Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXHjbQkNDek
My DOOM Collection And Unboxing A New Arrival
Introduction
I’m a big fan of id Software’s 1993 game DOOM and have quite a big collection of stuff. So lets take a look at the collection and unbox a new arrival!
Script
It seems just lately that I’m spending a lot of time talking about Doom - I mean, I was on Iain Lee’s Random Access Memories podcast not all that long ago, and he asked me to to pick a game to talk about - what was my favourite game of all time? - and I picked Doom.
And last year I was on an RMC video, and Neil basically asked all of us to pick our “Desert Island Game” - the game that we couldn’t live without, and if we were marooned on a desert island, the one game that we would spend the rest of our days playing and indeed, I picked Doom for that as well.
And most recently, on my Desk PC video, of course, the whole concept of the video was buying it and trying to get Doom up and running on it. So, what’s going on with this obsession with Doom? I mean, as you can see, I’ve got quite a lot of stuff. And completely coincidentally, I actually ordered something new for my collection - something quite rare and interesting, which arrived today, believe it or not.
So I thought it was about time I made this video and I thought I would unbox this live on camera as well - which I’ll do at the end of the video - so you get to see what the newest thing in my collection is and it is very cool, it is well worth the wait, trust me. It’s one of 19 and John Romero himself - in fact I bought this from John Romero himself - so it’s quite a cool thing.
But yeah, I think without further a-Doom…
Yeah, I just came up with that off the top of my head, this is a completely unscripted video so apologies for that…
Let’s talk about my history with this game and why I love it so much.
So back in 1994, we got our very first family PC and I remember it very vividly - it wasn’t the first time I’d had access to a PC - my dad had a work PC that he used to bring home to do his his sales forecasts and stuff on - it was a 286 Amstrad thing and I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D on it with the PC speaker which is probably my earliest first person shooter memory, but yeah, we got our very own home PC.
It was a 486 DX2/66 with 4MB of RAM, and it had some kind of SoundBlaster compatible sound card - I think it was an ESS AudioDrive, that’s certainly what I tell people, but most importantly it had some games loaded on it.
I think it was one of my dad’s employees that had been tasked with setting this thing up and he’d put like Wacky Wheels and Jazz Jackrabbit and, you know some cool kids games on there - bear in mind I was 10 years old at the time.
But also included with it was this boxed version - I say “boxed version”, more enveloped version - and this is the original copy - of Doom, the shareware episode. I have no idea if this came with the PC from Tiny or if it belonged to the guy that had set the PC up, or if he’d insisted on my dad buying it because he thought I’d like it, but yeah, I spent the whole of that Christmas playing through this shareware episode of Doom.
So, basically the concept of this is that you get the first 8 levels, so the first episode is 8 levels plus a bonus hidden level. And it’s essentially completely unlocked - you’ve got all the enemies, all the weapons and stuff, and the idea being that you play through that and then when you quit it at the end there’s a big message that pops up that says, “this is the shareware episode, feel free to install this on as many PCs as you like, please copy it, please give it to all of your friends and you can send off to this address, send a check, and we will send you a boxed copy of the game, which has three episodes, it has more enemies and more weapons”.
I think, I’m not sure I might be misremembering - but hey, I’m a big fan but I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of the series so apologies if there’s any slight errors in this. So this was released in 1993 and I remember playing it and I remember quitting out of the game at the end and obviously seeing that message come up and thinking, “cor, the rest of this game must be absolutely amazing”, you know, “two whole extra episodes of this must be so cool”.
And I do remember asking my parents and they were like, “well, no, of course we’re not just going to send a cheque off to some address in America”, you know, “what if it’s some kind of scam or what if we never get anything back?”
But I’m very pleased to say that had we done that, I do have what would have come back - what would have been sent back, and this is quite a rare and quite a holy grail for a lot of Doom collectors - as you can see, mine’s not quite in perfect condition, it’s got some scratches and things on it, but this was quite a recent acquisition, and this is the original boxed copy of Doom.
So, no barcodes or anything on this - these were hand assembled and hand packed by id Software themselves back in 1993. So a really, really special thing this.
It’s got the original floppy disks and the original manual in it, and one of my absolute favorite things in my collection. So, that’s the original Doom as it was released in 1993.
Now, a bit later on came The Ultimate Doom - and one of these is our original copy, and one is one that a friend found when they were clearing out their loft I think. I have no idea which one’s which, they’re almost identical. I think our original copy was this one, which is the slightly less impressive one, because it’s in this thinner foldy box with the Windows 95 version, whereas this is like a proper big box release.
