Pazuzu (Wings of Possession) (PAZUZU.WAD)

PAZUZU

WINGS OF POSSESSION

by T. Elliot Cannon

aka "Myscha the Sled Dog"

T. Elliot Cannon has a brief but promising Doom II authorship that was cut down in its prime by being hired to work on Unreal at the recommendation of John Anderson of Master Levels For Doom II fame. He released the raw, cramped, and switch-crazy Iditarod; the charming architectural delight of Odyssey;  and then published the lone but formidable Diabolos, all three PWADs being uploaded to /idgames in 1996. His last known single-player idtech1 creation was this: Pazuzu (Wings of Possession), a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, similarly released in 1996, about a month after he interred the rest of his known single-player maps.

Diabolos (DIABOLOS.WAD)

DIABOLOS

by T. Elliot Cannon

aka "Myscha the Sled Dog"

A lot of Doom WAD authors from the '90s went on to work in the gaming industry. We're very familiar with names like Dario and Milo Casali, Tom Mustaine, Sverre Kvernmo... but less so with dudes like T. Elliot Cannon. TEC authored eight of the original Unreal's 38 single-player maps but started out cutting his teeth on Doom II. If you aren't much of a WAD archaeologist then Cannon's name will probably be unfamiliar. His biggest legacy as far as community recognition is concerned is as one of the founding fathers of The Talosian Incident, but he also authored some deathmatch levels, including contributions to Team TNT's Bloodlands and Grievance. Myscha--his handle is based on the name of one of his beloved dogs--didn't end up authoring any maps for TALOSIAN, but if he had, then we'd have some very different things to say about it, based on Diabolos. This is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released in 1996.

Odyssey (ODYSSEY.WAD)

T. Elliot Cannon went on to have a relatively robust career in the video game industry beginning with Unreal, but he got his start--like so many others--with Doom. It appears that Cannon's heyday was focused on the period where the community was anticipating Quake. I initially thought that the Ancients Series marked Cannon's first forays into single-player level design. These maps appear to have been individually released at earlier dates and then were packaged together and re-released as Odyssey, perhaps around the time that TEC authored Iditarod. Both PWADs were uploaded to /idgames on 07 Apr. 1996. After looking at the .TXTs for his deathmatch packages for SLEDDOG and GRISHA, however, I am inclined to believe that the true production order was something more like SLEDDOG, IDITAROD, most of Odyssey, and then Grisha. Unfortunately, with the death of Compuserve, there's no log of Cannon's original releases, and the deathmatch packages do not appear to have made it to /idgames. Odyssey as it exists here is a five-map minisode for Doom II, replacing MAP01-MAP05.

Iditarod (IDITAROD.WAD)

T. Elliot Cannon made something like seventeen single-player levels for Doom II and eleven deathmatch arenas before being recommended to Epic Games by John Anderson aka Dr. Sleep and being hired for Unreal. Both Iditarod and Odyssey were originally released on Compuserve, I believe, which makes an absolute timeline difficult to pin down, given that Compuserve shuttered its doors more than 20 years ago. I originally believed that Cannon made the individual levels of Odyssey first and then cobbled together Iditarod during the anticipation of Quake. After experiencing Iditarod first-hand, I wasn't so sure. Both PWADs were absolutely created by the same person, but I found it difficult to believe that Cannon built the carefully-crafted Odyssey first and then cranked out Iditarod. Looking through packages of his Deathmatch levels that I obtained after I initially wrote these reviews, it would seem that the true order of production would be SLEDDOG, IDITAROD, some of Odyssey, and then Grisha, all of this occurring in 1995. Both SP PWADs were uploaded to /idgames alongside Diabolos on April 7th of 1996. Iditarod replaces MAP01 through MAP10 of Doom II.

