He started working on his own version of Doom, ArmageDoom, which included six maps, new weapons, zombie attack dogs, and huge battles with friendly AIs. SGtMarkIV was amazed at what fans were able to add to the old game: mouse support, jumping, improved graphics, and more.
In trying to make the game run on Windows XP, he stumbled upon the game's still lively modding community.
In 2009, the computers in SGtMarkIV's high school lab were too old to run modern games, so he decided to install Doom.
Despite all the improvements, nothing in Brutal Doom looks like it couldn't have been developed in 1993.Īs everyone who's played Brutal Doom and as SGtMarkIV himself explains, it's not Doom the way it was, but the bombastic impression it imprinted on your mind when you first played it. SGtMarkIV manages to walk a fine line between modernizing the game with features like looking down a gun's sights (a Call of Duty staple that didn't exist back then), and preserving the original masterpiece. I haven't had a Doom all nighter since 1996…Thank you so much SGtMarkIV! You should put a donation linky on your Facebook page." "Just played it for the first time a few days ago and I'm addicted. "I love this mod," one of the many YouTube commenters gleeful over the Brutal Doom v20 trailer writes. Brutal Doom gives it back some of that impact, and since it preserves the original's old, pixelated graphics, it gets away with things modern games with modern graphics wouldn't. I realize that this may sound a little psychotic out of context, but it's what Doom fans want, not because out a blind appetite for violence, but nostalgia for the original. " Brutal Doom is Brutal because when you fire a shotgun into an enemy's face, you can feel like your chest is being punched as the recoil shakes the camera, the loud, sharp and metallic sound of the blast rips through your ears, and behind the large muzzle flash, you see the enemy's head being ripped open, with pieces of grey matter, flesh, skull, eyeballs, and teeth being launched all around the room and sticking on the walls and ceiling." " Brutal Doom is not Brutal because when you shoot an enemy there is a lot of blood," SGtMarkIV told me. Brutal Doom gives it back some of that impact The walking speed, the way blood now splatters and drips down from the ceiling, the extra bass added to shotgun blasts.ĭoom was shocking at the time.
The animations are obvious additions, as are the new and improved weapons, but it's the little things that make the biggest difference. It may not sound like it, but there's a very subtle, meticulous craft to SGtMarkIV's imp mutilation. This allows you to point a shotgun at an imp's head and shoot it clean off, or shot him in the legs, watch him scream for help, then come close and kick him to death. Brutal Doom introduces a variety of animations and "hit boxes," which detect which part of the imp's body you shoot. In the vanilla version of Doom, for example, when you shoot an imp, he always falls over and dies the same way.