But yeah, that’s The Ultimate Doom. What’s so special about The Ultimate Doom? Well, it adds an extra episode - but apart from that, it’s essentially just the original game.
Now, Doom 2, I remember going to a friend’s house and it was on his dad’s work PC - it was actually around the same era.
I’m just just checking dates here, by the way, I’ve got my laptop hidden behind here.
Of course, Doom 2 was released in 1994, just a year after the original Doom, and around that time we had our first PC, I remember a friend having a kind of a similar spec PC, and we found Doom 2 on it, and it must have been his dad that had installed it but, you know, didn’t really tell us about it.
I don’t think his parents were very keen on us playing it because it was quite violent and stuff, whereas my parents were just like, “yeah, whatever”.
And so my original experience with Doom 2 was actually copying it from my friend’s PC using MSBACKUP under DOS, copying it to multiple floppy disks and installing it on our home PC and playing it at home - and I love Doom 2, it’s absolutely fantastic. A lot of people will say that it’s actually better than the original. I have much more kind of fond memories and much more nostalgia for the first Doom, like I say, specifically that first episode, but I can’t deny that Doom 2 is an absolutely fantastic game.
I love the music in this specifically, I think the music is absolutely great, and the levels are kind of a bit bigger in scope, and of course they’d got to grips with the level design and level editors and stuff, and a bit bigger and a bit more sort of complex - a bit more of a challenge - so yeah, that’s Doom 2.
This was a recent acquisition - obviously this wasn’t my original copy based on what I’ve just said. But the far more common game, this is the 3.5” floppy edition for IBM PC - of course it was also released on CD.
And then a couple of years later came this - which is Final Doom - and that was 1996 and for the longest time I thought this was like a complete collection of the original and Doom 2, and you know, all of the episodes and everything else but this is actually two entirely new episodes for Doom 2 - and I don’t think they were developed by id Software themselves.
I actually don’t know what the story is with Final Doom - I should probably learn about that if I want to call myself a fan, but still a very cool thing, and of course this is quite a common thing as well in Doom collections, this was quite a big seller back in the day.
Well worth checking out - I actually quite like the two episodes in this, I have played through it.
And of course, no discussion of Doom is complete without the Atari Jaguar version, and I have a pretty much almost complete collection of Atari Jaguar games - I’m missing, like, two, I think. They’re two of the most ridiculously rare and expensive games, but of course I had to pick up Doom for that as well and this is actually a really well regarded and really good port as far as the console ports are concerned - I think the original PlayStation port’s probably the best console version but this is certainly up there.
It’s pretty much pixel perfect, graphics wise, it just doesn’t have the music in it - and for me that’s actually quite a big deal breaker because the music is such an important part of the Doom experience, I find. I’ve always loved it. In fact, I think it’s kind of partly to blame for my current taste in music - you know, metal and all guitar-based stuff, because that’s what it is, it’s all just rip offs of, like, Iron Maiden riffs and Megadeth and stuff like that, good stuff.
But still a fantastic version of the game - like I say, slightly let down by the lack of music, and also by the Jaguar controller which isn’t a great way to play Doom, but I had to have it for the collection, because, of course, it’s Doom and it’s Atari Jaguar.
And then there was an eight year gap - or at least there was as far as I was concerned as a kid. I think Doom 64 on the Nintendo 64 completely passed me by at the time.
Of course, that was released in ‘97, a year after Ultimate Doom - I think people were getting a bit tired of Doom, obviously we were getting Quake and Duke Nukem 3D and sort of more exciting 3D first person shooters, things were moving so quickly in the 90s.
I didn’t have an N64 at the time so that’s why it passed me by, but I have recently played it, thanks to the Nightdive remaster, and I must say, I really like it. It’s a bit odd as far as Doom games are concerned, but it’s a really good shooter in its own right, and it does kind of tie into Doom in a few ways, but it’s also kind of a bit weird in its own way as well.
But I don’t have that in the collection - I did briefly own it a few years ago when I had an N64, I had a Japanese N64 and a big collection of games, but I modded that console, put RGB and HDMI mods in it and I sold it on eBay, so that one is gone. I should have held on to Doom for the collection, but obviously I didn’t have the console anymore, so not really much point owning that.
