Speedruns of TERRIBLE Doom Ports

hello you absolute legends can it run doom a commonly asked question that is almost inevitably answered with a resounding yes we've seen doom run on pretty much everything watches cameras a pregnancy test and even a calculator powered completely by potatoes trying to get doomed to run on the most basic of electronic devices is a fun challenge that has essentially reached meme status by this point but an equally important albeit less frequently asked question is should it run doom being able to play doom is one thing having a good time while doing it is something else entirely in the 80s fast-paced action gaming was the domain of video game consoles and arcades home consoles were specifically designed for gaming and the custom hardware they contained allowed them to better manage the specific needs that games necessitate features like smooth scrolling had been standard on consoles since the early 80s but it wouldn't be seen on ibm pcs until 1990 with the release of its software's commander keen the reality is that pcs just weren't designed for gaming as they had to cater to all different types of use from spreadsheet management and word processing to computing advanced physics calculations geniuses like john carmack were always trying to find creative ways to mimic on the pc what consoles could already do but as the years went by and pcs became much more powerful the tables began to turn when doom was released in december of 1993 it sent a shockwave through the gaming industry it proved that the pc was no longer playing catch-up and was now at the forefront of cutting-edge home gaming technology doom was not only revolutionary but it was also incredibly successful naturally consoles were eager to capitalize on its popularity and in the mid 90s a slew of doom ports were pumped out to the console market unfortunately for the console gamers that were on the receiving end the ports were often inadequate to say the least john carmack was a powerhouse of a programmer one of the most innovative of all time working with some of the most up-to-date home pc equipment expecting any other programmer to make a comparable version run smoothly on slower devices may have been asking too much still publishers were greedy impatient and clueless of just how sophisticated doom was they rushed out ports seemingly uninterested in their quality resulting in borderline unplayable games in this video we will take a look at some of the worst doom ports ever made plus a couple that were actually okay we will also take a look at the world record speed runs for each port and learn how they differ from the pc version speed running these ancient doom ports is something very few people do and when you see these runs you will understand why i really hope you enjoy released in november of 1994 doom on the atari jaguar is actually not terrible in fact of all the games on this list it's easily my favorite it's important to include though as it was the first doom port to enter development and many of the other ports were derived from this version this is the only port developed by id software and it shows it looks good it runs well and lacks many of the concessions that other doom ports of this generation had to make that being said some cutbacks were made many of the levels have been simplified and there is no music at all during gameplay still the most important thing is playability and doom on the jaguar is definitely playable when it comes to speed running i've said it many times in the past that controls are the single most important aspect unfortunately due to limitations imposed by the simple nature of old-school console controllers flexibility and movement is greatly decreased there are no dedicated strafe buttons which results in the d-pad being responsible for both turning and strafing if you want a strafe you need to hold the strafe button and press left or right on the d-pad this means that you cannot strafe and turn at the same time which makes fluid movement through levels incredibly difficult the world record for beating doom on the atari jaguar in the fastest time is 18 minutes and 34 seconds set by jrm hd 91 on the 23rd of may 2020 you can immediately tell that the movement is nowhere near as precise as the pc version this is not the fault of the player either turning with a d-pad just makes everything a chore despite having only 24 levels compared with ultimate dooms 32 not including the secret levels the jaguar speed are considerably slower than those on the pc from a game with no music to a game with some of the best music doom on the 3do has a killer soundtrack unfortunately this is where the praise of the game ends published by art data interactive and released in 1996 3do's doom was a nightmare to produce the story about how the game came to be is a fantastic one and i'll put a link in the description to a video by rebecca heinemann who was the sole programmer for the port in a nutshell the ceo of art data interactive randy scott was clueless about video game development but somehow bought the rights to doom on the 3do from its software for 250 000 he immediately began a marketing campaign promising the best version of doom ever with new weapons levels and enemies he then lied to rebecca heinemann who was the co-founder and lead programmer for logicware advising her that the game was near complete and just needed some touching up the reality is that development for the game hadn't even begun randy gave rebecca 10 weeks to get the port done without even providing her with the source code the result is the wonderful mess that is doom on the 3do the first thing you'll notice is the tiny screen the game does provide the option of increasing the size but the frame rate becomes so bad the game is rendered unplayable naturally speedrunners play on the most optimal settings for preserving frame rate which is the smallest size available as with any other game that has a variable frame rate lag reduction strategies are implemented as much as possible like looking away from enemies and learning as little of the terrain as possible the world record for completing doom on the 3do is 16 minutes and 36 seconds achieved by alexo on the 22nd of september 2019. if you watched my video last year about void glides in doom you'll know that it is pretty difficult to get out of bounds and once you enter the void it's impossible to get back in this is definitely not the case with porch that were derived from the jaguar version which includes the 3do not only is it easy to get out of bounds by using rocket boosts but you can even re-enter the level on top of this hitting exit switches is now not a problem at all from outside of the map meaning that out-of-bound strategies can be exploited much easier one positive thing about this port is that the 3do allows for dedicated strafe buttons so you can strafe and turn at the same time this makes movement look and feel much smoother honestly as long as you keep looking directly at walls as much as possible a lot of the game runs semi-decently it's obviously not great but the frame rate is not as bad as another port i'll talk about later at least on the smallest screen size anyway unlike the other doom ports released in the 90s and early 2000s the super nintendo version was built from the ground up and uses a completely different engine in fact development on the game began before even speaking with id software about the possibility of a doom port coming to the snes however after being shown a working demo id were impressed and allowed the project to continue published by williams entertainment doom was released on september 1st 1995 pretty late in the system's career the super nintendo is much less powerful than the other consoles that saw doom releases in the 90s and the fact that it can run a playable version of doom