Phobos - Relive the Nightmare (RELIVE.WAD)

Slugfest. Doom City. Torment. All released by Shamus Young, in 1995, with original music from the author, and pulling double-duty as both single / co-op and deathmatch maps and mapsets. Phobos - Relive the Nightmare, the last of his Doom II works, differs in that it was published in 1996 but otherwise continues the same trends as the author's previous uploads in making aesthetically appealing levels with more complex layouts and relatively small bodycounts. The end result is a nine-level mapset drawing inspiration from Doom's shareware release yet thankfully remaining cast with Shamus's particular idioms.

Torment (TORMENT.WAD)

Shamus Young made a bunch of maps from 1995 to 1996, starting off with Slugfest and then moving on to the seminal Doom City before ending the year on Torment. The last is a six-level minisode released in 1995 that continues in Young's tradition of trying to make levels just as playable in single-player as they are in deathmatch. I can't speak as to their multiplayer quality but there's a pretty clear difference between these maps and those featured in Slugfest, seeming more polished and less distinguishable as oriented toward player vs. player.

Slugfest (SLUGFEST.WAD)

Shamus Young has gone on to much fame as a blogger about all things geek culture. Back in 1995, though, he was making WADs like everyone else. As far as popularity goes, his authorial career peaked at Doom City, a single map released in 1995 with a bunch of custom textures to simulate an actual urban environment at a higher level of recognizability than Doom II's abstract locales. His first publication was Slugfest, a ten-level episode for id's sequel also released in 1995. It attempts to straddle the line between PvE and PvP while using a series of small maps whose layouts are clearly oriented toward deathmatch but are also arranged for demon-slaying.

Doom City (DOOMCITY.WAD)

DOOM CITY
by Shamus Young

Shamus Young gets lost in the shuffle of authors from Doom's formative period, but if he's remembered for anything, it's probably Doom City. A MAP01 replacement from 1995, this Doom II level did some clever things that no one else had really attempted at the time, at least not to the degree Shamus had done. While the first impulse of many authors was to recreate things familiar to them like their houses, schools, and places of work, Shamus set about making a little city, with graphic replacements to boot. Now, nothing here will meet the realism of the BUILD engine games, but Shamus's texture replacements have a certain unified fidelity about them in all their PAINT-ish glory.