Nebula 95 Series

as featured in Super Serials

Nebula Shrine	Mudman Wonderland
Human Earrings	Drown Stone

Plenty of people loathe the early days of Doom PWADs. I'm more in author Chris Kassap's camp; there's a lot of raw weirdness in Doom's first few years that I find endearing if for nothing else than the raw enthusiasm that authors had for making and sharing their works. Nebula 95 tries to channel some of that free-wheeling spirit, but there's no disguising it. Chris is too immaculate a designer to fit in with his pretended peers. Frank Zappa once named The Shaggs as his #3 favorite band, I imagine because the Wiggins felt like a holy grail of sorts, a band whose members were making music while lacking any preconceived notions about what music was supposed to sound like, or what its message should be. Kassman, however, has clearly eaten from the tree of knowledge, and while that doesn't stop one from appreciating works of comparative innocence, the consequence leaves him a marked man.

Nebula 95: Drown Stone Cassette B (NEB04.WAD)

NEBULA 95:
DROWN STONE CASSETTE B
by Chris "lupinx-Kassman" Kassap

This ended up being the first of the Nebula 95 levels to appear on the archive, but Drown Stone began life as part of the Doomworld Secret Santa project. There are a few big differences between this edition and the previous, but if you've played the original level, the gameplay is basically identical to my eyes, excepting the Nebula 95 intro map on the saucer. It's got an amusing background story. Since Kassman used a stewboy track for the first version (part of his stewboy imitation), Cassette B is offered as an alternative more in spirit with the gives-no-fucks attitude of Nebula 95. The choice is left to you, as beads of sweat pour down Doomguy's forehead since he can't make the decision himself.

Nebula 95: Human Earrings (NEB03.WAD)

NEBULA 95:
HUMAN EARRINGS
by Chris "lupinx-Kassman" Kassap

This time we take a bit of a detour in Nebula 95, acknowledging that the series itself is a detour from typical Doom fare with its unusual blend of jazz and funk tracks, demons, and jarring SFX, a deliberate callback to the anything goes days of Doom mods. Human Earrings is the first (and at the time of this writing the only) original entry in Nebula 95, which has you traveling through the mysterious forbidden quadrant in a corner of the galaxy inundated with the eponymous hallucinogenic gas. After spending some time in your ship, which might reward you with some armor, you can touch down and put these particular demons to task for their gruesome mockery of human life.

Nebula 95: Mudman Wonderland (NEB02.WAD)

NEBULA 95
MUDMAN WONDERLAND
by Chris "lupinx-Kassman" Kassap

Chris Kassap's Nebula 95 series strikes me as a means of blowing off steam from his relentless perfectionism by flexing his vanilla muscles and indulging in stone-age Doom lunacy with jazzy MIDIs and sound replacements. Like the other entries, this one actually occupies both MAP01 and 02, with the first being a little bonus intro and the second housing the main event. After escaping near-death on the shrine planetoid you bound through the quadrant in search of your old military instructor (Crash?), arriving on a world with possibly sentient mud creatures. After naming off a few Doom-related alien races like Kaiser's DSV (with plenty more to spare), the potential existence of beings composed of mud pales in importance when compared to the very real presence of demons right next to you.

Nebula 95: Nebula Shrine (NEB01.WAD)

NEBULA 95:
NEBULA SHRINE
by Chris "lupinx-Kassman" Kassap

Nebula 95 is a curious amalgam of ideas from Doom visionary Chris Kassap, merging the divisive presentation of early PWADs (graphics, custom sounds, jazz MIDIs) with small levels and open layouts. If you're remembering the accolades received for his massive Community Chest 4 entries, these works will come as a shock. Nebula Shrine aka NEB01 is the first of the entries, officially released in 2014 and based off his MAP18 from Odamex Nitro Deathmatch. The plot of the series has you clearing out demons on micro-planetoids in a corner of the galaxy filled with a hallucinogenic gas dubbed Nebula 95.