at all is a very impressive feat the lack of capable hardware definitely shows though a ton of graphical compromises had to be made and even when all was said and done the frame rate is still atrocious surprisingly though because this is not based on the jaguar version much of the level geography is actually more representative of the pc version than other ports as a speed run the super nintendo version of doom is arguably the hardest to learn not only do you have to deal with the low fps but again you can't strafe while turning there is also another incredibly frustrating element to this version which is the monstrously long input delay opening doors shooting and activating switches requires some seriously long-term planning you have to press buttons well in advance for them to be timed optimally unlike the other ports this version makes going out of bounds incredibly difficult so it's not utilized at all in runs the world record for completing doom on the super nintendo is 17 minutes and seven seconds achieved by sidorino on the 4th of march 2020 it is immediately obvious how labored the movement is even speedrunners who trained specifically to move through levels well end up getting caught on walls much of the time the time lost suffered from enemies blocking your path is magnified tenfold by the unresponsive controls and horrendous frame rate doom on the super nintendo an amazing technical feat but a terrible game to speed run in doom for the game boy advance walls are merely a suggestion this is by far the most broken speedrun of the doom franchise and as a result it is also the shortest published by david a palmer productions and released in 2001 this is the last port released that was derived from the jaguar version containing these same levels it actually plays fairly well and you'd have to hope so coming out eight years after the original game the frame rate is generally pretty consistent but the speed at which the game runs is heavily impacted by the amount of processing happening at any moment that means looking away from enemies and trying to minimize the amount of the level the game has to load will have massive advantages the world record for completing doom on the game boy advance is 8 minutes and 59 seconds achieved by alexo on the 11th of october 2020. visually this speed run is insane as out of bounds is abused to an incredible degree there are a few reasons why this version in particular is much more broken than other ports despite the fact that similar out of bounds are possible on them as well one is enemy rate of fire and accuracy which does differ from game to game enemy hitscan tends to be more forgiving on the game boy advance version which ultimately leaves doom guy with more health and given that each of the rocket boost that allows doomguy to leave the map eats up a gigantic amount of health you can't afford to be damaged much by enemies ports also have a tendency to crash when out of bounds are used and the game boy advance version seems to be the most stable in this regard given the amount of time that the world record holder alexo has spent on this port alone it's definitely one of the most figured out and optimized runs of these old school doom ports published by gt interactive and released in march of 1997 doom for the sega saturn is arguably the worst port of doom ever made the developers rage software had originally created a custom engine that took full advantage of these saturn's hardware facilitating a version of doom that apparently ran at 60fps however when john carmack saw the final result he wasn't happy with how the game looked and forced them to revert to the original engine that just wasn't optimized for the saturn john carmack later confirmed this was a mistake as the final result was a doom game with a frame rate so low its borderline unplayable graphically the game looks really good especially when compared with consoles of the same generation but at the end of the day if the gameplay sucks graphics become less and less relevant as the game progresses and the levels become more complex and cluttered with enemies the frame rate drops ever lower which is the last thing you want to happen when the difficulty is increasing the controls are also terrible and precise movement is extremely difficult they attempted to combat these flaws with an increased rate of fire and slower enemy movement which ironically makes this version one of the easiest to survive the world record for completing doom on the sega saturn is 32 minutes and 14 seconds by jrmhd91 this makes it by far the slowest version of doom you can run i wouldn't wish having to play this game on my worst enemy let alone having to speedrun it it looks like a complete drag to play and unfortunately getting out of bounds is almost impossible as the game engine runs more similar to the pc version this means that you have to take the long way round and even the best of players look like complete amateurs due to the sluggish movement and slideshow nature of the game behold this is peak speedrunning last but not least published by sega in november of 1994 doom for the 32x was the first official doom port to be released while the 32x version has some obvious compromises like a small screen size no enemy infighting no multiplayer and a tiny selection of levels at only 17 it actually runs pretty well for an action game like doom frame rate is definitely one of the most important factors so all in all i wouldn't even call this a terrible port however i had to include it simply due to the hilarious failure of the soundtrack check out this masterpiece [Music] simply beautiful given that the 32x version has the least amount of levels out of all of these ports you would expect it to have the shortest speed run but it still only comes in second the game is one of the most unstable and has a tendency to crash when out of bounds is abused the world record stands at 10 minutes and 26 seconds achieved by chivalry on the 14th of october 2020. nightmare on this version is absolutely brutal enemies are always facing you and aren't forgiving at all combine that with the stiff controls and lack of maneuverability and you're left with a monstrous challenge the world record for the nightmare campaign is 54 minutes and 56 seconds by jrm hd 91 which is surprisingly long given the short list of levels it just goes to show how difficult playing the most intense settings are when you are dealing with early 90s control schemes and lack of circle strafing nightmare on the pc version was already too difficult for me so when it comes to console ports definitely count me out for this challenge now a huge thanks to alexo for helping me with this video please show your appreciation by subscribing to him on youtube and throwing him a follow on twitch also massive thanks to the console doom discord if you want to try your hand at speedrunning one of these old ports i'd suggest joining them over there i will put a link in the description if this video is received well i will likely follow this up with speed runs of awesome doom ports which i would be really excited to cover as always thank you so much for watching you legends i hope you were having a fantastic day and i will see you in the next video you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 470,515

Rating: 4.9589767 out of 5

Keywords: doom, ultimate doom, doom 2, doom speedrun, speedrun, classic gaming, doom classic, pc speedrun, speedrun history, world record progression, gaming history, karl jobst, karl jobst doom, doom history, documentary, gaming documentary, speedrun documentary, id software, john romero, zero master, doom eternal, greatest doom player, best doom player, doom 3do, doom snes, doom saturn, worst doom ports, doom ports

Id: Ak-Gu6q3-P8

Length: 16min 7sec (967 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020