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I can still vividly remember playing Doom for the first time. Having been previously wowed by Wolfenstein 3D I had hoped for something as good as the WW2 shooter, but what I got was more than I had ever hoped for. Doom was, and probably still is, the best example of a shareware software release ever. The game was split into three levels and the first level was available free, meaning that you could get a true feel for the gameplay before putting your money on the table and buying the whole thing. Of course this meant that I played the shareware version through dozens of times before one of my work colleagues finally stumped up the cash for the whole game (thanks Jane).

Once I had access to the full game, I found myself spending night after night in a dark room battling the minions of Hell. Doom was the game that started the trend for accelerated heart rates, and the levels where the lights weren’t quite working properly, always had you on edge, just waiting for an Imp to pop out and scare you half to death. The level designs were so complex for the time, that you could never be truly sure if you’d found everything there was to find in a level until you’d completed it – then you would be told the percentage of enemies you’d killed or secrets that you’d found. Of course, anything less than 100 per cent, meant going back and playing the level again.

To say that Doom redefined video gaming is an understatement of epic proportions. OK so Wolfenstein 3D launched the first person shooter genre as we know it, but Doom perfected it and it remains near the top of any hardcore gamer’s “best games of all time” list. But what set Doom apart from almost any other game at the time, was the fact that fans from all over the world created their own Doom maps. I played many of these maps, some were good and some were bad, but the need to play more Doom was so great that I was willing to try anything. The best of the bunch was probably the Aliens Doom patch, which was truly impressive at the time.

The other thing that Doom brought with it was multiplayer gaming. I remember one of my friends bringing his PC round and connecting it to mine with a serial cable. A couple of other friends came round, and the weekend seemed to worryingly disappear as we played one on one deathmatch continuously.

Doom II built on the success of the original and added some new touches and the more than welcome double barrel shotgun. This time it wasn’t shareware and shipped as a full retail package. It wasn’t groundbreaking, but I really didn’t care, and judging by the sales, neither did anyone else.

I was working at PC Pro magazine when Quake launched, and although the 3D engine was amazing and again took first person shooters to the next level, it just wasn’t Doom. The complexity of the engine and the limited power of the hardware at the time meant that the number of enemies you found yourself up against was very limited, and even if you had a very fast PC, movement would be far from smooth. Quake II came and went, as did Quake III Arena, but it was when id Software officially announced that Doom3 was in production that my dreams of a more modern, truly 3D Doom seemed close to reality.

Anyway, enough of the history lesson, since I’m sure that most of you know the ins and outs of how we got here, and fully understand why this is such an important video game. Few gamers will deny the fact that John Carmack is, quite simply, a genius. And when this man designs a new 3D engine, the whole gaming world sits up and takes notice. It’s a fact that id Software is one of the driving forces behind realtime 3D rendering engines, and it’s releases like Doom3 that make graphics companies like ATI and nVidia design whole new chipsets.

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