fun like Erik Alm and his goofball Find It. Not everything has to be Scythe II to be worth making OR preserving. In Esa Repo's case, his pre-Suspended in Dusk work is peppered with levels that people perusing his back catalogue might find...questionable. The first of these that we got was Barons o' Fun, so named because it's an arcade-type scenario where you attempt to get Barons of Hell to blow each other up with barrels and even scratch each other. The One Level With All Those Teleporters is not an auspicious name to start things off with, and if you keep reading, you'll see what all the fuss is about. TOLWATT is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released toward the end of 2001. As to why it requires ZDoom, I think that the only reason is because it has a MAPINFO lump. It seemed to play just fine back in DSDA-Doom apart from not being able to play the included music.

Corrupted Cistern (CIS-LUTZ.WAD)

CORRUPTED CISTERN

by Christopher Lutz

2016-2017 was a banger of a year for Chris Lutz. No End In Sight saw its final release, with three awesome levels from the author in the four-episode package, including the stunningly gorgeous "The Blood Beneath" (E4M5). We got a similarly fabulous Hellscape, reimagining the original Doom II's Hell episode with forbidden, Stygian vistas and built around his previous The Dying End. Later, we saw the super-fun and super-huge Dark Tide, a late entry in TNT's sort-of-series, The Return. Now, in 2022, we get a new evolution of Chris, an ultra-detailed level in GZDOOM: Corrupted Cistern, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Be still, my beating heart!

Psychic (XA-PSYCH.PK3)

PSYCHIC

by Xaser Acheron

My reintroduction to Doom is tangentially related to Psychic. A friend gifted me a Something Awful account back in '09 and one of the forums that I gravitated toward was the Let's Play forums. They had a Doom mods thread going on at the time and I think that they were playing a combination of Psychic with B.P.R.D.'s Equinox. I saw so much cool stuff going on with Doom (my previous dips in user-created content being limited to whatever I found on my Dad's Doom 1 & 2 Collection shovelware CD as well as Kaiser's Doom 64: Absolution TC) that I wanted to dive right in. Of course, if you're a long-time reader you know that I don't spend a lot of time playing gameplay mods, but fourteen years to finally load up Xaser's Psychic seems, in retrospect, a bit excessive. At least I had planned it out back in 2019 to play it after The Abyss! That's got to count for something, right?

Hell Harbour (#HHARBR.WAD)

HELL HARBOUR

by "Sphagne"

Sphagne's main claim to fame is submitting of his previously-released levels to the original Community Chest. Like his contemporary Gene Bird, Sphagne had been crafting maps since the mid-90s only to start publishing them later in the early '00s. Hell Harbour is Sphagne's sixth level but a portion of his maps were apparently not deemed fit for release. Of the seventeen or so works whose existence is confirmed, #HHARBR is actually the sixth. Like the rest of these single map publications (Gene Bird's and Alex Parsons's), it's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. It was published in 2002 but the story of its creation suggests that it ought to work in vanilla given that Sphagne "did not know about Doom communities accessible via internet", which sort of precludes source ports.

Temple of Sin (TMPLOSIN.WAD)

TEMPLE OF SIN

by Mike "Use3D" Alfredson

On the subject of Use3D's rainy day classically-styled megAWAD, we don't appear to be any closer to seeing a full release than we were when I posted my review for Chaotic Grounds. However, Alfredson DID see fit to grace us with a stealth-release of Nilla Doom's second episode (MAP08-MAP11)! That's awesome! I don't think that this, Temple of Sin, was cut from that project, but rather a megaWAD that was originally, nominally based on the story of the Doom II: Hell on Earth novelization. It's a MAP21 replacement for Doom II that should theoretically work in any source port given that Use3D tested it in doom2.exe.

pus06 (PUS06.WAD)

pus06 is one of those PWADs that Russian author Memfis published to little or no fanfare via a Doomworld thread, first debuting in July of 2013. It didn't make it to /idgames until about a year later in June of 2014 during the great uploadening. Memfis crafted a ton of small-scale releases from 2011 to through 2014, but he refrained from publishing more than half of them on the archives until mid-2014. From what I gather, this was due to a variety of factors, but the end result was an epic Newstuff flood that scifista42 took ownership of. pus06 is a two-map minisode for Doom II and its target port is prboom-plus -complevel 2, so... limit-removing.

