ArkaEvren
Doom

GAME · 1993 · USA

Doom

Developer
Nerve Software
Publisher
Atari, Inc., Atari, WMS Industries
Platforms
RiscPC, 3DO, Microsoft Windows, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis

38 archived facts 4 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Nov 2026

  • Doom — production image

38 Interesting Facts About Doom

Interesting Facts (12)

  1. #001

    The chainsaw and shotgun weapons in the game were inspired by The Evil Dead (1981) film series.

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  2. #002

    Because of the game's low system requirements, hackers found it difficult to port the game to various systems, especially systems it was not designed for. Among many other devices, they managed to run the game on a printer, an Apple iPod Nano, a graphing calculator and even an ATM.

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  3. #003

    The various weapons Doomguy uses throughout the game are actually digitized versions of toy guns the developers bought from a toy store.

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  4. #004

    The complete list of songs whose melodies were borrowed or copied in whole or in part (original Doom only; alphabetical by artist): AC/DC - "Big Gun": E2M1 (ExMy = Episode x Map y in-game). Metallica - "No Remorse": E1M1. Metallica - "The Call of Ktulu": E2M2. Pantera - "Mouth for War": E3M1. Pantera - "Regular People (Conceit)": E2M3. Pantera - "Rise": E1M4.

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  5. #005

    The death sound of a Former Human and/or Imp resembles the mating call of a Bactrian camel.

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  6. #006

    Another inspiration behind the game was Dungeons & Dragons. One night the development team was playing its weekly campaign, and it ended with an army of demons bombing them.

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  7. #007

    Die Hard (1988) is a major influence behind the game. The tough hero Doomguy collects and uses an arsenal of weapons as he battles the demons that have taken over the military facility and the marines who have gone bad.

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  8. #008

    The Smashing Pumpkins used the game's rocket launcher sound in their song "Where Boys Fear To Tread".

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  9. #009

    The Super Nintendo version became the first console game to receive a 'Mature' rating from the ESRB.

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  10. #010

    When it was adapted to different platforms, levels were cut from the Super Nintendo version due to limitations, while in the Game Boy Advance version enemy blood was colored green for a lower age rating.

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  11. #011

    In the first releases, the red cross symbol on health packs was changed to green in later releases under pressure from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

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  12. #012

    DOOM spawned the first-person shooter genre and transformed video games from a childish pastime into an adult pursuit; at the time of its release, it was installed on more computers than Windows.

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Production Story (17)

  1. #013

    John Carmack came up with the concept for Doom as a game about employing technology to battle demons, drawing on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played by the team.

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  2. #014

    Doom was originally going to be a video game adaptation of the film Aliens (1986). Those plans were cancelled to allow for more creative freedom.

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  3. #015

    The Doom team aimed to blend the styles of the films Evil Dead II and Aliens.

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  4. #016

    In 1999, a feature film adaptation of the video game was announced, with Arnold Schwarzenegger said to be playing the role of Doomguy, but it was cancelled after an incident in which two children died while handling a chainsaw and the game was blamed. In 2005, the feature film adaptation Doom (2005), starring Karl Urban, Dwayne Johnson and Rosamund Pike, reached the big screen.

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  5. #017

    The team ended its relationship with previous publisher Apogee Software and chose to self-publish Doom, believing they had outgrown the publisher and could earn more money independently.

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  6. #018

    Hall's Doom design was a science fiction horror concept in which scientists on the Moon open a portal to an alien invasion, with the player discovering over a series of levels that the aliens are demons as hell infects the level design.

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  7. #019

    John Carmack disliked the proposed Doom story and dismissed having a story at all, saying story in a game is expected to be there but not that important; he preferred focusing on technological innovation and dropping Wolfenstein's levels and episodes for a fast, continuous world.

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  8. #020

    Hall disliked Carmack's direction but the rest of the Doom team sided with Carmack, so Hall spent the next few weeks reworking the Doom Bible; the team then realized Carmack's seamless-world vision was impossible given hardware limitations, forcing Hall to rework the design document again.

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  9. #021

    The same press release advertised features of John Carmack's new 3D engine for Doom, including multiplayer, that had not yet been designed.

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  10. #022

    Doom initially kept Wolfenstein's arcade-style scoring, but it was removed because it conflicted with the game's intended tone; the studio also tested and dropped systems such as lives, an inventory, a secondary shield and a complex user interface.

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  11. #023

    John Carmack started adding multiplayer to Doom in late 1993, a month before the game's release.

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  12. #024

    According to Romero, Doom's deathmatch mode drew inspiration from fighting games including Street Fighter II, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting.

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  13. #025

    Doom stored its level and graphical data in WAD files, short for "Where's All the Data?", kept separately from the engine so any part of the design could be changed without adjusting the engine code.

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  14. #026

    The Doom engine supports walls and floors at any angle or height, unlike the flat levels with right-angled walls of Wolfenstein. It does not, however, allow areas to be stacked vertically.

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  15. #027

    Doom's lighting system works by adjusting the color palette of surfaces directly. Instead of ray tracing light from sources to surfaces, the game sets a "light level" for a small area from that area's predetermined brightness and alters the surface textures' palette to imitate darkness.

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  16. #028

    Doom uses the same palette-adjustment lighting system to make distant surfaces appear darker than nearby ones.

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  17. #029

    After Romero's complex level designs began causing problems with the engine, Carmack turned to binary space partitioning to quickly select the reduced portion of a level visible to the player at a given time.

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Behind the Scenes (8)

  1. #030

    The Doom team relocated to a dark office building they called "Suite 666", drawing inspiration from sounds coming from a neighboring dental practice.

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  2. #031

    The 3DO version of this game was initially going to include FMV cutscenes shot in front of a green screen with players and detailed costumes. However, because the port was given only ten weeks of development time, it was not possible to finish the cutscenes in time for the deadline.

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  3. #032

    According to Sandy Petersen, John Carmack and Romero wanted to hire other artists, but Cloud and Adrian disagreed, arguing a designer was needed to help build a cohesive gameplay experience; the team also added a third programmer, Dave Taylor.

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  4. #033

    Doom's remaining levels were designed by Petersen and Romero, who worked toward different goals: the team considered Petersen's designs more technically interesting and varied, while Romero's were seen as more aesthetically interesting.

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  5. #034

    Once Doom's multiplayer component was coded, the development team played four-player games; Romero called this "deathmatch", and Cloud named killing other players "fragging".

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  6. #035

    Doom's monsters were designed to look nightmarish, using realistic, dark graphics rather than staged or rendered imagery, and were built through a mixed media approach.

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  7. #036

    For Doom's enemies, the artists sculpted some models and photographed them in stop motion from five to eight angles so they could be rotated realistically in-game, then digitized the images into 2D characters with a program written by John Carmack.

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  8. #037

    Adrian Carmack made clay models for a few Doom demons, while Gregor Punchatz built latex and metal sculptures of the others; the weapons were assembled from parts of children's toys.

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Deeper Meaning (1)

  1. #038

    At Christmas 1997, John Carmack released the game's source code to the public, an unprecedented step in the industry that allowed players to build their own tools and turn the game into whatever they wanted. In practice this guaranteed the game's eternal life, and it is also the reason DOOM can be played on any machine with a processor and a screen, including smart refrigerators and even pregnancy tests.

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Sources & editorial notes

Sources for the entries on this page

  1. Wikipedia Doom (1993 video game) — WikipediaEncyclopedia · accessed 18 Sep 2026

Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work