19th August 2024, 9:19 AM
Yeah I'm with you. That FPGA NES port of Doom was interesting but felt like "cheating", since it wasn't using any of the expansion chips available to the NES at the time.
I never bothered with the console ports of Doom when the game came out, because I was lucky enough to have a good enough PC to play the game. Heck I eventually even got an AWE32, which was about the best I could hope to afford for sound at the time. Sure an SC-55 would have been NICE but no chance I'd have been able to get that.
As for which 90's era port was the best, for me? Easily, EASILY the PS1 port. That one starts with the Jaguar port, already an impressive feat, and then adds an incredible new set of sound effects and music to the game. The altered level geometry was meant to allow it all to run on Jaguar but it got straight ported to PS1. Frankly, I like it for standing out as it's own thing. Plus, colored lighting sectors make it stand above too. It's got the fourth episode, Doom II, and some extra levels on top of that. Final Doom also got a PS1 port, and it's impressive for the same reasons, except that it barely has any of the levels from the PC version for some reason. It did add mouse support though!
Plus, it paved the way for Doom 64, which isn't really a port but a sequel in it's own right.
I'll say this though. Outside of using an SC-55, the SNES version has the best MIDI interpretation of the original PC soundtrack. I just... look I have a copy of the game right? It's impressive on a technical level but I can't imagine actually playing it through to completion. No saving, no circle strafing (an odd oversight that has numerous fan mods to fix already), and a frame rate around 10 or so? Yeah, music aside, I'd rank the 32X version over that one. In fact, the only port worse than the SNES version is the 3D0 version to me, though the 3D0 version impresses in the sense that it was all done by one woman working under a massive time crunch, and working for a man who believed "porting" a game was easy and that features could just be added by dragging and dropping pictures "into" the game and it would somehow figure out how to do the rest on it's own. He was a much better musician though, and his garage band went and made one of the most interesting soundtracks for the game.
But, I can respect the nostalgia factor. If this was the only way you had to play the game, then this was your Doom.
Now then, will they add in XBand, Keyboard, and Mouse support on top of everything else?
I never bothered with the console ports of Doom when the game came out, because I was lucky enough to have a good enough PC to play the game. Heck I eventually even got an AWE32, which was about the best I could hope to afford for sound at the time. Sure an SC-55 would have been NICE but no chance I'd have been able to get that.
As for which 90's era port was the best, for me? Easily, EASILY the PS1 port. That one starts with the Jaguar port, already an impressive feat, and then adds an incredible new set of sound effects and music to the game. The altered level geometry was meant to allow it all to run on Jaguar but it got straight ported to PS1. Frankly, I like it for standing out as it's own thing. Plus, colored lighting sectors make it stand above too. It's got the fourth episode, Doom II, and some extra levels on top of that. Final Doom also got a PS1 port, and it's impressive for the same reasons, except that it barely has any of the levels from the PC version for some reason. It did add mouse support though!
Plus, it paved the way for Doom 64, which isn't really a port but a sequel in it's own right.
I'll say this though. Outside of using an SC-55, the SNES version has the best MIDI interpretation of the original PC soundtrack. I just... look I have a copy of the game right? It's impressive on a technical level but I can't imagine actually playing it through to completion. No saving, no circle strafing (an odd oversight that has numerous fan mods to fix already), and a frame rate around 10 or so? Yeah, music aside, I'd rank the 32X version over that one. In fact, the only port worse than the SNES version is the 3D0 version to me, though the 3D0 version impresses in the sense that it was all done by one woman working under a massive time crunch, and working for a man who believed "porting" a game was easy and that features could just be added by dragging and dropping pictures "into" the game and it would somehow figure out how to do the rest on it's own. He was a much better musician though, and his garage band went and made one of the most interesting soundtracks for the game.
But, I can respect the nostalgia factor. If this was the only way you had to play the game, then this was your Doom.
Now then, will they add in XBand, Keyboard, and Mouse support on top of everything else?
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)