Phobia (PHOBIA.WAD)

PHOBIA

by Kristian "Ebola" Käll

Kristus started his authorship with pretty much the most ambitious project possible, a megaWAD total conversion. Codename HYENA: Killer Machine likely established its legacy mostly with the purveyors of the weird. The work that followed is what made him a Doom community legend. Phobia was originally released in 2001 and then greatly expanded over the course of five years, eventually published in 2006 as Phobia: The Age. Both were made to be experienced in Legacy but the original is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. You may be wondering why I'm playing the single level release when there is, one may dare say, a superior version available. Blame it on an interest with its editorial history.

SlayeR (SLAYER.WAD)

Richard Wiles started mapping during the advent of source ports in 1998 but remained part of the vanilla vanguard. His output remains highly lauded; for example, his considerably-varied DICKIE series (well, technically DICKIE10) was named one of Doomworld's top 10 WADs of 1998 and he also clinched nods in 1999 for the brutal but acclaimed Crusades as well as his contributions to The Darkening E2 in 2000. SlayeR, a ten-map plus one secret mapset released in 2001, appeared to be his Doom swan song but Wiles would come back five years later to author the Monolith series. Dare he return a decade after in 2017? Probably not, but stranger things have happened!

Equinox (EQUINOX.WAD)

Equinox followed right on the heels of the ridiculous, engine-crushing Nuts toward the end of 2001. This implies that the former - a Doom II thirteen-level mapset for limit-removing source ports - had already been in development for quite some time. Both were created by the mysterious B.P.R.D. and while Equinox is much closer to traditional Doom level design there are enough instances of large areas and mixed monster packs to suggest that full-on enemy infighting was more woven into the author's Doom DNA than the casual silliness of Nuts (created to test the /idgames upload process) suggests. Looking at this and B.P.R.D.'s subsequent releases, including the magnificent yet maligned "Mucous Flow", it's clear that the author has enjoyed a considerable legacy of influence with today's level designers.

DooM Resurrection Episode One (DOOMRES.WAD)

When Doom's source ports started incorporating "advanced" features like scripting, I believe that there was a sort of fevered excitement as though these things would "elevate" it from a 1993-era FPS to something more in line with at least the late 90s, like Quake, its Stroggy sequel, and Half-Life. Over time the enthusiasm for expanding Doom's gameplay beyond the niche it rather robustly occupies waned and we are now up to our knees in vanilla and Boom-oriented maps and mapsets that continue to mine new depths beneath its rugged exterior. There's still a solid brace of people making highly inventive things with source ports, of course, but the days of authors like Kurt Kesler churning out little ZDoom mini-adventures appears to be gone, its peak madness left back in the early '00s.

Vrack 2b (VRACK2B.WAD)

VRACK 2B

by Fredrik Johansson

The original Vrack was released back in 2000, inspired by Dystopia 3's MAP04 and LucasArts's Dark Forces. The name of the game was a base in space and a big one at that. Fredrik's orbital platform was a pretty novel setting, but it didn't quite catch the eye of the public as strongly as its sequel did, leading to its enshrinement as one of Doomworld's Top 10 WADs of 2001. There are actually two versions of the sequel on the archives, original and extra crispy (2b). All of the changes are under the hood, adding Deathmatch starts, a REJECT table, and cleaning up the artificiality of the void; the original remains for demo compatibility purposes. That said, this review was written on Vrack 2b, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II and designed for Boom.

Null Space (NULSPACE.WAD)

NULL SPACE
by Russell Pearson

Russell Pearson started making maps back in the early days of the community but then took a break until 2000 where he started looking over his unreleased works originally created as part of a TC entitled DoomTown3. The author ended up putting his past behind him while working on a level to better reflect his changed sensibilities as of the year 2000. He even went so far as to axe a section of level that he liked but felt did not fit the spirit of what he was trying to do, leading to 2001's Deleted Scene. The final product is the much beloved Null Space, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, also released in 2001.