Doom

"A fun, but flawed port of the original PC classic."

The original Doom was an extravaganza. Released on the PC in late 1993, it further capitalized upon the First Person Shooter craze that developer id Software brought upon the world a year earlier with Wolfenstein 3d. As a result, Doom was ported to almost every video game console that was up for sale during the mid 1990s. Just one of them was Nintendo's highly successful 16-bit Super NES. How did this port turn out? Read on for my review...

To start things out, let's talk about the story of Doom. You are a lone Marine soldier, the sole survivor of a demonic onslaught that has devastated the rest of your Marine unit on a military base overlooking Mars. Your objective is to shoot through, annihilate, or blow up any demons that come your way. The gameplay is that of a 3D first person shooter; putting things simply, you must run your way around 23 levels of mayhem and destruction and somehow escape your confined hell.

I would say that the only huge problem I have with this port is the graphics resolution and the framerate. This port runs off of the Super NES' Mode 7 chip, meaning that the many pixels that made up the original game's levels are replaced here with large polygons that can take up the entire floor and ceiling, and can make many in game textures look pretty low-res compared to most other versions of Doom. Also, the framerate sort of slowly chugs around, and while not being as bad the Saturn or 3DO ports, it is noticeably slower than many other versions of Doom.

Also, this port is more difficult than most other versions of Doom, You can only choose the "Hurt Me Plenty" difficulty or higher when playing Episodes 2 and 3, so players that don't know the thick and thin of Doom may be easily frustrated. There is also no save function, so if you get close to the end of an episode and suddenly have to turn the console off or have a power outage (like me) are pretty much out of luck and have to do the whole episode again.

One of the most impressive features of this port is the level layout. While 5 maps are missing, this port has all of the features that the original Doom had: all the enemies, all the weapons, crushing ceilings, no border issues, etc. (most other ports of Doom had scaled-down levels first introduced in the Atari Jaguar port). The music and sound effects are the same as the PC version; though of lower quality. The control layout is excellent, but response is a little slow due to the framerate.

There is no in-game multiplayer; though ages ago there was an online service for the SNES called "X Band" that you subscribed to and played with other people online via deathmatch. Looking at the Super NES' demise a decade ago, I doubt this service even exists anymore.

Despite the fact that this port is not of the quality of the PC version, you have to give respect to the developers; they made Doom happen on a 16-bit console! Doom collectors should track this one down, and those looking for some FPS action on the Super NES should definitely grab this one. This port definitely gives more justice to the original game than that awful Wolfenstein 3d port that was also on the SNES.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/06