Caverns of Darkness (COD.WAD)

The Chaos Crew may not have started out as Christopher Lutz's baby but it ended up that way. Three authors of incredible power - Chris, Pedro Puicón (NokturnuS), and Emil Brundage (NaturalTvventy) - were gathered together with one Joel Murdoch. The last was a programmer during the source port boom and had his hand in a lot of engines that were created for the sole use of one Doom mod. You know, stuff like Mordeth, Millennium, and Eternity. He also worked on Caverns of Darkness which has a leg up on the previous three projects because it was actually released some sixteen years ago as of this writing. Published in 2002, it's a twelve-map episode for Doom II. We have been spared from having to use its custom source port because of Graf Zahl's painstaking work in translating its effects to ZDoom with an indispensable patch.

The Beginning of the End (Part 2) (END2.WAD)

Emil Brundage, who goes by NaturalTvventy nowadays, published Part 1 of The Beginning of the End back in 1997. The following year, he finished the follow-up, which - of course - goes by The Beginning of the End (Part 2). Since we never saw a Part 3, I suppose that this is the finale of the series, more analogous to the original Doom than the Ultimate version. This release also forgoes vanilla compatibility, more for savegame reasons than anything, judging by the .TXT. The official port of END2 is Boom, which puts this right at the time when the port was being introduced. It's also more inscrutable than its forebear, which at least had map titles. The new sky enforces a strong sense of place, though, and that location is... some kind of starry galaxy.

The Beginning of the End (Part 1) (END1.WAD)

Emil Brundage, aka NaturalTvventy, is one of those 90s authors who continues to kick around this old-ass game. His most recent releases are tied up in projects like Back to Saturn X and No End in Sight, but his first set, released in 1997, was The Beginning of the End (Part 1), a pair of episodes released for the original Doom. Part 2 would follow the next year, which would complete this megaWAD, but that's a slightly different story. Speaking of story, with a name like The Beginning of the End, you'd think that there'd be some kind of framing narrative for all the crazy action that follows. There isn't, though you might be able to wrangle some kind of narrative out of the map titles... Heh.