MAYhem 2016 (MAYHEM16.WAD)

The MAYhem series has built a PWAD for every May since 2012 and, starting with 2014, they've all been megaWADs. The project organizers have changed but the general procedure is the same. 1) Pick a texture pack in order to give the set a distinct identity. 2) Decide on some sort of limitation as a gimmick. 3) Kick the event off in May, where the bulk of the level design is (hopefully) performed. In this particular case the merry month was used for planning and logistics while the actual work was done in June. 2016 was really a tale of two gimmicks but you probably wouldn't realize either due to the necessities of the final product's presentation. It's a 21-level mapset for Boom-compatible source ports and, in spite of some promising progress, still drug ass until it was uploaded in early 2017.

10 Sectors Part 2 (10SECTO2.WAD)

In 2000, Doomworld hosted a contest inspired by an Unreal community challenge. 10 Sectors took more than 120 submissions from authors looking to create the most interesting Doom II level they could using - you guessed it - no more than 10 sectors. The premise actually allows for fairly complex levels as demonstrated in the official 10SECTOR megaWAD. It collected the thirty highest-rated entries plus two special mentions. 10SECTO2 is then the first and only spillover release. 27 of these levels were part of the top 32 for at least one judge. The illustrious Linguica hand-picked the remaining five to round the collection out to the mythic "complete game replacement" status. Like the primary release, this 2000 PWAD should be played with Doom II in a Boom-compatible port.

Mayhem 1500 (MAYHEM15.WAD)

Every May since 2012 Doomworld community members have gotten together in an attempt to make a megaWAD in a month. It isn't polished and finalized by June, though, and it might not even be finished during the same year. The 2015 session followed in the grand tradition of MAYHEM13 insofar as it wasn't released until 2016. It is also the second of the projects to reach the symbolic status of a full game replacement, occupying MAP01-MAP32 with additional bonus levels in the MAP33 and MAP34 slots. MAYhem 1500, like its forebears, is meant to be played in a Boom-compatible source port. If you play it in something that supports a brand of MAPINFO, though, then the secret levels will transition smoothly into the extra stuff.

MAD STUFF FOR DOOM 2 (MAD.WAD)

In 2002 Paul Corfiatis had contracted a case of jokeWAD fever. Sure, the first glimpses were there with Elliot Goblet in 2001. SPACIA crystallized another side of pcorf, though, one looking to get some laughs from the community through absurdity whether it be porn in otherwise unremarkable space levels, garish MSPaint textures, or cumbersome sound replacements. MAD STUFF FOR DOOM 2 continues the trend in a different direction. The set attempts to leverage the simple AI of the monsters in order to fabricate situations where the player does not even need to fire a single shot and avoids both the smut and, for the most part, hideous colors. The .WAV files, however, are here to stay.

SPACIA: A Silly DOOM Space Adventure (SPACIA.WAD)

2002: A Doom Odyssey is fondly remembered by a multitude of players, enshrining a stable of authors - Paul Corfiatis, Kristian Aro, Christian Hansen, and others - in the minds of many. SPACIA is much less so. Released earlier in the same year, this twenty-two level Doom II mapset followed Elliot Goblet in marking the beginning of pcorf's jokeWAD period. If bearing witness to someone's clumsy attempts at humor in the idtech1 engine is not your cup of tea, especially when it's rife with senseless softcore pornography wall textures, then you can safely sit this one out.

0scraps (0SCRAPS.WAD)

Paul Corfiatis is one of the community's most prolific authors and it's only natural that a dude who had released nearly a hundred levels from 1996 through 1999 would have some unfinished stuff that he was just disinterested with. Enter 0SCRAPS, a Doom II episode pulled off of pcorf's drawing board and released in early 2002 alongside Spacia: A Silly Doom Space Adventure. The compilation has a total of nine levels, two of which were clearly designed for deathmatch and appear here in their eerie, deserted glory.

Elliot Goblet (GOBLET.WAD)

ELLIOT GOBLET

by Paul Corfiatis

pcorf didn't have a whole lot to show in 2001 but his Doom Odyssey was in development and while he failed to make its obvious target date it did get finished the next year in 2002. In the meanwhile he published a few bits of things that don't really reflect his catalogue as a whole but probably helped to serve as a sort of relief valve during 2002ADO's development. Elliot Goblet is the least of these things, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II that only has two monsters, neither of which you can kill yourself.

