Bring Back The 90s! - Going Old-School

[alando1]

Hey guys, I found time in between working on the Toby Accessibility Mod to work on a special side project that I always wanted to do. I've always been intrigued with how Doom wads have evolved over the years. I look back at the wads from the 90s and always felt a sense of nostalgia. It brings me back to when I was a kid and where I spent time with my father playing some of the most fun and creative wads. I have fond memories of when my dad and I played some of the classics.

 

In this new level set, I decided to make my first ever Ultimate Doom wad. As most of you know, most of my wads use Doom 2 and are played using (G)ZDoom. This, too, is the first wad I've made that can be played on any source port of your choosing. I tested it on Chocolate Doom and Crispy Doom, both of which work very well. If you really want to get that old-school vibe, I strongly advise playing this map set using Chocolate Doom or Crispy Doom.

 

DOWNLOAD:

BringBackThe90s.zip

 

Title Picture:

 

 

Enjoy! :)

 

 

-Alando1

[alando1]

Some Screenshots:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Walter confetti]

Cool! 90s is the best!

[Endless]

1 minute ago, Walter confetti said:

Cool! 90s is the best!

And the Lord said: let there be 90s WADs,

and the Lord saw that 90s WADs was good

[Kam Tovalski]

You get my attention tonight :V

this iconic sleek STBAR <3

[Costa de Vale]

Fantastic episode, really feels like one of those ambitious wads from 1995 (calgon, take me away comes to mind). Levels are short, but fun. Took me ~35 minutes to complete.

 

My only nitpick is the amount of times you have to open doors in E1M5, it gets a bit tiring after a while... other than that, good job!

[TMMMS]

looks neat! how long is it?

[LadyMistDragon]

Slightly modded vanilla gameplay with some rather obvious Icarus influences, along with some curious retexturing/simplification of IWAD maps. Good job!

 

 

[NPC_CO8ALT]

This was great! Not too difficult, decently fun maps, pretty good music.

Solid wad!

[S3M_XM]

Vanilla, that famous status bar during those times, Quake sounds, 11025 hz stock sounds, Butthead laughing while the chainsaw is revving up, music from Mark Klem, Jazz Jackrabbit 2 and Marilyn Mason midi covers.

Yep, definitely a 90's wad feel, in a good way.

 

A good 30 minute breeze.

[Amaruq Wulfe]

Alright then, what can I say except that I'm quite glad that I could experience this. A wonderful, pleasing experience from beginning to end. It has captured all the essentials of a 90's WAD, down to the crusty sound samples :P 

 

I loved the map design; it was quite pretty without being overly complex, achieving the aesthetics that it was after. If this was listed as an actual 90's WAD, you bet that I would've believed it. The difficulty is what I enjoyed the most. I've played a lot of difficult WADs recently, and in an oversaturated scene where everyone is trying to one-up Plutonia, I'd say that this was quite a pleasing experience, something to easily relax to. Quite beginner friendly that even a seasoned player would enjoy.

 

If I've got any complaints then it would be that it was too short of an experience! Now I'm actually left craving for more, and I hope that there might be more in the future :) brilliant work, a good 8/10 from me.

[Bobby :D]

Cute 90s adventure through techbases of a few varieties. I like how even though each map was within a techbase theming, each subtlely changed some aspects of the layout and texturing to keep it fresh. My favorite maps were E1M4 and E1M9, the former for the cool use of the main room and the later for how the level opens up in the second act.

As far as critique goes, one thing that turned me off in the second half of the wad is how chokey the gameplay gets. All of the maps have alot of one way corridor-to-room shenanigans, which is not an issue at first with the low monster count, but it becomes a big problem later on because of how monster dense every little compartment of each room gets, and because of the utilization of the roster, you often get a block of monsters that filters slowly through a tight doorway or staircase. As a nitpick, I really wanted to see more outdoorsy/setpiece doomcute stuff, whenever I think of 90s wads I think of their ambitious use of geometry and scale (maps like MAP01 of Mars Wars, MAP12 of TNT, most of Invasion 2, etc.). There was some in E1M2 and a little others but it could've been way more pronounced IMO. Either way, it's clear that there's alot of potential here, just needs some ironing out to smoothen and freshen up the experience.

[Serathis]

The maps are basic and some of them feel very inspired by Doom 1. There's nothing wrong with them, nothing to write home about either. Solid mapset. I like the music. 

[Kor]

Pretty good map set. Fun to play, had 90s feel to it as intended. And I notice that status bar. It was used in a lot of 90s wads, including my Invasion project. I also notice there the title pic song is the same as the intermission song from Invasion 2. Did you get that from there or some other wad? just curious.