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.

KMETL14 (KMETL14.WAD)

KMETL14

by Kurt Kesler

Kurt Kesler made a bunch of vanilla levels that got rolled up into KMEGA1 before moving onto limit-removing with KHILLS, Boom with KBOOM, and, of course, ZDoom with KZDOOM. In 2023, we got the first KGZDOOM, KGZDOOM1. At the end of 2024 Kurt added another wrinkle to his legacy--the first in a series of new KMETL maps, no longer for vanilla but for limit-removing ports. KMETL14 is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II and one of three such iterations on the KMETL theme thus far. As to whether or not there will be more, well, it looks like Kesler has switched gears to make a GZDoom minisode alongside Doomworld Community superstar Chris Hansen. If we can get a spiritual sequel to KGZDOOM1, then I'm sure that there'll be more KMETL.

Make, test, post. (MKTSTPST.WAD)

MAKE, TEST, POST.

by "Memfis"

Memfis has long had a love-affair with quirky stuff from Doom's '90s period. The vast majority of his catalogue leading up to and following really doesn't reflect the attitude represented in Kuchitsu, however, outside of perhaps Green Day. His smaller solo releases were more representative of his love for classic megaWADs like Requiem (REQUIMEM), Memento Mori II (MM2MEM01), and Phobos: Relive the Nightmare (RELIVEX2). 2013's Kuchitsu appears to have marked the seismic shift in his predilections, with the author continuing playing with more offbeat level design ideas in pus06, How Eye Killed Time, and--of course--Garbage. Make, test, post. was originally published to the Doomworld forums on November 14th of 2013. A MAP07 replacement for Doom II to be played in theoretically any limit-removing port, it continues the author's ongoing fascination with quirky, DoomCute elements.

Wonderful Doom (WD14.WAD)

Doom is wonderful. Wraith knew this and believed in it so much that he wanted to give players an excuse "to play First Doom one more time". To this end, he crafted Wonderful Doom. This megaWAD was apparently released in several iterations before being released in time to feature as a runner-up in the 2007 Cacowards, with several updates since then. It replaces every level in The Ultimate Doom with, for lack of a better term, remixed versions of the original levels. I've seen a broad variety of opinions on this project, the extremes of which boil down to dismissing it for being too derivative of the IWAD versus loving it for how close the maps are in spirit to the originals.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (WICKED_1.WAD)

SOMETHING WICKED

THIS WAY COMES

by "Rex Claussen"

Rex kicked off 2002 with an idiosyncrasy from the year before, officially releasing Invictus to /idgames. This was a vanilla level for the original Doom where most of Rex's works since his debut had been for ZDoom and, for a long stride, leveraged assets from post-Doom FPS games like Hexen II, Half-Life, the Quake series, and Dark Forces. The Invictus upload was paired with a vanilla Doom II level that kicked off a new Rex trend: Something Wicked This Way Comes. This is a MAP10 replacement, also released in early 2002, and while it didn't profess to be the beginning of something broader, he would go on to author a grand total of nine individual Wicked levels, sort of capping things off with the pseudo-prequel, By the Pricking of My Thumbs....

Pesha (PESHA.WAD)

Stanimapping is a failed portmanteau of "stamina" and "mapping", coined by Chris "Purist" Bourke to describe a design process where the author sits down and then does not stop mapping until their work is complete. (In Bourke's defense, Stanimapping flows better than Stamimapping, and Staminapping is something we all do from time to time.) This is basically speedmapping but without a specific time limit. The constraint depends on how long the author can stand to work. A few folks showed up for Purist's inaugural (and sole) Grindmapping session, whose subject was "industrial zone". The cast of characters included Purist himself, scifista42, Phobus, Katamori, and (dum dum dum DUMMM) dobu gabu maru. dgm cranked out three levels in as many days, with the final product packaged together as Pesha, a three-map minisode for Doom II that replaces MAP28-MAP30. It's supposed to work in any limit-removing port.

