Doom

"THE MOST LEGENDARY ACTION SHOOTER OF ALL TIME NOW AVAILABLE IN A HANDHELD. From the legendary game developers at id Software, comes an explosive journey into the nightmare world of DOOM". Embark on a harrowing mission to rid a Martian Moon Base of hordes of demonic creatures. Navigate through DOOM's 24 maze like levels, scouring the corridors for secret areas and combat aids as you take on hell spawned demons with an explosive arsenal of chainguns, plasma rifles and rocket launchers. Use the Game Boy Advance Game Link Cable to team up with a friend and blast the levels together or link up to 4 players for the ultimate deathmatch."

The Jaguar game was the first conversion, developed by ID software that is mostly faithful to the original PC game but with many level changes with reduced geometry resulting in simpler rooms to help boost performance also aided by having no music in the game. This version would also serve as the basis for later ports including the 32x (which released first by a week), Gameboy Advance, Doom64, PlayStation, Saturn and to a lesser degree, the 3D0. Each version has there differences, concessions and enhancements based on the power of the platform it's running on. The Super Nintendo game is it's own project with more faithful level geometry to the original game at the expense of resolution, ceiling and floor texturing and less textures overall to boost performance.

The GBA game is mostly the same as the jaguar source but is even lower resolution which boosts the framerate as a consequence. We also have music in this version and another notable difference is that this game is heavily censored in order to get a teen rating. Green blood and no hanging bodies. The game is much brighter than the jaguar and especially ps1 versions making all areas easy to see. especially useful as these Jaguar ports are all missing the blur artifact and light amplification visor items. It doesnt control too badly considering you only get two buttons to fire, run, open doors with the l/r buttons strafing and weapon select. 24 or the original 27 levels are included as well 8 deathmatch levels (Not Shown)

For the longplay, I have the goal of getting through whilst showing 100% secrets. Map10 (E2M2) put a spanner in the works with an inaccessible area bug. This version of the game only has one hidden level in episode one. pre level map screens are included but there are no interlude texts between episodes. levels run in one long chain until you eventually get the ending. This version has the same music as the original game but it's offset by one so don't play on the expected levels. Overall it is an impressive port to get doom running on this little handheld.

It's interesting to note that considering the censoring of some of the textures in the game for the Teen rating, the final end screen still has the severed head of your pet rabbit in hand!


00:00:00 MAP01: Hangar
00:02:18 MAP02: Plant
00:07:00 MAP03: Toxin Refinery
00:13:18 MAP24: Military Base
00:18:33 MAP04: Command Control
00:23:05 MAP05: Phobos Lab
00:29:35 MAP06: Central Processing
00:36:43 MAP07: Computer Station
00:44:05 MAP08: Phobos Anomaly
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00:46:08 MAP09: Deimos Anomaly
00:49:33 MAP10: Containment Area
00:55:39 MAP11: Refinery
01:01:18 MAP12: Deimos Lab
01:09:52 MAP13: Command Center
01:15:44 MAP14: Halls of the Damned
01:21:50 MAP15: Spawning Vats
01:26:37 MAP16: Tower of Babel
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01:28:34 MAP17: Hell Keep
01:32:12 MAP18: Pandemonium
01:38:02 MAP19: House of Pain
01:45:16 MAP20: Unholy Cathedral
01:53:30 MAP21: Erebus
01:59:54 MAP22: Limbo
02:06:44 MAP23: Dis
02:09:46 Credits