TNT: Revilution (TNTR.WAD)

In 2009, Whoo opened the doors for TNT2, what was to be a spiritual sequel to TNT: Evilution. What followed was one of the longest and most protracted and most importantly PUBLIC development cycles in the community. Somewhere along the way, Steve Muller aka "Kyka" took the reigns of development along with a few other forum regulars who really wanted to see TNT2 make it to completion. I distinctly recall playing a gorgeous TNT2 demo map from Xaser. His teaser generated a lot of buzz for the project, but certain folks including a late-returning Whoo looked at the direction that Kyka had taken TNT2 and were vocally...dissatisfied. Somewhere after all the name-calling and aspersions, when the project heads could speak a bit more civilly in public, there was a project split in 2014, founded upon some sort of a level draft where levels were split up like dividing property during a divorce. A bit more level-headed than the divorces I've heard talk of, really. This is where Revilution's story begins, as a TNT2 spinoff.

Cavemen (#CAVEMEN.WAD)

CAVEMEN

by "Sphagne"

Some folks wish that the first two Community Chests had been more exclusionary. Its original call to arms did not specifically ask for maps that had not previously been released, which is why Sphagne, Gene Bird, and Daniel Trim ended up submitting some of their previously-released maps to CCHEST, with Gene Bird sneaking a few (as well as one original!) into CCHEST2. The vast majority of Sphagne's material was concocted prior to him approaching the Doom community, during a period spanning 1995-1999, and then bulk-uploaded in August of 2002. The author claims that Cavemen, a MAP07 replacement for Doom II, is his ninth map, though it's the seventh in the running that was made available on /idgames. For those keeping score at home, the 1st and 3rd levels have never been (publicly) seen.

The Real Crusher (CRUSHER.WAD)

THE REAL CRUSHER

by "Black Void"

The original Community Chest was an interesting hodgepodge of folks who had already had long and storied careers, like Rex Claussen, Stephen Clark, and Samuel Villarreal, as well as authors like Sphagne, Gene Bird, and Daniel Trim, who had released a bunch of solo levels over the previous year or two, some of which found their way into the collection. Black Void doesn't really fall into either of these categories, instead standing alongside Simon Broadhead and Will Hackney as one of the less-defined contributors. Black Void is sometimes remembered for Captain Mancubus, a Doom II episode that they created alongside another author named Epyo. This, however, is The Real Crusher, a MAP06 replacement for Doom II released mid-2002.

X-treme (demo) (EAXT.WAD)

X-treme is a two-level demo of a megaWAD project that Erik Alm declined to finish, released months after he published Scythe, late in 2003. If Alm had finished out the whole thing then it might have ended up as a gold standard for masochists the world over. As it stands, EAXT is whispered among consumers of ultra-hard mapsets, with the likes of gggmork theorizing whether or not it could be completed in a single segment run. As it turns out, yes, it can, but few speedrunners are willing to cut their teeth on it. The only person willing to do so on MAP02 appears to be stx-vile, whose record you can see played on Youtube.

KMETL14 (KMETL14.WAD)

KMETL14

by Kurt Kesler

Kurt Kesler made a bunch of vanilla levels that got rolled up into KMEGA1 before moving onto limit-removing with KHILLS, Boom with KBOOM, and, of course, ZDoom with KZDOOM. In 2023, we got the first KGZDOOM, KGZDOOM1. At the end of 2024 Kurt added another wrinkle to his legacy--the first in a series of new KMETL maps, no longer for vanilla but for limit-removing ports. KMETL14 is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II and one of three such iterations on the KMETL theme thus far. As to whether or not there will be more, well, it looks like Kesler has switched gears to make a GZDoom minisode alongside Doomworld Community superstar Chris Hansen. If we can get a spiritual sequel to KGZDOOM1, then I'm sure that there'll be more KMETL.