Kill the Cybie (SISOCRAN.WAD)

KILL THE CYBIE

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

Espi made a deathmatch map in 2002 called Narcosis. Apparently he had enough people request that he turn it into a single-player level that he did so, so in 2003 we received a file by the name of SISOCRAN, which of course is Narcosis spelled backwards. Its official title is Kill the Cybie and it's a single-level for ZDoom on account of it uses a script to end the level after, you know, you Kill the Cybie. For some reason I had built in my head that this was going to be something goofy like Jim Flynn's Surrounded!, which is also a single map that requires you to slay a Cyberdemon. I was pleasantly surprised. In my defense, it's not like Repo doesn't have strange little levels like Barons o' Fun and The One Level With All the Teleporters.

Defragmentation Factor (DEFRACT.WAD)

DEFRAGMENTATION

FACTOR

by Eugene Guschin aka "Wraith"

Defragmentation Factor is Wraith's /idgames debut, a Doom II MAP01 replacement published in 2006 to be played in any source port. Guschin was a member of Clan [B0S] during its heyday with Da Will, Sacrament, and A.L.T., but he had established a cornerstone in the community a few years before "Russian Realism" with Wonderful Doom. He has a few other works mentioned in the PWAD's .TXT, among them Wonderful Doom's E1, so this isn't the first thing that he apparently produced. Through contacting Wraith, I managed to figure out the location of most of these proto-works, but I'm still not sure about MySchool.

One Bloody Night (BLDNIGHT.WAD)

Erik Alm is largely regarded as the WADfather of the Doom community's direction in combat due to his double-shot of the much loved Scythe and then, later, Scythe II. The third episode of Scythe generally comes as a thunderclap to folks who love its shorter, "cute" levels, but anyone familiar with Alm's work could see it coming from a mile away. Alm's fondness for both short, warm-up type levels as well as bone-crushing challenge encounters is evident in his contributions to Sam Woodman's ONEWEEK and it's similarly mirrored here, in One Bloody Night. This is a nine-level episode for vanilla Doom II that replaces MAP01-MAP09, released in the middle of 2002.

Blood Runners (#BLOODR.WAD)

BLOOD RUNNERS

by "Sphagne"

Sphagne sits alongside Gene Bird and Daniel Trim as an author who published levels prior to Community Chest and who submitted them back when the original CCHEST pitch was something more along the lines of, "Have you ever wanted to see one of your works ensconced within a megaWAD?" Thus far, the five Sphagne levels that I've covered--Simphony of Death, Secret Lab, Death Cycle, Hell Harbour, and The Living End--were not among the three maps that made it into the 2003 Community Chest. Blood Runners, which the author claims was his eighth produced level, became CCHEST's MAP23. It was originally released as part of a batch upload in 2002, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. The author claims that he did not know that there was an online Doom community back when he authored these levels from 1995-1999, so one may assume that it will function in any source port.

The Process (TPROCESS.WAD)

THE PROCESS

by Mike Alfredson aka "Use3D"

Use3D has been making maps for a long time. So much of his creative energy has been tied up in his two one-man megaWADs, Doom Beyond and Nilla Doom, so much so that he actually jettisoned a number of his oldest maps from Doom Beyond and released them as singular outtakes. I've been covering all of these levels in my run-up to the original Community Chest and will take a gander at Doom Beyond whenever it releases because, well, Mike makes damn good classic-feeling maps. The last batch of Alfredson's outtakes was published in 2019. The Process is the most recent of these, by which I mean it was crafted in 2001 instead of 1997. It's a MAP05 replacement for Doom II, to be played in any port.

KGZDOOM1 (KGZDOOM1.PK3)

Kesler's Still Kickin', released in 2004, seemed to be the last that we'd hear from him in terms of new material. Then, in 2018, he reconnected with Doom and started showing off screenshots of him horsing around in an editor. KMETL 2018 didn't ultimately pan out--Kesler had to back away for awhile and lost what he had been working on--but when he eventually returned he plinked away until we got KGZDOOM1! This is a two-map minisode replacing MAP01 and MAP02 in, you guessed it, GZDoom, released in 2023. We haven't seen another KGZDOOM yet, but we've gotten KMETL14, KMETL15, and KMETL16 so far, so who knows what's in the pipeline?

