One Humanity (ONE-HUMANITY.WAD)

ONE HUMANITY

by John Romero

Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022. John Romero had been working on the beginnings of his Doom II follow-up to Sigil. After the start of the invasion, he elected to release a teaser as a purchasable download on his website, Romero.com, with all proceeds supporting humanitarian aid in Ukraine through the Red Cross and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund. If you wish to help in this particular fashion then you can download One Humanity for five euros. Like Sigil, this MAP01 replacement is meant to be played in any limit-removing port. The key differences are that it's for Doom II and - as a demo, more or less - it has no wicked cool soundtrack, Buckethead or otherwise. After such a wicked cool 2019 episode, well, D_RUNNIN just doesn't cut the mustard.

Sigil (SIGIL.WAD)

John Romero made a few maps for the original Doom back in 2016. He had withdrawn from idtech1 level design following the publication of The Ultimate Doom and Thy Flesh Consumed. Tech Gone Bad and Phobos Mission Control saw a broad range of reactions from the community, none of which surprised me. What did was the announcement of Sigil at the end of 2018 in celebration of Doom's 25th anniversary. John made an entire episode of maps and while it was going to be released  for free he was also including it along with some physical goods. These took the form of a regular-sized box and funsies as well as the larger and more expensive Beast Box. The material stuff saw some production issues that ultimately delayed the publication of the free download but the package is on /idgames as of 05/31/19. The finished product replaces Inferno for source ports that don't support MAPINFO and the like (SIGIL_COMPAT) but it otherwise makes its own room, slotting in as a fifth episode. It won't play in pure vanilla but it ought to work in just about everything else, including the HEX-hacked "Doom+" executable.

Phobos Mission Control (E1M4B.WAD)

PHOBOS MISSION CONTROL
by John Romero

The man with the blood on his hands is back again. Romero released his first Doom map in, like, nineteen years with Tech Gone Bad. Just as that one was an E1M8 replacement, Phobos Mission Control - John's newest publication - slots into E1M4. And, like E1M8B, it requires some kind of limit-removing port to run. As Romero points out, E1M4 was built on top of a framework supplied by Doom co-conspirator Tom Hall; E1M4B completes the clean sweep, giving his fans something they'd (probably) always wanted, an entire episode of Phobos-themed Doom maps. I can only hope that his Kickstarter campaign for BLACKROOM continues to yield such dusky jewels.

Tech Gone Bad (E1M8B.WAD)

TECH GONE BAD
by John Romero

Yes; John Romero done went and made a Doom PWAD. The name of this level is Tech Gone Bad, and it replaces E1M8. Twenty-two years later in 2016, you can finally have your full-Romero E1. The purist bogeymen will be disappointed, since Romero opted for limit-removing ports and uses some of the goodies that were reserved for E2 and E3; namely, the Berserk pack and invul sphere. They're both here, along with everything else from Knee Deep in the Dead, plus a little something extra because of the plot. As a man named Jasper once said, "...What a time to be alive."

The Ultimate Doom (DOOM.WAD)

Doom wasn't originally a retail release; while id left the bosom of Apogee, it was still invested in the shareware model. When GT Interactive finally got around to producing a boxed copy, someone had the outstanding idea to include an additional, fourth episode. Some might call it an incentive; since a patch was released that upgraded Doom 1.9 to The Ultimate Doom, I'd call it more of a celebration. In either case, in 1995, we got nine more official levels for the original Doom. One of the authors - Romero - was part of the original crew. This is Thy Flesh Consumed.

Doom (DOOM.WAD)

It's the future, and you're a space marine with a heart of gold, exiled to Mars for disobeying and physically reprimanding a superior officer who ordered you to fire on civilians. You've been working in tandem with a paramilitary organization - the Union Aerospace Corporation - who has been uncovering the secrets of teleportation. Things have been getting weird, though, and the source of the gateway anomalies reveals itself as true blue Hell when demons pour out of the teleporters. Security quickly falls and the rest of the Phobos base follows; Deimos just disappears entirely. Those that don't die turn into cannibalistic, gun-toting shells. You're dispatched from Mars to Phobos to investigate and left to secure the perimeter with your trusty pistol while the rest of your team goes inside. After brief but intense combat, you're left as the lone survivor, the last marine. Since you can't fly the ship alone, you elect to confront your fate head-on, ever the defiant one.