Format: 32X
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Developer: Sega
Publisher: Sega

By the time id Software was working on a follow-up to their wildly successful "Wolfenstein 3d", IBM PCs were packing some serious 32-bit 486 chips, with serious price tags to match. Less than twelve months after the nightmarishly, enrapturingly fluid DOS original shipped, Carmack and a team of Sega engineers delivered this: the first ever home conversion of Doom, beating the Jaguar rendition to market by a week. It's missing some textures and enemy animation sprites, sure-- but the core experience is so close to the PC original, and the framerate so good, that those who entered Doom's ghoulish world through this 32X gate were not missing out on much relative to their IBM PC brethren.

Where Carmack used the Jaguar's DSP for collision detection, rendering that port musically mute, the Genesis' sound chip is freely available to the 32X. In what could have been this port's real treat, Brian Coburn creates YM2612 adaptations of Bobby Prince's classic tunes-- but don't get too excited, because they are quite drab sounding, and only a small handful of songs were completed in time, meaning episode two stages recycle the episode one music. Still, it's significantly better than having no music, and the PC's iconic sound effects are all present and sounding as crystal clear as they do anywhere else!

Run, fire, strafe, and map buttons are all present, while the engine's programmers got the sensitivity-- the "feel"-- of the dpad movement positively spot-on! This reviewer played the brand new DOS version on a Gravis Gamepad, and it adds a new, fun layer of challenge to once again experience the game via a dpad, after all of these years of mouse-driven source ports. Unfortunately, only the first fifteen levels of the game are present, but it hardly matters since those were far-and-away the best stages anyhow. As was the case in virtually all home ports, some sections of levels are removed or simplified-- but ironically this fat-trimming leads to more streamlined gameplay! Perhaps even the original DOS stages could have used some belt-tightening.

In the modern sense, this 32X port of Doom makes a lot of sacrifices: only fifteen maps; somewhat disappointing YM2612 music adapations, with most of the songs absent altogether; simplified levels; and no save support. But there are two other ways of looking at this rendition: first, and at the time, being able to play Doom on cheap Mega Drive hardware was incredible, to the point where the trade-offs were hardly even observable. Second, the "wow" factor of this rendition is off the charts: holding a Mega Drive cartridge with the Doom logo on its label is cognitive dissonance inducing enough, much less playing the game with a Mega Drive controller! What's more, the game also lets the player start on any level, shifting formula from a "start to finish" experience, to something with more arcade-like sensibilities.