But as far as I was concerned as a kid this came out in 1996, and then there was an eight year gap until the next Doom game, and I’d pretty much forgotten about Doom by that time. I was at college, I’d built myself a new PC - for doing college work, but also, perhaps more importantly, for playing Half Life 2, which also came out that year, and Quake 4, which I’m not sure if it came out in 2004 or 2005, but that was also around that time.
Part of a holy trinity of games that I remember playing on that specific PC - a Pentium 4 HT 2.8 GHz with a GeForce FX5200 graphics card, if you’re interested.
I actually still have my original copy of Doom 3, most importantly, from that year - this is it, it comes on four CDs. I don’t know why I got the CD version, maybe there wasn’t a DVD version at the time, or maybe I didn’t have a DVD drive - I can’t quite remember.
2004, maybe this was cheaper. But yeah, I remember buying this from PC World at the time, and I’ve still got it, and it’s a bit polarising, this game. A lot of people didn’t really like it at the time because it wasn’t in the same vein as the original games - it wasn’t that sort of fast paced arcade action, bright colours and, and all that stuff.
Very dark, survival horror, jump scares, and that kind of thing but I really enjoyed it - I thought it was a great game at the time - a little bit different, but hey, perhaps I’d matured a bit and moved on and in fact, I liked it so much that I also got it on the Xbox, the original Xbox.
I believe that my now wife actually may have bought this for me at the time because she bought me the Xbox and she knew I was a big fan of Doom - and also the Resurrection of Evil expansion pack - I think I might have bought this myself, which has those extra levels and things.
And yeah, great games. I remember playing it through on the PC originally and then playing it through again on the Xbox and then playing this - I don’t remember playing this all that much but they are my original copies.
And then more recently, just to round out the collection, I picked up the BFG Edition which combines the original Doom 3 and the Resurrection of Evil, and it also has some interesting mods in it like the torch - the flashlight in the original game - I really liked the survival horror aspect of it that you couldn’t hold a weapon and have a light at the same time and you had to kind of juggle the two but a lot of early reviews really hated that and they actually changed that for the BFG edition, but…
I think, did they do that for the Resurrection of Evil as well? It’s been so long since I’ve played this game.
Forgive me, it’s been 20 years. But obviously I thought, “well, I’m gonna have to pick that up for the collection as well” - I think that was very, very cheap. So that’s the kind of Doom 3 era of Doom - but of course Doom didn’t didn’t stop at the Doom 3 era and it still continues to this day so let’s talk about some of the newer Dooms, the the 21st century Dooms.
So, notable in their absence, I think, would be the two newest Doom games, which I do own. I bought them on release day, of course I bought them on Steam, played them through on the PC, and like them a lot. I know most people prefer Eternal, I actually think I prefer 2016 - it was the more kind of pure experience, less of this kind of upgrade tree / RPG element stuff - it was just get in there and murder a load of stuff and I appreciated that, and obviously all the kind of parkour jumping around stuff that they introduced in Eternal - or at least expanded upon in Eternal - I think kind of changed the pace of the game a bit.
I don’t hate it, I do think Eternal is an amazing game but I do prefer 2016 for that more kind of pure Doom experience.
Now, I do own a really cool Revenant statue from Doom 2016, and I didn’t actually bring it with me, but what I will do is I’ll bring it at some point in the near future and I’ll get a nice b-roll shot of it on the table, which is what you’re looking at right now, and we can pretend that I had it here all along and that I didn’t forget it when I brought all of my collection over initially, because that doesn’t actually fit on the Doom shelf at home, that’s actually usually in a separate place.
And I’ve also got this Doom Eternal keycard which my lovely wife bought for me - a nice collectible thing, limited edition, of course that’s still sealed.
So yeah, that also has pride of place in the collection.
And I’ve got these plushies, of course, which I’m sure you’ve spotted - these were official things that were released by Bethesda - of course, owners of the Doom franchise nowadays - around Doom 2016 kind of time, it was like a promotional thing and I thought “I just have to have those”. They didn’t officially sell them in the UK, but I actually imported those.
And of course, speaking of Doom collectibles, you’ve probably also spotted these pewter figures in some of these shots - and they’re part of the Doom Miniature Reaper Set. Unfortunately, not the original run from the 90s, which are incredibly valuable and sought after now but these are from the reissue that Bethesda did in 2019 and really pleased to have got my hands on these. They’re really detailed, really nice little models, and they have pride of place on my shelf at home.
