Phobos: Anomaly Reborn (PAR.WAD)

Chris Lutz has a more or less independent property in marshaling The Chaos Crew's Caverns of Darkness. His earliest obsession, though, was to reinvent the original Doom under the guidance of his own image. This started in 1998 with the release of Inferno and was followed by some work on replacements for The Shores of Hell and Knee Deep in the Dead. His passion project took a backseat when he joined CoD, though, and by the time he got back to the trilogy he was so displeased with his older works that he began anew. Thus we were fortunate enough to receive Phobos: Anomaly Reborn. This episode one replacement was released at the beginning of 2003 and imprinted on Doomworld's curators enough to find a spot in their coveted Top 100 WADs of All Time. Lutz identifies Boom/MBF as the target port and his language implies that it ought to work with either but it was also found to be compatible in a then-contemporary version of ZDoom. There are some caveats, though, and I'll get to those in a bit.

SubP:AR (PAR.WAD)

When I hunkered down to look into Phobos: Anomaly Reborn I learned one of the community's best-kept secrets. There are four other levels contained within PAR.WAD, occupying E2M5-E2M8. They constitute the stealth release of SubP:AR, a collection of outtakes from Christopher's Inferno period (1997-1999). The author originally intended to make Lutz-ified reimaginations of Knee Deep in the Dead and The Shores of Hell, too, but he joined up with The Chaos Crew and these levels fell by the wayside. While he eventually got around to Phobos (and, though incomplete, Deimos) it was with a few good years of authorial experience under his belt. I don't know whether these were necessarily designed for BooMBF but it was probably the last port that Chris used to test them. I'm reviewing them separately from P:AR in spite of being contained in the same PWAD because I don't want to bloat Reborn's review and I'd like to give these curiosities their time in the sun.