The Abyss (ABYSS.WAD)

The Abyss was rescued from... the abyss of time. It's crazy to think that the primary reason we have The Abyss right now is because one of its creators, J.M.P. van Waveren ("Mr. Elusive"), toted a copy of it with him when he started working at id Software. Otherwise, who knows? This megaWAD was released over several iterations, eventually crystallizing in 1995 as a 24-map replacement for Doom II, not counting the placeholder "THE END" levels. Miklos de Rijk ("H2SO4") and van Waveren originally published The Abyss on a more localized BBS in The Netherlands, but there's no digital record of anyone acknowledging it. de Rijk and van Waveren went on to significantly more acclaim with their Omicron Bot for Quake, notable for its apparent ability to function on "the jankiest, boxiest of community maps". This apparently got Mr. Elusive a foot in the door at id, where he worked on Quake III and subsequent projects before following Carmack to work on the Oculus.

Reanimated (REANMTD.WAD)

Karthik Abhiram officially kicked off his authorial career when he was 19 years old with Ick. His brother, Varun, kicked off his own career the same year with The Anomaly: Part II, when he was around 13 years of age. The siblings had some sort of dialogue with each other when it came to mapping for Doom, but they didn't really collaborate in level design until 2004's Reanimated. This PWAD, whose name and level titles are inspired by the Linkin Park remix album, Reanimation, is a two-level minisode for limit-removing ports. Apparently the genesis of their inspiration came when they downloaded some Linkin Park MIDIs off the internet. If that doesn't sound like a time-capsule of the early 2000s then I don't know what else would.

Linna (LINNA.WAD)

LINNA

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

(based on Come to a Head by "Deadnail")

In June of 2001, Deadnail uploaded his only single player level to /idgames, Come to a Head (SP_DN01). It was a weighty techbase map with grueling thing placement, best enjoyed on HMP and even then you'll likely suffer without knowing the level's five secrets. Nine days later, Espi renovated the level and uploaded Linna, a MAP01 replacement for... whatever the confluence is of source ports that are Boom-compatible and also allow jumping. GZDoom and Zandronum ought to work, Eternity, Odamex, Legacy, and idk, Risen3D? I know that I'm selling someone's favorite source port short right now, I just couldn't tell you which one.

Come to a Head (SP_DN01.WAD)

COME TO A HEAD

by "Deadnail"

The next PWAD on my itinerary is Esa Repo's Linna, but as it lines out in its .TXT, Espi actually based it on a level that had been released by another person earlier in the year. Deadnail appears to have been primarily an author of deathmatch levels who played in what must be a now-ancient version of ZDaemon. At one point, however, they aspired to make some singleplayer levels, and Come to a Head is the fruit of this practice session. This is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released in 2001, and is specifically designed for ZDoom. I'm not sure if there's anything going on under the hood that requires it besides maybe the particle fountains, but in terms of gameplay, jumping is required in order to complete the level.

Bloodworks (BLUDWRKS.WAD)

BLOODWORKS

by Bob "brad_tilf" Larkin

Bob Larkin is the webmaster of the Doom Wad Station, one of the oldest hubs of Doom diaspora still knocking around the internet. He also has his own bibliography of PWADs! Back before I wrote any reviews I think that I had randomly picked his Endgame project to try out. I was... deeply confused. If you ask him what his best WAD is, though, he'll almost certainly say Bloodworks, and probably give a shoutout to Mitnal. BLUDWRKS is a MAP03 replacement for Doom II. I think that the source port recommendation basically boils down to "limit-removing". The GL ports of the day didn't know what to do with the software renderer tricks, I guess, but times have changed and this looks pretty much as it was originally intended in GZDoom as well as ZDoom.

Tangerine Nightmare (TN.WAD)

The French Doom Community celebrated in 2024 with a huge win, finally pushing out a release candidate of their Necromantic Thirst megaWAD after years of development. They didn't get there by just chipping away at their mega-project, though. franckFRAG and WH-Wilou84 fostered a creative community through their 3 Heures d'Agonie speedmapping project, which got sequels in 3HA2 and 3HA3. This seemed to activate authors like Datacore, who has since become one of the most productive authors of their subset of the Doom diaspora. Tangerine Nightmare started as a Datacore-led project with an emphasis on an orange color scheme. At some point, and I can't exactly tell by reading the development thread, franckFRAG sort of organically became the lead. What started as a vanilla adventure became a (mostly) limit-removing episode for Doom II, finalized in early 2018, replacing MAP01-MAP10.