Make, test, post. (MKTSTPST.WAD)

MAKE, TEST, POST.

by "Memfis"

Memfis has long had a love-affair with quirky stuff from Doom's '90s period. The vast majority of his catalogue leading up to and following really doesn't reflect the attitude represented in Kuchitsu, however, outside of perhaps Green Day. His smaller solo releases were more representative of his love for classic megaWADs like Requiem (REQUIMEM), Memento Mori II (MM2MEM01), and Phobos: Relive the Nightmare (RELIVEX2). 2013's Kuchitsu appears to have marked the seismic shift in his predilections, with the author continuing playing with more offbeat level design ideas in pus06, How Eye Killed Time, and--of course--Garbage. Make, test, post. was originally published to the Doomworld forums on November 14th of 2013. A MAP07 replacement for Doom II to be played in theoretically any limit-removing port, it continues the author's ongoing fascination with quirky, DoomCute elements.

Wonderful Doom (WD14.WAD)

Doom is wonderful. Wraith knew this and believed in it so much that he wanted to give players an excuse "to play First Doom one more time". To this end, he crafted Wonderful Doom. This megaWAD was apparently released in several iterations before being released in time to feature as a runner-up in the 2007 Cacowards, with several updates since then. It replaces every level in The Ultimate Doom with, for lack of a better term, remixed versions of the original levels. I've seen a broad variety of opinions on this project, the extremes of which boil down to dismissing it for being too derivative of the IWAD versus loving it for how close the maps are in spirit to the originals.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (WICKED_1.WAD)

SOMETHING WICKED

THIS WAY COMES

by "Rex Claussen"

Rex kicked off 2002 with an idiosyncrasy from the year before, officially releasing Invictus to /idgames. This was a vanilla level for the original Doom where most of Rex's works since his debut had been for ZDoom and, for a long stride, leveraged assets from post-Doom FPS games like Hexen II, Half-Life, the Quake series, and Dark Forces. The Invictus upload was paired with a vanilla Doom II level that kicked off a new Rex trend: Something Wicked This Way Comes. This is a MAP10 replacement, also released in early 2002, and while it didn't profess to be the beginning of something broader, he would go on to author a grand total of nine individual Wicked levels, sort of capping things off with the pseudo-prequel, By the Pricking of My Thumbs....

Pesha (PESHA.WAD)

Stanimapping is a failed portmanteau of "stamina" and "mapping", coined by Chris "Purist" Bourke to describe a design process where the author sits down and then does not stop mapping until their work is complete. (In Bourke's defense, Stanimapping flows better than Stamimapping, and Staminapping is something we all do from time to time.) This is basically speedmapping but without a specific time limit. The constraint depends on how long the author can stand to work. A few folks showed up for Purist's inaugural (and sole) Grindmapping session, whose subject was "industrial zone". The cast of characters included Purist himself, scifista42, Phobus, Katamori, and (dum dum dum DUMMM) dobu gabu maru. dgm cranked out three levels in as many days, with the final product packaged together as Pesha, a three-map minisode for Doom II that replaces MAP28-MAP30. It's supposed to work in any limit-removing port.

Kill the Cybie (SISOCRAN.WAD)

KILL THE CYBIE

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

Espi made a deathmatch map in 2002 called Narcosis. Apparently he had enough people request that he turn it into a single-player level that he did so, so in 2003 we received a file by the name of SISOCRAN, which of course is Narcosis spelled backwards. Its official title is Kill the Cybie and it's a single-level for ZDoom on account of it uses a script to end the level after, you know, you Kill the Cybie. For some reason I had built in my head that this was going to be something goofy like Jim Flynn's Surrounded!, which is also a single map that requires you to slay a Cyberdemon. I was pleasantly surprised. In my defense, it's not like Repo doesn't have strange little levels like Barons o' Fun and The One Level With All the Teleporters.

