I recently played the original Doom again.

[A Black Falcon]

Doom wasn't the first FPS I played. Lots of people will mention Wolfenstein, but that wasn't the first FPS either. Before that, the first I played was Catacomb 3D, where you were a wizard guy shooting spells, but even that isn't the first that company made. That goes to Hovertank 3D.

Doom was one that was born from experience though, and the level design finally matured by the time they got to that game.

I'm not sure, but I'd guess that the first FPS I played was Wolfenstein 3D. I don't remember playing one before that. I also remember Ken's Labyrinth, but that game released after Wolf 3D, so I probably played it a bit later. Wolf 3D seemed pretty cool at first, but the game is so incredibly confusing thanks to everything looking the same and there not being a map that I've never even finished the shareware version, much less made any attempt at the retail one. I'm good at navigating with maps, but it's much harder without them!

I did play a lot of Apogee platformers back then too. I liked Commander Keen, and Monster Bash (Starring Johnny Dash), and Cosmo's Adventure. Heck, the DOS days were home to numerous gems like that, back in the wild west, the frontier days. But, I can't put Keen up on the same rank as Super Mario Bros 3.

I was a big Apogee fan in the early '90s for sure, of course! I cover my thoughts on all of the Apogee games you mention there in my PC Platformers thread though, so no need to repeat that here... but as for Keen v. classic Mario, I like Super Mario Bros. (1) and Super Mario World more than any Keen games, but I do like Keens 1 and 3 more than Mario 3. I like Mario 3 a lot, but I've never loved it quite as much as some, the levels are just too short! I actually like (US) Mario 2 slightly more than 3, and the first Mario the most (maybe for nostalgia reasons I admit), of the NES Mario games. As for Keen, I like the first trilogy the best there too, though Keens 4-6 are really great as well. I'm sure that I had the Keen games at home in the early '90s, but not the NES Mario games, is part of why I think of them so highly, but they're fantastic games... and it's not just nostalgia; as much as I like the two Mario Land games, which I also had in the early '90s, most of the Keen games are better. I really like how the Keen games play.

(On my game collection spreadsheet, where I put 'what I kind of think of the game at the moment I put a number by it' scores in one of the columns, SMB1 and SMW are both scored a 10, Keen 1 a 9.8, SMB2 and Keen 3 a 9.6, SMB3 a 9.5, and Keens 4 and 6 a 9.4 each. Oh, Yoshi's Island has a 9.2, as does Mario Land 2 and also Keens 2 and 5.)