Candy Choppers (PC_HERT1.WAD)

CANDY CHOPPERS

by Paul Corfiatis

1999 was a really big year for pcorf. After releasing a veritable glut of levels including The Twilight Zone II as well as Death Tormention and its sequel, he released three individual levels (the first-created entries of his Selfish series) in 2000 and cranked out a handful of submissions for the 10 Sectors contest. Four of them made it into the runoff compilation, 10SECTO2, uploaded in 2001. Candy Choppers, published later in the year, takes things in a completely different direction. It's Paul's token Heretic level! It presumably works with its vanilla executable and occupies its E2M1 slot.

SELFISH3 (SELFISH3.WAD)

SELFISH3

by Paul Corfiatis

The first two levels of pcorf's Selfish series saw their initial release in 2000. The following year saw the publication of the third, a MAP23 replacement. By this time the author had kicked his Ultimate megaWAD into full gear, though it was still known as 2001: A Doom Odyssey and not 2002, at which time it would finally find its way to /idgames. Paul compiled his trilogy a few months later for the first of several repackagings but for now I'm focusing on the originals. As with its siblings, SELFISH3 has no actual plot, but it would later garner the title of "Lethal Hideout".

THT: Threnody (THTTHREN.WAD)

You don't maintain the /idgames archives for eighteen years, marshal the Doom community's longest-lived and most productive authorship collective, and found what became the de-facto standard for "advanced" source port features without getting some kind of a send-off. While we were fortunate enough to pass him the Espi award in 2014 it wasn't until he died in 2015 that community members attempted to pay their respects in a more familiar format. The end result of the Ty Halderman Tribute Project: Threnody, a 20-level megaWAD for Boom released in 2016.

Vectra, the Last Mystery (VECTRA.WAD)

VECTRA
THE LAST MYSTERY
by Paul Corfiatis

Paul has a listing of pretty much all of his PWADs on his homepage, www.paulcorfiatis.com, including the jokewads he has just about disowned. Vectra is not among them, and after playing it, I can see why. 1999 was a pretty busy year for Paul, kicking out The Twilight Zone II: Final Dreams as well as releasing Death Tormention and its sequel, plus a bunch of other little scraps. Vectra is... a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. While I suspected that PC_WOLF's sky was Star Wars-related, there is no question about this one's, since it's spelled out in a comparatively extensive backstory.

Toxin Refinery (PE1_TOX.WAD)

TOXIN REFINERY

by Paul Corfiatis

Before embarking on Simply Phobos in 2004, Paul Corfiatis was no stranger to kickin' out the love for KDitD-themed maps. Some of these ended up in The Twilight Zone and TWZONE2 megaWADs but this map marks Paul's first standalone Romeroian excursion. Toxin Refinery is an imaginatively-titled remake of the original Doom's E1M3, released in 1999 along with a bunch of other odds and sods. Like a "Bad Dream" it also has a secret level for the hidden exit - more fun in the Martian sun. I'm guessing that the bonus entry's name is "Magna" since it's written into the map's geometry.

PC_WOLF, a Wolfenstein Classic (PC_WOLF.WAD)

I grew up playing Wolfenstein 3D and while I'm not against retreading that worn path it's not something I look for in Doom II levels. There are some who can't get enough of it, though. Paul Corfiatis continues to cram Wolf3D-themed maps into his work as late as 2015; back in '97, he was doing the same thing with his his brother Joe. PC_WOLF is a collection of what pcorf calls his sibling's best levels - MAP01-04 - and two that Paul hadn't yet shown to the world. Released in 1999, this six map episode will probably find favor with a select few Doomers who, like Paul, enjoy slaying SS Nazis in boxy rooms ad nauseum.

PC_PLAN (PC_PLAN.WAD)

PC_PLAN

by Paul Corfiatis

Paul Corfiatis has made a ton of Doom levels. PC_PLAN has the earliest beginnings of any of them but was released in 1999. That's because it was the first level Paul ever designed; the medium, however, was paper. This MAP01 replacement owes its existence to its sentimental value since PC_PLAN is pretty basic when compared to the maps from The Twilight Zone, which Paul had released in 1998. I suppose he felt honor-bound to commit his plan to WAD. According to the author's notes, the thing placement has not been tinkered with in any way, bringing the pencil sketch to life exactly as conceived.

