Doom review - Super Nintendo

Towards the end of the SNES's twilight years, all eyes and ears were fixed intently on Nintendo's forthcoming next-gen console - the N64. Many of the purported killer apps for the console included two very high profile games for the era: one was Killer Instinct, and the other was Doom. So it was with no great surprise that when both these games were announced to grace the SNES instead of Ninty's super console, that many people were dubious if indeed downright dismissive of the notion, not least of all with the idea that Doom could would be even possible, let alone playable on 16-bit hardware. However, what was surprising is that not only was it possible, it was also playable; very playable indeed. It would later turn out to be one of the jewels in the crown and one of the great technical marvels that the SNES grew steadily infamous for.

It's hard to gauge just how big of an achievement it was to see Doom running on the SNES if you weren't an avid and conversant gamer back when it was released. To put it into perspective, it would be like porting Id's latest in the series to a PSP. You see, the SNES simply wasn't meant to be able to cope with the 3d texture-mapped environments Doom's engine spat out, and that's where it had to get a helping hand in the guise of the Super FX chip.

However, for all it's merits, the technical proficiency of the FX chip inevitably had it's shortcomings, and invariably some minor aesthetic sacrifices had to be made. The resolution was dropped to around half, and the frame rate likewise - it chugged along at a solid and just-about playable 15 fps; textures adorned the walls only; enemy sprites could only be viewed from one angle (the front) and the game screen was boxed to around 70 percent of your TV screen. Minor setbacks for a game that almost two years previous, was only capable of running on high-spec PC rigs that cost close to a grand.

Doom purists then (and now) would argue that this wasn't a good conversion of their beloved FPS. It lacked some of the finer things the PC version had to offer, most notably the flick-of-the-wrist gameplay that a keyboard and mouse had to offer - knee-jerk reactions were a must when a sneaky imp clawed at your back, and lest I forget, for multi-player - something the SNES lacked.

But all those things aside, it didn't matter. Sculptured had managed to port the same run-and-gun and nerve-inducing gameplay that made the PC original the classic that it's come to be. It even got one better over on it's PC big brother by actually boasting a better and more booming orchestration of the game's soundtrack. Asides from Secret of Mana, the game had no other equal sonically.

Id has a track record of breaking the mould when it comes to first person shooter's in the graphics department. When Doom was released back in 1993, it prompted enthusiasts to shell out for expensive upgrades and it was no different 11 years on when they released the latest in the series in Doom 3. Just like many of the SNES owners back in 1995 who could not afford a decent spec PC, or simply just hadn't sampled Doom's frenetic gameplay yet, so it was much to the delight of many an Xbox owner that the game was being ported over to the system for them to see what all the big fuss was about. The only difference this time - and once again underling why SNES Doom was such a triumph for the system - was that the Xbox was more than capable of handling the new engine, albeit with minor sacrifices.

Simply put, Doom on the SNES rocked. It made a man of your SNES, and a boy out of it's rivals. It was certainly a stinging jab to the eye of Sega's much vaunted supposed next gen add-on, the 32X.

If you didn't go to Hell by owning this game back then, then you sure as hell deserve to for not buying this piece of mastery - with all guns blazing, mind.

- Steve AKA Drunken Leprechaun