What do you like from classic 90's megawads?

[Mortrixs19]

Personally, I love 2 things about 90s megawads:

 

1. Some maps are so big full of secrets and optional areas to explore, they are non-linear and clearly they try really hard to make the player take it's time to explore these levels. It's like the mappers tried to make better non-linear levels than the ones seen before in doom/doom 2

Example: MAP27 of Memento Mori 2 - the silos.

2. Silly warning signs pasted over doom textures.

[Nevander]

Off the top of my head... the complex simplicity, the ingenuity, the first of their kind, and being a part of the beginning of a community we know and love today.

[Nine Inch Heels]

57 minutes ago, Nevander said:

the complex simplicity

I prefer the simple complexity of modern maps, though...

[Roofi]

I will do a short list:

 

- weird but interesting level design choices combined with pretty abstract layouts.

 

- the use of traps involving crushers , barrels , deadly pits instead of juste using Monsters.

 

- Vanille compatible wads and moreover vanilla tricks.

 

- It's not really mapping but I love wads using low-cost new sounds.

 

[yakfak]

my opinions on game design are overtly based on 90s doom level sets and 90s rpgs so I value a lot of what they do! It seems important to me that levels have areas with negative gameplay, whether it's because of annoying lighting, nukage, barrel traps, platforming, ammolessness, mazy-ness, etc; restrictive gimmicks in my mind deserve to be half of a game-world where the other half is unrestricted arena or adventure combat. just seems spicier that way. lots of 90s wads are morasses of confusion and gimmick and i adore them for it.

 

also the way a lot of the old megawads seem to place undue reverence on certain power-ups and bad guys is insanely cute to me for some reason.

[seed]

Personally, what I like the most at 90s wads and classics is the fact that they were rather creative and often weird in how some ideas were executed in them, they were mostly novelties, but sometimes ended up being revolutionary and highly influential pieces of work, and they're still interesting to check for historical reasons, to see how it all started and compare that with where we are today, 2 very different time periods considering there were no standards back then.

 

There's also something magic about them, as it is with all things classic, something that can no longer be captured today.

[NuMetalManiak]

Having recently replayed Obituary I'll say stuff. 90s wads are the first ones to really incorporate most of the gimmicks that people have used today, such as teleporter traps, cramped combat, intentional ghost monsters, and slaughterfests. While there's some issues with many of them (notably what's known as Zdoomisms) they are still replayable and even the lamest ones still have some fun value in them.

[mrthejoshmon]

They are not overly complicated, easy to pickup and play, much more friendly in terms of difficulty due to the level of play at the time, they are infinitely inspiring due to the odd and unconventional means of expressing concepts or ideas (Mark's Maps "EGYPT.wad" is a perfect example), they are charming in the unique, clean and recognisable visual style they have (due to the lack of microdetail) and had quirky but not very drastic changes like STRAIN.wad.

[ZeMystic]

I loved the large amount of creativity for working around the old doom engine. I played map01 of Icarus Alien Vanguard for the first time and it was beautiful what they did for the skyboxes and changing them with the og doom engine. Nowadays you can just do stuff like the change sky thing in boom and stuff but back then it was lowering walls. They also had weirder layouts that tried to make it look like things instead large arenas.

[Woolie Wool]

3 hours ago, NuMetalManiak said:

Having recently replayed Obituary I'll say stuff. 90s wads are the first ones to really incorporate most of the gimmicks that people have used today, such as teleporter traps, cramped combat, intentional ghost monsters, and slaughterfests. While there's some issues with many of them (notably what's known as Zdoomisms) they are still replayable and even the lamest ones still have some fun value in them.

It would have been hard to put ZDoomisms into wads that were made before ZDoom even existed.

 

'90s wads are only an occasional thing for me these days, but I still enjoy the complete lack of rules or best practices surrounding Doom design at the time. Nowadays Doom level design tends to involve a lot of rules and theory and refining ideas from earlier wads. In the '90s it was much more "nothing is true, everything is permitted". If vanilla Doom ran it and players could finish it, it was a viable map in 1996, and people ran with all sorts of crazy ideas and sometimes they worked out really well, but there were always surprise, variety, and moments of "I didn't know you could do that" in a major project. Indeed sometimes I play modern maps and wonder if they'd be a bit better if they were a bit weirder.