Big Boy (BIGBOY.WAD)

BIG BOY
by Paul Corfiatis

Paul made a fairly big splash in 1998 with the original Twilight Zone megaWAD but it wasn't his premier production to be performed in an editor. I'm not sure whether Big Boy is, either, but it was among the first of his works pre-TWZONE that he deigned to release afterward. It also apparently began life as a big Doom II level featuring a ton of Wolfenstein 3D textures and SS Nazis. These latter features don't really surprise me given what I've seen from most of Paul's other, larger projects. As published, BIGBOY is a single level for E2M4 so all the Doom II resources are no longer present. Some of the Nazi stuff is still baked into the level's architecture but both details are easy to miss.

Operation: BIOWAR (BIOWAR.WAD)

Chris Harbin is one of Doom's more obscure authors. While he donated one of his unfinished levels to Death Tormention II, his magnum opus is this, Operation: BIOWAR. Released in 1999, BIOWAR is one of those Doom II megaWADs that didn't bother to stretch to fit the mythical thirty-two map slots. Instead, it's eighteen normal maps plus one secret level, and I believe the whole thing plays back in vanilla Doom. Of course, Harbin didn't necessarily go it alone, and Biowar also features the stylings of Paul Corfiatis, who revised one of his levels from Twilight Zone II, and John Bishop, who released a smattering of solo releases over the late 90s, and was apparently a contributor to Plutonia 2 in its initial stages of development, though those levels are now confined to the archived development WADs.

Death Tormention II (PE4_DT2.WAD)

1999 saw the release of two Doom episodes bearing Paul Corfiatis's name. The first was Death Tormention, Paul's in-depth study of the Thy Flesh Consumed aesthetic that is so popular among authors. The second was, you guessed it, Death Tormention II, which shows a lot of personal growth... and a few unhealthy fixations. This episode is also among the first of Paul's collaborative works, joining fellow Team Insanity member Kristian Aro in the beginning of a long and fruitful friendship, as well as Chris Harbin, who is known for Operation: BIOWAR, if you know him at all. The bulk of Death Tormention II is a nine-level episode with a .DEH that apparently only works in source ports like Boom. Paul has also included three bonus levels that are pretty silly and underdeveloped and which are hiding in the secret map slots for Knee Deep in the Dead, The Shores of Hell, and Inferno.

The Twilight Zone II: Final Dreams (TWZONE2.WAD)

Paul Corfiatis, to me, is the working man's WAD author, a dude who has hundreds of levels under his belt starting from 1998 and continuing to this very day... though he'd be among the first to distance himself from his earlier, "experimental" works. His first release was a full-fledged megaWAD, The Twilight Zone, where you battled Hell through your dreams to get a good night's sleep. A year later, we got The Twilight Zone II: Final Dreams. The current iteration of TWZONE2 is a Boom-compatible megaWAD; though it was released in 1999, Paul went back and remastered it in 2014, stripping out the resources that had fallen out of favor with him... More on that in a bit.

Death Tormention (PE4M_ALL.WAD)

Paul Corfiatis has made a lot of maps, and more than a few of them have been specifically in the style of Doom's fourth episode, Thy Flesh Consumed. Death Tormention is the beginning of a series of such works, released in 1999 in between his first two megaWADs, The Twilight Zone and The Twilight Zone II: Final Dreams. It's apparently vanilla compatible, but the .DEH only works in source ports, I guess. There isn't any sort of attempt at setting up the plot in the .TXT, but you can glean some stuff from the end text.

Doomed Space Wars (SPACWARS.WAD)

Doom is no stranger to Star Wars; I've seen a massive, light-hearted TC (Star Wars: Chibi Rebellion) and I know that Rex Claussen has had a few SW-themed releases. Heck, according to John Carmack:

Seeing how someone had put the death star into our game felt so amazingly cool. I was so proud of what had been made possible, and I was completely sure that making games that could serve as a canvas for other people to work on was a valid direction.

This time, Paul Corfiatis is taking a swing at the pairing. Doomed Space Wars is a twelve-map release meant to be played in ZDoom, published in 2015. While it uses textures that will be familiar to veterans of Dark Forces, Paul isn't really trying to channel the gameplay, and has confessed that he's not overly familiar with it. So, if the phrase Dark Forces got you all hopped up, I'd make sure that you're willing to settle for visual parity, if nothing else.