Doom (1993 video game)
"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.
Official versions of Doom
The 32X version of "Doom" was developed and published by Sega and was released on November 21, 1994. It features 17 of the 18 levels from the first two episodes, but none from episode three. This version lacks multiplayer support, does not play in a full screen, and only has the front sprites for the monsters. 10 levels are missing from the original version (twice as many missing levels as any other version of the game). A DOS prompt shows up after the credits roll if the player finishes the game either using cheats or starting from any level other than the first level, locking up the game. Similarly, the secret level cannot be accessed in these scenarios. Due to the lack of the third episode, the BFG 9000 can only be obtained through the use of cheats. Due to poor use of the Mega Drive/Genesis YM2612 sound chip, this version's soundtrack is considered inferior to that of other versions, and many of the sound effects are missing. As with most mid-90s console ports, the levels come from the Atari Jaguar version. This version does not feature the Cyberdemon, the Spider Mastermind, or the Spectre. There is a level select option that allows the player to start on any of the first fifteen levels, although there is no way to save the game or settings.