Garbage (GARBAGE.WAD)

November of 2013 marked the beginning of perhaps Memfis's most productive span of authorship, kicking off with How Eye Killed Time and--apart from a lull in March--built multiple PWADs a month until July of 2014, right after his epic /idgames archive dump in June of 2014. Garbage is the second WAD published during this period, a two-level minisode for Doom II to be played in theoretically any limit-removing port. In practice, you are best to keep to PrBoom-Plus or its descendants like DSDA Doom. MAP01 plays just fine but the very first thing maze in MAP02 is not navigable in (G)ZDoom. If you must insist on playing in (G)ZDoom then you'll have to clip through the first maze. After that, it's aces.

Abyssal Speedmapping Session 7 (ABYSPED7.WAD)

The Doom community has generally had semi-regular speedmapping events in one form or another but in my mind they seemed to get new life in 2013. One of the longer-running institutions--now defunct--is The Abyssal Speedmapping Sessions. The Abyss was a forum that ended up receiving some of the now defunct NewDoom regulars, and Obsidian wanted to bring them together to make some Doom maps. The first ABYSPED didn't have the greatest turnout but they kept it strong, eventually ending at a grand total of 69 iterations. ABYSPED7 is the seventh Abyssal Speedmapping Session, organized in June of 2014. A bunch of regulars from past sessions showed up as well as some, err, new blood, to put out a grand total of 14 levels, replacing MAP01-MAP14.

Invictus (INVICTUS.WAD)

INVICTUS

by Rex Claussen

Wow, it's been a long time since I've played me some Claussen maps. Pre-Invictus, Rex made a ton of levels including a series of partial and total conversions (A Hex On You, Phoenix Rising, Paranoia, Temple of the Ancients, The Darkest Hour). Along the way, while I imagine The Darkest Hour was about a month away from being released, Claussen participated in DoomCenter's E1 Mapping Contest in 2001. His entry, "Invictus" (E1M6), was a break from form in a variety of ways. It included no copy and pasted geometry from his previous levels and tended toward more abstract level geometry based in OG Doom's aesthetic compared to, say, the more Quake II- or Half-Life-esque base and office designs.

Tower of Lies (LIES.WAD)

TOWER OF LIES

by "scwiba"

scwiba got his start in the 1 Monster project, kicking off a career of gimmick-dedicated mapsets. He was awfully quiet for the following nine or so years until 2016, with the Cacoward-winning Absolutely Killed. In the year prior in 2015, however, he published this level, Tower of Lies. It's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II to be played in a limit-removing port. Not hearing anything about it beyond its author just about disowning it, I wasn't sure what to expect. On its face, this is a regular ol' climb through a demon-infested tower. It's still deeply invested in being a gimmick level, though, even if figuring it as such involves a deep reading of its level design with respect to its name. It's all in the name, isn't it?

Ruma (RUMA.WAD)

RUMA

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

It's taken about three years to get here since I first played Espi's Barons o' Fun, but I finally made it. Ruma made Doomworld's Top 100 WADs list as one of the entries from 2002. It's a single map for Doom II, to be played in what appears to be any limit-removing port. Historians take note: Repo intimates in the .TXT that this was going to be MAP03 of his mini-episode, with the author keeping the start and exit, intending to build an otherwise entirely new level. I know that Espi had two minisodes in the works, One Hell of a Day (which became Suspended in Dusk) and Rust (which became part of Back to Basics). After a brief scan--and a second scan--I confirmed that the starting area of Ruma has the same geometry as Suspended in Dusk's MAP03 starting area. I guess that this makes Ruma something of a lost level or a Deleted Scene, to crib from Russell Pearson's cut content showcases.

Greymood (GRMOOD.WAD)

GREYMOOD

by "MysteriousHaruko"

Misty has had a healthy community career over the past seven or so years, working to co-host the Pigeon Speedmapping Sessions and contributing to a variety of community projects. She's also had a smattering of solo releases, including but not limited to the 2022 Cacoward HM Caffeine Injection. Greymood is her first public offering, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II published back in 2017 which now feels like a long, long time ago. There must have been some prior shared maps as rd alludes to an improvement over prior works (and the DoomWiki mentions Think about it), but Greymood was the first to find its way to the /idgames archives.