[joepallai]

a friend of mine described the early mapping scene as punk.  I can't think of a better term honestly--there's a certain raw charm to the early megawads and pwads of that era (94 - 97).   It was envelope pushing and innocent at the same time.

 

 

[Lizardcommando]

The old ways "realistic" buildings and locations were portrayed in older megawads, specifically in the later levels in Memento Mori 2.

[Doomkid]

What do you like from classic 90's megawads?

Cheese

[OniriA]

D_Runnin 

[Vorpal]

The abyss I get stuck in when mapping is trying to make a "place". 90's mappers just did not care until ~1998 and there is a degree of nonsense but in a way I never would have thought of, which I envy

[Musk]

Steam rolling a level without having to spend half an hour looking for a hidden switch to activate a certain event that's required to progress.

[Loud Silence]

They are not for GZDoom only.

[Juza]

Their creative simplicity. I find it way more amusing than the hyper-detailed and complex architecture of nowadays' works.

[whirledtsar]

I definitely agree about optional areas. Many IWAD and 90s maps have huge chunks of the level that don't actually have any purpose beyond exploring or unnecessary shortcuts. You really rarely see that in "modern style" wads where every area is a setpiece or perfectly planned combat scenario.

[Master O]

6 hours ago, Musk said:

Steam rolling a level without having to spend half an hour looking for a hidden switch to activate a certain event that's required to progress.

 

Eternal Doom says hi.

[Octillion]

Everything about them. It just feels nostalgic to play any of them, even on the first time. It screams "Yeah, this is definitely a 90's wad" when you see the monster placement, the design, the traps... All of it. And the soflocks.... Oh those glorious softlocks.

 

Edit: I realized that this is more of a "gushing" to oldschool stuff and not something specific. So I'll go with something rather odd. I actually like "softlocks" that are used as pitfalls during combat. I always thought of them as the best way to limit the player's movement.

Edited December 14, 2019 by Octillion

[Juza]

2 hours ago, whirledtsar said:

I definitely agree about optional areas. Many IWAD and 90s maps have huge chunks of the level that don't actually have any purpose beyond exploring or unnecessary shortcuts. You really rarely see that in "modern style" wads where every area is a setpiece or perfectly planned combat scenario.

I always thought people hated optional areas.

[Mortrixs19]

1 hour ago, Juza said:

I always thought people hated optional areas.

Honestly, I don't mind optional areas since they are optional.

But I guess that must've been a pain for people that goes for 100% everything.

[gaspe]

I love 90's wads because they have very interesting design choices and the authors were more daring to try weird ideas, part of it because there weren't standards. There's a nice way to detail the places and give a sort of a backstory to the maps even going with weird representational stuff that sometimes it's well done and other times the attempts are more clumsy but both ways have their charm. Then this is also a topic that I wanted its own thread but I think it fits also here since it shows a difference between the 90's and the more modern releases: the excessive playtesting. From what I know old wads didn't have the same care and dedicated playtesters like we have now and I think that lack of this has given more "edge" to the maps and you can see more the personalities of the mappers. For example I always heard some criticisms of BSTX that some players think its boring, while I like the wad I also though that they had a point but I couldn't figure out exactly what was off about the wad to me. Some quality control and tuning can be good, especially for bugs, but 90's wads don't have the same "leveled" feel that many modern releases have.

[xvertigox]

Cheesy midis.

[boris]

23 hours ago, Master O said:

 

Eternal Doom says hi.

 

This. I just played through MAP01 again, and that alone is such a progression clusterfuck that it makes you wonder if they had any quality control whatsoever. Especially as MAP01.

 

22 hours ago, Juza said:

I always thought people hated optional areas.

 

I think it's more that level designers hate them :P And I can understand it (I'm the same), since carefully building parts of a map that nobody might ever see seems kind of a waste of time.

[DSC]

I actually like old wads better than new ones. I already touched this on a previous thread, but I don't like it when levels are set in an episode which must follow a specific theme. Believe it or not, I really like it when each map is made by different authors and have completely different feels, that is why I'm such an AV fanboy. Not being episodic makes them stand out more and feel less restricted... In other words, more memorable. Of course it completely sacrifices coesion, but I am the sort of guy that doesn't care about the story in any wad, so in the end it doesn't matter to me anyways.