But of course the Doom story doesn’t end there because John Romero - one of the original creators of the game - who hasn’t been involved in the more recent installments, but still a huge fan of the game, still keeps his hand in and you can still play him at a Doom Deathmatch game at one of the many gaming shows that he attends over the course of the year if you want to, and he will completely kick your ass ‘cause he still kicks everyone’s ass at Doom!
But still really active in the community, still very much that kind of rockstar status, and still very proud of his creation - quite rightly.
And he has actually released two new episodes for Doom. One of those being Sigil, which I have here, and this is the big super fancy box version - it’s got a t-shirt and some other collectibles in it, signed on the back by John Romero himself, and it’s kind of one of a numbered limited edition.
And that was released in 2019, so that was literally just before Doom Eternal - and it’s great, it’s loads of fun. There are some really, really clever levels in there, he always was a very good level designer and obviously he’s had 30 years of experience, so the stuff that he’s coming out with now is awesome and well worth checking out and you can actually download that for free as well.
The same goes for Sigil 2, the sequel, which has literally just been released - and unfortunately I missed out on the giant box edition of this, I only managed to grab this standard big box edition. I know it’s sad, isn’t it? It’s rather unfortunate, but, apparently it has a poster and a few other collectibles inside but I haven’t actually opened this one yet, I’ve left it sealed, and I have no reason to open it today, so I’m going to leave it sealed for today.
But yeah, Sigil and Sigil 2, the two new episodes for the original classic Doom, as made by John Romero, one of the original creators of Doom.
But I think it’s about time we moved on to unboxing this thing, this mysterious tube - and like I say there is a John Romero connection with this as well, so let’s get on with that.
So, what do we have here?
Well, John Romero was one of the original creators of Doom and he was one of the founders of id Software alongside John Carmack, of course.
They coded a load of their early stuff together and obviously took on a bit of a team for Doom - a very, very small team, there was like five people involved in that game.
But I followed him on Instagram quite a while ago and he’s still very active in the Doom community and he announced a couple of weeks ago that he had some spares of this…
…and I don’t think this - wow, that’s a very, very big tube considering what’s inside it!
But anyway, we’ll have a look at that in a second because that’s a very important part of it - let’s just check that there isn’t anything else stashed away in here.
I don’t think there is, that should be it.
So a very small thing - nope that’s just packaging in there.
I didn’t know if there might have been any other bonus things thrown in.
He announced a couple of weeks ago that he had some spares of these and I thought this was very cool and I thought I couldn’t let this opportunity pass me by.
So I’ll just be very careful with this - let’s just take the sellotape off there and pop this out and then I will very shortly put you out of your misery.
And this is…
…an original Doom poster!
Obviously this was the original box art as we’ve just seen on the original boxes and they made these posters back in the day, and this has been signed by Adrian Carmack, Tom Hall and John Romero. So of course, John Romero, I have mentioned before, Tom Hall was one of the level designers and general designers on the original Doom and Adrian Carmack did a lot of the artwork and stuff.
No relation to John Carmack the programmer - a lot of people thought they were brothers back in the day but apparently they’re completely unrelated, they just happened to work together.
But yes - an original Doom poster signed by three of the original development team from 1993.
I mean, how cool is that!? There were 19 of these available.
Apparently they were available at an event that they attended recently - they didn’t specify which event - and they had a few left over at the end.
So I’m definitely going to be framing that and putting it up on the wall with the rest of the collection.
And of course, that also includes a certificate of authenticity, which -
authenticity, that’s a difficult word to say
- as signed by John Romero himself. So I think the ultimate aim would be to track down the rest of the team.
There was Sandy Petersen who did a lot of the design on it, but of course, I think John Carmack would be the ultimate - he doesn’t have much to do with the Doom community nowadays for some reason. I think he’s pretty much moved on, he’s only really interested in kind of the latest and greatest gaming technology.
But yeah, a cool thing to have and if I ever do find myself at an event with one of the other co-creators of Doom of course I will be taking this along with me and asking if they can sign it. But what a cool thing to have for the collection - really pleased with that and I will have to take very good care of it.
So thank you ever so much for joining me and taking a look at my Doom collection with me, including this latest addition, which if you can’t tell, I’m very, very pleased with so thank you ever so much for watching and I shall see you in the next video.
Original Video Links
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Relevant Links:
Iain Lee Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLrTiv3TQ2M
RMC Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkSq2g1HXFU
Desk PC Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS6Ku-GZMIw
Download Sigil: https://romero.com/sigil
🤘 End Credit Music: “Metallica - E1M1 (At Doom’s Gate)” by StateOfMercury - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl-xcjlfswo
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