Strafing, Not Stirred


I make no secret of my love for the Doom franchise - as I've stated here and on other sites many, many times previously, Doom is one of my all-time favourite games and it's sequels and spin-offs are games I hold in extremely high regard. Due to this slightly worrying affection for all things Doom, I have amassed quite a collection of variants of the game and have pretty much every iteration of it for consoles - the only one I don't have in the collection is the 32X port and that's only because I don't actually own one of those mushroom-shaped monstrosities anymore. I have waxed lyrical about my penchant for id's sprite-based (and polygonal, the the case of the 3rd instalment) shooting series here at the 'Yard in recent months, but in this post I wanted to share some images I took from within one of the best mods I think I've ever seen for Doom...and one that I have had the pleasure of sampling via my Dreamcast SD card reader: the GoldenEye 007 total conversion.

8:27 to complete a par 0:30 level? Shocking.
I don't think I've yet played a Doom mod that has excited and intrigued me as much as this one - it takes the original N64 game and recreates it perfectly in the Doom engine. From the weapons to the level layouts and even the mission objectives, the creator of this mod has not scrimped on the detail. Obviously, due to the limitations of the Doom engine, things like the sniper rifle and remote mines have been omitted, but other details such as the placement of body armour, the appearance of Sean Bean's Alec Trevelyan and even the locations of boxes and explosive barrels from the N64 are faithfully recreated with amazing accuracy.

Some levels, such as the Severnaya stages (where you spent forever wondering around in the snowy wilderness looking for that satellite dish) are broken up into several areas that are traversed via teleports, and some of the more ambitious aspects of the N64 cart (such as ladders and transparent windows) are substituted for slightly different takes. Other notable omissions include the ability to call up the iconic red targeting reticule, but the auto lock-on that Doom is famous for makes that redundant in any case; and certain mission objectives where that ability would normally be required (shooting padlocks, destroying CCTV cameras etc) have been removed...but for all intents and purposes, this really is about as close to playing GoldenEye 007 on a Dreamcast as you're likely to get. Until somebody gets an N64 emulator running at a playable speed, that is.
For England, James.
This Doom mod is actually part of a larger collection of total conversions and player-created expansions that I downloaded from the SD iso section of DC Iso Zone. If you've got a spare SD card and reader (or even one of those swanky GDEmu iso loaders installed in your Dreamcast), you should definitely give this (and the other outstanding mods) a whirl. Sticking with the N64 theme, here are some shots from another pretty imaginative variant: Nintendo Doom...who knew shooting Yoshi in the face with a plasma rifle could be so satisfying?!

3 comments:

nocarpayment said...

Thanks Tom i have to keep this on my mind as im usually looking for something new to play. My gaming comes in spurts. Essentially one month i wont barely play and the next im playing just about everyday. Thanks for the info

Tom Charnock said...

No worries - thanks for reading! Those Doom mods are well worth checking out if you get the chance.

Robert Jones said...

Once you've seen that image of a demented Yoshi running towards a double barrelled shotgun it's stuck in your mind forever. Once seen, it cannot be unseen!