Super MAYhem 17 (MAYHEM17.WAD)

MAYhem is a time when Doomworlders can band together and throw their weight behind an arbitrary set of restrictions. The series had a rough start in terms of meeting its megaWAD goal, with 2012 and 2013 fielding 12 and 11 levels respectively, but it hit its stride with MAYhem 2048, with each subsequent iteration meeting the "megawad" definition (in spirit with MAYhem 2024, which produced 35 segments to stitch together). The 2017-released-in-2018 installment goes by Super MAYhem 17 because the texture theme this go-around was Super Mario Bros.-themed, with an aesthetic that appears to be sort of a mix of Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. This is a 28-ish level replacement for Doom II, to be played with Boom-compatible ports, with some fringe MAPINFO perks for ZDoom / Eternity users.

The Living End (#LIVEND.WAD)

THE LIVING END

by "Sphagne"

No--it's not THAT "Living End". This is a level by Sphagne that happens to go by the same name. Sphagne's main claim to fame is having submitted three of his previously-released levels to the first Community Chest: Avenger, Blood Runners, and Afterlife. Pretty much all of his single player maps were crafted somewhere between 1995 and 1999 and then uploaded in bulk in August of 2002. The Living End is purportedly the seventh of these, with four of the author's mentioned 19 levels never seeing publication. Like the rest of Sphagne's released solo works, it's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II.

Computer Station (CMPSTATN.WAD)

COMPUTER STATION

by Mike Alfredson aka "Use3D"

Doom Beyond started out as a replacement for the Hell levels of Doom II, which Alfredson thought were lacking in Hellishness when compared to "The Catacombs" and "The Spirit World". He seems to have had a sympathetic soul in Chris Lutz, who executed a project similar in sentiment with 2017's Hellscape. Doom Beyond eventually ventured beyond its original scope, however, becoming a limit-removing megaWAD with more or less classic-style gameplay. Along the way he removed some of his older levels from the running and published them independently. So far I've taken a look at Hell Pit, Deep Core 1, Chaotic Grounds, and Temple of Sin. This review is for Computer Station, a MAP04 replacement for Doom II, originally crafted in 1997, that was stationed earlier in the megaWAD along with Deep Core 1. 

Still Kickin' (KICKIN01.WAD)

STILL KICKIN'

by Kurt Kesler

When I played KZDOOM7 back in 2016, I had two levels left before I had reviewed the entirety of his output: "Phobos - The Underground Sewer Facility" from Ni'mRoD - IXNAY on the HOMBRE (MAP05), published in 2002, and Still Kickin', a solo level released in 2005. I played NIMROD back in 2019, but I wasn't in much of a hurry to play Kesler's final offering. Then, in 2023, it happened: KGZDoom1, Kesler's first published Doom content in 18 years. Since then and as of this writing, there are three new KMETL levels. Will wonders never cease? It feels about time to ride the K train again and close the gap between 2002 and 2023. Still Kickin', at one point Kesler's ultimate work, is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II to be played in any limit-removing port.

How Eye Killed Time (KILLTIME.WAD)

HOW EYE KILLED TIME

by "Memfis"

Memfis uploaded some maps to /idgames as he made them, but he waited to upload even more of them until 06/21/14, the day of the great uploading. How Eye Killed Time, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, was apparently crafted early October of 2013 but it doesn't appear to have been stealth-released on the Doomworld Forum like most of the June 2014 uploads that I've played thus far. Maybe he posted it to a different forum, or maybe he just sat on it until he decided to clear out his archives. In any event, the PWAD claims to require Boom compatibility, but based on what I've seen over past Memfis reviews, I believe that the reality is that the only environment this map was tested in is PrBoom-plus using -complevel 9. It wouldn't surprise me if it worked in more or less any limit-removing port.

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.

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.