The Troopers' Playground (TTP.WAD)

Matthias Worch is one of those mysterious '96 mappers that wasn't prolific outside of the community projects, namely Memento Mori II and Requiem. He has a few solo releases, however. One is a tune-up of a WAD called Ring of Havoc by Jason Blevins. The other is a Doom II episode featuring among, other things, a new enemy. The WAD? The Troopers' Playground.

Dystopia 3: Re-Birth of Anarchy (DYST3.WAD)

Anthony "Adelusion" Czerwonka and Iikka "Fingers" Keränen got together and had a baby. The baby's name was Dystopia 3, the apparent descendant of Czerwonka's DYST2.WAD, itself a conversion of a Heretic WAD (DYST.WAD). Really, I'd be hard pressed to draw any parallels between Dystopia and Dystopia 3. It's clear that Adelusion considerably honed his mapping skills, producing much tighter and deliberate gameplay through encounters and layout. His partner, Keränen, contributes a formidable six levels of his own, rounding out an 11-map episode for Doom II.

Army of Darkness Doom (AODDOOM1.WAD and AODDOOM2.WAD)

Steve Conway wanted to make a total conversion based on the now cult classic, Army of Darkness, then a recent release. He touched base with Stefan Maes, the man behind Excalibur. The two welded together a crew of individuals, among them Doomworld's own "Linguica" (Andrew Stine). Army of Darkness Doom comes in two flavors, Doom and Doom II. Qualitatively, there is no difference between the two. They have the same levels and the same arrangements. The actual differences lie mainly in the ways both are packaged to deal with the episode formats.

99 Ways to Die (99WAYS.WAD)

In 1996, Doomers everywhere eagerly anticipated the release of id Software's next project, Quake. Among other things, Quake featured 3D light sources, making realistic and attractive lighting far easier to execute than Doom's sector-based method, which often required painstaking work in order to simulate equivalent lighting. In the wake of Quake's previews, Warren Marshall released a short minisode for Doom II, intending to show just how far Doom's engine could be pushed. The .TXT has just a hint of desperation, almost pleading for Doom mappers to not jump ship for the new technological superior. While 1997 would show an exodus of many of Doom's most prominent mappers from '94-'96, anyone can see that the Doom mapping community continues to go strong. I'm not sure what effect 99 Ways to Die had on lighting standards, but I think Marshall made his point effectively.

A Hidden Mountain Factory (MTFACTOR.WAD)

A HIDDEN MOUNTAIN FACTORY
by Grzegorz Werner

Grzegorz Werner wasn't the most prolific mapper in the Doom community. He has three single player levels and one deathmatch level in the idgames archives, but one of them graced Doomworld's Top 10 WADs of 1996. A Hidden Mountain Factory is, well, a Hidden Mountain Factory, that's producing something contemptible, and you must infiltrate it and shut it down. Make no mistakes - this WAD is hard, in the knockabout Plutonia style (though not necessarily inspired by Plutonia). It has maybe one or two missteps that feel more like bullshit, but I'll cover those later.

Polygon Base (POLYGON.WAD)

POLYGON BASE
by Rick Lipsey

Polygon Base is an incredibly vast and incredibly nonlinear techbase map by Rick Lipsey from 1996, the sequel to The Final Geometry, published back in 1995. It's for Doom II, but if you play on Hurt Me Plenty, he's seeded the monsters as if it were an OG Doom map. There are a few cosmetic changes, namely the new title graphic and a sound replacement for the plasma rifle that's about as obnoxious. You have a lot of ground to cover and a lot of baddies to kill. No teleportation traps, just monster closets and lighter fare. None of the toughs are really thrown at you in hordes, so the difficulty is fairly low-key, which is nice considering how big it is. There's a lot to see, with several outdoor areas (all accessible) and several rooms tracing the path of a nukage river.

Icarus: Alien Vanguard (ICARUS.WAD)

Team TNT began as a loose assortment of people from the Doom editing mailing list that for a time had batted around the idea of doing a large WAD for Doom II. Most everyone knows that Team TNT made TNT Evilution, which id Software officially licensed. Less but certainly many still also know that they released another WAD following Evilution's production, this one freeware, which because of certain circumstances actually made it out of the gates before its "predecessor". That WAD's name was... Brace yourself... Icarus: Alien Vanguard. The plot...

All Hell is Breaking Loose (ALLHELL.WAD)

Up until the advent of DeHackEd, all of the "crazy" Doom mods were basically just sprite replacements. While Obituary is sort of the grand daddy of S.T.R.A.I.N. and some of the more subtle augments, the batshit insane mods can lay claim to The Sky May Be, or more sensibly, All Hell is Breaking Loose. Released in 1996 by one Joel Huenink, with a guest map by brothers Michael (Risen) and Chris (Kamikazi) Niggel, ALLHELL is a "near Total Conversion" for Doom II, replacing MAP01 to MAP05. It changes virtually all monster behavior, tossing many of them around in DeHackEd to make new and even more threatening beasties, and revamps Doomguy's arsenal to compensate for the increased lethality of the hordes of Hell.

Memento Mori II (MM2.WAD)

Memento Mori II, released in 1996, is of course the second outpouring of mapping effort from the Memento Mori Crew, though I should note that this Memento Mori Crew is not exactly the same group that made Memento Mori. Indeed, a number of mappers did not return for a second outing, while a number of authors stepped up to bang another quality megaWAD out. It's 31 levels of Doom II, 1 level of Doom, all specifically tweaked for coop. Both members of TiC - Thomas and Denis Moeller - return, alongside Jens Nielsen, David Davidson, Mark Klem, Orin Flaharty, Alden Bates, Florian Helmberger, Michael Rapp, and Andy Badorek. Some of these guys would even go on to work on Requiem, kind of a Memento Mori III, if you will.

Memento Mori (MM.WAD)

Memento Mori has the distinction of being one of the first megaWADs released for Doom II, period, seeing its first publication back in 1995. It's also one of the first community megaWADs, at one time racing neck and neck with H2H-Xmas and TNT: Evilution, at least until id bought up the latter for their own nefarious schemes. Memento Mori has its origins with The Innocent Crew - Thomas and Denis Moeller - authors of two episodes for OG Doom and the partial conversion, Obituary. From what I can tell, they helped form the Memento Mori Crew, gathering up 19 other authors, and pushed their megaWAD out in a little more than five months.