IN

past part

we left the developers of Doom at the difficult moment when they parted ways with their old colleague, creative director Tom Hall, over his disapproval of the overly brutal style of the new game. With months to go until release, id Software urgently needed a new game designer in hopes of polishing the game’s levels just the way a space station extermination shooter needs to be.

All parts of the series of articles about the creation of DOOM:

Art for cult id Software games

Hall’s departure was painful for Romero, perhaps the only one on the team who considered him a friend. That’s why John couldn’t confront Tom for so long, despite the cold-blooded Carmack’s insistence. However, Hall did not remain without a job for long: he was immediately bribed by Scott Miller from Apogee, with whom id Software also stopped working. In the end, John Romero and Tom Hall still remained friends … including the fact that after a few years, John Carmack would push Romero out of the company and “the lazy star”, in his opinion.

John Romero and Tom Hall in Moscow, 2004

Well, at the moment we are talking about, id Software plunged into studying the resumes of applicants for the job of game designer instead of Tom Hall. They were most interested in Sandy Petersen, widely known in professional circles, a 37-year-old developer of board and computer games from Missouri and a paleontologist by education. Already in the early 1980s, he thundered into the world of tabletop geeks with his game Call of Cthulhu based on the work of Lovecraft – it remains one of the most famous titles in the dungeons to this day, and Sandy thereby made a significant contribution to the popularization of Lovecraftianism in the geek world -community.

Call of Cthulhu first edition 1981

After leaving Chaosium and moving from board games to computer games, Sandy Petersen joined the ranks of the still young MicroProse in 1988, where he worked for several years with Sid Meier, and contributed not only to Sid Meier’s Pirates!, but also to the creation of an epoch-making game for the genre of computer strategies, the first Civilization, released in 1991. However, in 1992, Petersen was fired from MicroProse, and he and his family spent a few months out of work, which was terrible for him. Seems like the perfect candidate for the job?

Sandy and the figure from the Lovecraftian board

However, John Romero had one point on Sandy Petersen’s resume confusing. He was a Mormon, a member of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, known in the USA and around the world for their strict adherence to many of the rules of their religion. Still not moving away from the story of Tom Hall’s departure, Romero feared that having a Mormon game designer in the development of a game about demons and hell could turn out even worse. However, manager Kevin convinced John to try working with Sandy. Still, despite his denomination, he managed to release a tabletop hit about Cthulhu and other ungodly creatures of the Lovecraftian world – and one could hope that working on Doom would not offend his feelings as a believer too much.

Spoiler: no offense, and in general, Petersen is a person who has, say, a bust of Lovecraft at home

When Sandy Petersen arrived at id Software’s office in a black office cubicle, he looked like a white crow against the background of the Rozdolbai youth. The fact is that 1993 was already 38 years ago. He was a fat uncle with a beard and suspenders, who in the Runet of the beginning of 2024 would immediately be identified as a typical skuff. However, he was sincerely delighted, because during the time of sitting without work, he managed to get hooked on Wolfenstein 3D, and for the first day, he was thinking about options for arranging game spaces for a 3D shooter. Sitting down at the keyboard, he quickly sketched out the plan of the level – so eloquently and interestingly that Carmack was left with no questions as to whether or not they needed him as a replacement for the one who had left.

It is to Sandy’s talent that we owe most of the Doom levels and all Doom II levels

However, Romero still didn’t give a damn about the possible conflict between Sandy’s religious beliefs and what kind of game they were making. He began to feel the soil and let out a small breath as he advised with a smile to accompany the killing of the demons with a large amount of blood. Then there was a wonderful dialogue, which is worth quoting in full:

– So you’re a Mormon?
– Yeah.
“Well, you don’t look like a Mormon who made a million kids and stuff.”
– In total, I have five children.
– Oh great! Well, you know, five is a lot, but at least you’re not a card-carrying fanatical Mormon.
– Um, I carry a Mormon card with me!
– Well, at least you’re not wearing that weird ritual underwear and stuff?
– It’s on me right now!
– Okay, okay, it’s time for me to shut up.
– Listen, don’t worry! I have no problem with demons in the game. These are just pictures. And in general, we wet them here!

(something like that)

Romero and Petersen began riveting levels – and their approach was quite different. Romero tried to play on the nerves of the player, as it should be in a game with elements of horror, and provoke as fast a passage as possible with elements of a cinematic approach. Apparently, he wanted to sell something like “Aliens” on Carmack’s 3D engine. Sandy’s approach was more like mazes with the solution of logical problems – probably a hint from his past as an author of boards and strategies.

E2M1 Level Map: Deimos Anomaly by Sandy Petersen

The team liked his approach less than what Romero did – but he made the levels fast, talented, and as a result, we owe Sandy the 4th and 8th levels of the first episode of Doom, and the entire second and third episodes of the game. If we look at, say, the first episode of the second chapter, we will see very Lovecraftian green walls oozing with slime, a large number of burning pentagrams and inverted crosses, as well as strange architecture, albeit not quite R’lyeh.

Walkthrough of E2M1: Deimos Anomaly written by Sandy Petersen

As a weapon, the player was offered bare fists (their role was performed by the hands of manager Kevin on a blue screen background), a chainsaw as a brutal homage to the “Sinister Dead”, a pistol, a shotgun, a rocket launcher and an uberwunderwaffle, a heavy plasma machine of mass destruction called BF. The abbreviation was not very typographically deciphered as Big F***g Gun, and the “nine thousand” was intended to emphasize its enormous power.

Dismemberment of a demon with a chainsaw friendship

In the fall, as the game’s release approached, the tension of anticipation among fans grew. In September, someone leaked a press demo online, which fueled interest — and the office began to literally be flooded with letters and calls demanding either a faster release of the game or more details. The team began to prepare for the release – and chose a rather unusual way of distributing the future hit at that time. But about exactly how Doom was released and soon gained enormous popularity – the next, and this time the last part. Stay with us!

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