Eternal Doom (ETERNAL.WAD)

Eternal Doom began life as a 12-map episode for Doom II, produced by Team Eternal and under the direction of Paul Schmitz, the author of Artifact and Welcome to Hell. A number of WAD authors cleaved unto him, including Sverre Kvernmo, who is responsible for many of the new graphics (that is, the stuff not ripped from Heretic and Hexen). Eternal Doom was updated two more times, adding fifteen and six levels, respectively, to turn it into a mega-megaWAD. I know this project eventually came under the purview of Team TNT, but I have no idea when that happened. I'm guessing some time during the development of Eternal Doom II, but I have no basis for that assumption. For sure, Eternal Doom III was headed by TNT, given Ty Halderman's involvement.

Welcome to Hell (WELHELL.WAD)

Paul Schmitz created Artifact, one of Doomworld’s picks for the top 10 WADs of 1995. He also contributed some maps to Eternal Doom, very much in keeping with his mapping style. Welcome to Hell, his lesser-known followup to his premiere trilogy, is something in a bit of a different direction, finished near the end of '95 but released in early '96. It’s not exactly one large map cut up into three linked adventures. Each of the levels is fairly small and / or short compared to the offerings of Artifact. Schmitz has refined his map making sensibilities, however, creating a number of challenges with a unique aesthetic sense.

The Artifact (ARTIFACT.WAD)

Paul Schmitz is a member of a very small school of authors that includes the likes of Jim Flynn, Bob Evans, and Sverre Kvernmo. It's not just the fact that all of them were contributors to Eternal Doom, but all of these people tend to make large levels where navigation and puzzle play is just as strong of an opponent as the monsters you're supposed to be focusing on. Schmitz had his big debut with The Artifact, and he's revisited it several times. The first was for Doom, and the second updated the level for Doom II. For the third, Schmitz went back and substantially reworked every level for the Boom engine on top of using Team TNT's RETRES resource pack, creating an experience that's both familiar and alien at the same time. Since the version linked in Doomworld's Top 100 WADs of All Time was the Doom II version, that's the one I played, and the one this review is focused on.