History: Let’s Take a Look inside the Office of Doom Era id Software

History Let's Take a Look inside the Office of Doom Era id Software

id Software has made some of our favorite games of all time and some of the most revered titles of all time. As a company they’ve grown and changed tremendously over the years, not just in their staff, but also in the games they make. They started off with classic style platforming games, then eventually moved on to making the prototypes of the modern FPS. Eventually, they made Doom and later on, Quake. The rest is history. Can you imagine what it must’ve been like to be in the office when they were trying out the very first versions of Doom? The fast frame rate… the textures… the visceral gunplay. Check out these old videos we found, shared by none other than John Romero, which shows you around the id Software offices in 1993.

Romero summarized it this way,

“In 1993, Dan Linton, owner of a hugely successful BBS called Software Creations, visited Texas and made his way to id Software. This is the footage he recorded one night in November 1993.

Shown are several of id’s employees at the time: Jay Wilbur, Shawn Green, John Romero, Dave Taylor, Sandy Petersen and Adrian Carmack, Bobby Prince was visiting to finish the music and create the sound effects.

This video has 21 minutes of me playing DOOM before the sound effects were put in as well as some early deathmatching with Shawn Green.”

It starts off with the crew in the office playing Aladdin on the Sega Genesis. Then some time with Bobby Prince, the composer of the Doom soundtrack. Finally, we end up in Romero’s office and witness some early Doom gameplay. The sound effects are from Wolfenstein 3D still and the levels are quite a bit different from what is seen in the final game. You can listen to the people spectating as they are surprised and impressed by the technology they’re witnessing. We also see some networked deathmatching… in 1993.

PC gaming was never the same after that. Hell, gaming wasn’t the same.

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