Development of Doom
"Doom"s original release date was the third quarter of 1993, which the team did not meet. By December 1993, the team was working non-stop on the game, with several employees sleeping at the office; programmer Dave Taylor claimed that working on the game gave him such a rush that he would pass out from the intensity. Id began receiving calls from people interested in the game or angry that it had missed its planned release date, as hype for the game had been building online. At midnight on December 10, 1993, after working for 30 straight hours, the development team at id uploaded the first episode of the game to the internet, letting interested players distribute it for them. So many users were connected to the first network that they planned to upload the game to—the University of Wisconsin–Parkside FTP network—that even after the network administrator increased the number of connections while on the phone with Wilbur, id was unable to connect, forcing them to kick all other users off to allow id to upload the game. When the upload finished thirty minutes later, 10,000 people attempted to download the game at once, crashing the university's network. Within hours, other university networks were banning "Doom" multiplayer games, as a rush of players overwhelmed their systems.
Official versions of Doom
Changes from the PC original include the removal of the "Nightmare" difficulty level, and the fact that progress is saved via passwords (given at the end of each level). The passwords also save ammo and health stats, but the numbers for them are rounded. This version features 59 levels in total; 23 levels from the PC version of "Doom" (edited much like the Jaguar and 32X versions), both of the levels designed for the Jaguar version, six new levels designed by the Midway team, five levels from "The Ultimate Doom"s fourth episode, and 23 levels from "Doom II". Unlike the other 1990s "Doom" ports, all of the enemies from the PC version of "Doom" are included. However, the Arch-vile monster from "Doom II" is not present; according to one of the game's designers, Harry Teasley, this was because he had twice as many frames as any other monster, and the team felt that they "just couldn't do him justice" on the PlayStation. There is, however, one new monster, the Nightmare Spectre. According to Teasley, this was included to add variety, and to take advantage of the PlayStation's capabilities. Two player deathmatch and co-operative multiplayer modes are available on the PlayStation if two consoles are linked using the original Serial I/O port, and each console has its own controller and "Doom" disc inserted.