In preparation for Doom 3's imminent release, some of us feel the need to tell the tale of our first run-in with the original game. For me, I was in college and hadn't been gaming for years. The Atari was the last piece of digital fun I had ever touched. Castle Wolfenstein was fun, but I only came across it near the release of this new game by id, called Doom. There were already rumblings in the game press (for what it was), and a screenshot I chanced across was too good to be true. So wehn the announcement came over email that the shareware demo was ready for download, I pointed my 9600 baud modem at the id servers and started downloading. Around a day later, the download ended. No joke. I called up my friend Russ (R.I.P buddy!) and told him I was about to start playing without him. He insisted he'd choke the life from me if I dared to even think of it, put on some pants, and ran over. For the next ten hours or so, it was all Doom, all the time. The opening scene, with its eerie music and distant roars and spectacular graphics, was almost too much to take. We switched off at the keyboard after each death, and before we knew it, the demo was over. Needless to say, we bought the game immediately, directly from id. The closest I got that feeling was when I first played the GBA version of Doom. If you've never played the original, and you own a GBA, do yourself a favor and play the original before you jump into number three.