Defragmentation Factor (DEFRACT.WAD)

DEFRAGMENTATION

FACTOR

by Eugene Guschin aka "Wraith"

Defragmentation Factor is Wraith's /idgames debut, a Doom II MAP01 replacement published in 2006 to be played in any source port. Guschin was a member of Clan [B0S] during its heyday with Da Will, Sacrament, and A.L.T., but he had established a cornerstone in the community a few years before "Russian Realism" with Wonderful Doom. He has a few other works mentioned in the PWAD's .TXT, among them Wonderful Doom's E1, so this isn't the first thing that he apparently produced. Through contacting Wraith, I managed to figure out the location of most of these proto-works, but I'm still not sure about MySchool.

One Bloody Night (BLDNIGHT.WAD)

Erik Alm is largely regarded as the WADfather of the Doom community's direction in combat due to his double-shot of the much loved Scythe and then, later, Scythe II. The third episode of Scythe generally comes as a thunderclap to folks who love its shorter, "cute" levels, but anyone familiar with Alm's work could see it coming from a mile away. Alm's fondness for both short, warm-up type levels as well as bone-crushing challenge encounters is evident in his contributions to Sam Woodman's ONEWEEK and it's similarly mirrored here, in One Bloody Night. This is a nine-level episode for vanilla Doom II that replaces MAP01-MAP09, released in the middle of 2002.

Blood Runners (#BLOODR.WAD)

BLOOD RUNNERS

by "Sphagne"

Sphagne sits alongside Gene Bird and Daniel Trim as an author who published levels prior to Community Chest and who submitted them back when the original CCHEST pitch was something more along the lines of, "Have you ever wanted to see one of your works ensconced within a megaWAD?" Thus far, the five Sphagne levels that I've covered--Simphony of Death, Secret Lab, Death Cycle, Hell Harbour, and The Living End--were not among the three maps that made it into the 2003 Community Chest. Blood Runners, which the author claims was his eighth produced level, became CCHEST's MAP23. It was originally released as part of a batch upload in 2002, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. The author claims that he did not know that there was an online Doom community back when he authored these levels from 1995-1999, so one may assume that it will function in any source port.

The Process (TPROCESS.WAD)

THE PROCESS

by Mike Alfredson aka "Use3D"

Use3D has been making maps for a long time. So much of his creative energy has been tied up in his two one-man megaWADs, Doom Beyond and Nilla Doom, so much so that he actually jettisoned a number of his oldest maps from Doom Beyond and released them as singular outtakes. I've been covering all of these levels in my run-up to the original Community Chest and will take a gander at Doom Beyond whenever it releases because, well, Mike makes damn good classic-feeling maps. The last batch of Alfredson's outtakes was published in 2019. The Process is the most recent of these, by which I mean it was crafted in 2001 instead of 1997. It's a MAP05 replacement for Doom II, to be played in any port.

KGZDOOM1 (KGZDOOM1.PK3)

Kesler's Still Kickin', released in 2004, seemed to be the last that we'd hear from him in terms of new material. Then, in 2018, he reconnected with Doom and started showing off screenshots of him horsing around in an editor. KMETL 2018 didn't ultimately pan out--Kesler had to back away for awhile and lost what he had been working on--but when he eventually returned he plinked away until we got KGZDOOM1! This is a two-map minisode replacing MAP01 and MAP02 in, you guessed it, GZDoom, released in 2023. We haven't seen another KGZDOOM yet, but we've gotten KMETL14, KMETL15, and KMETL16 so far, so who knows what's in the pipeline?

Garbage (GARBAGE.WAD)

November of 2013 marked the beginning of perhaps Memfis's most productive span of authorship, kicking off with How Eye Killed Time and--apart from a lull in March--built multiple PWADs a month until July of 2014, right after his epic /idgames archive dump in June of 2014. Garbage is the second WAD published during this period, a two-level minisode for Doom II to be played in theoretically any limit-removing port. In practice, you are best to keep to PrBoom-Plus or its descendants like DSDA Doom. MAP01 plays just fine but the very first thing maze in MAP02 is not navigable in (G)ZDoom. If you must insist on playing in (G)ZDoom then you'll have to clip through the first maze. After that, it's aces.