Endless

Awesome! I enjoyed working on the first one, so I'd like to take MAP21 for this one, please :)

Eh, partially agree but also disagree with some points. Morally, it was a shitty move, but from a retrospective, Maximum Doom does represent the average quality you could find in most PWADs back then on the old internet. Some comments around here from people that were there back when it released have more or less a mixed opinion about it, mostly regarding its fake promises and shady marketing, but considering that not a lot of people had, or fast enough at least, internet, Maximum Doom was a gateway into what the community offered during the 90s. There's tons of shitty duplicates and poor conversions that's true, but the 0.05% okay maps comment, I'm not sure, I've played a lot of it (but not even close to finishing it) and I've found some good hidden gems as well as some other well known titles from the 90s that are usually remembered fondly today. Then again, there's my personal bias of course, as I do enjoy the jank era of the 90s, but I still think that if I was a kid playing Doom in the 90s, and somebody gifted me Maximum Doom for Xmas, I would probably have been quite happy with it. Addendum: In modern times, there is no reason at all to play Maximum Doom, that is true, and even if you are one of those that enjoy a completionist style of gaming, completing the entirety of Maximum Doom just because you want to is insanity-inducing and will make you hate the game. The only reason to play it today is either because you want to relieve the 90s experience, or you are some sort of nut old-school WAD archeologist, like me.

Oh yeah. I wouldn't say it ruined S2 completely, but to date, I haven't finished Scythe 2 because of the last maps. The sudden spike in difficulty was too much for the me the first time, so I just dropped it and have not touched it since. I think it is one of those cases where the levels are pretty good on their own, but change their gameplay style so abruptly to something I don't enjoy.

Citadel at the Edge of Eternity kinda ruined Community Chest for me. It's not like CC1 is a great megawad anyway, but MAP29 really just made it such a horrible, horrible experience. Also Community Chest 2, is not a bad megawad per se (more or less a hit and miss), but once you get to The Mucus Flow, it really changes everything.

In the danger of coming off as an unwanted ad, the Wadazine has had similar features in the past as a companion piece to the Cacoawards. And as it has been mentioned; it is an excruciatingly challenging endeavor that takes a lot, lot of time. From the gathering of the judges, to the selection process, the playtesting, the reviewing, the rankings and/or critiques, and of course, the presentation of it. It has been probably the hardest thing I've done with the Wadazine but it is something I do wish to keep expanding and improving. Meanwhile, to just relegate the entire task to a Chatbot and do the entire thing for you as if it was your school homework, well, that's fucking lazy and dishonest. I initially was optimistic for these new Doom Awards and their community-vote type of system for something that could work well while trying to be its own thing, but at the best of my ignorance, the entire thing was a fiasco since day one, and I didn't realize it until the very last moment when the AI shit came down and they reacted in the absolute worst way possible. Should be noted that they straight up delete and censor anyone that does not 100% agree with their views. My twitter thread had at least 10 different answers from different persons, but because they were comments under a post by the DA twitter account, they were all soon deleted. They tried to ''expose me'' by sharing our private DMs, as if that somehow would make them look better? They even plastered the Wadazine logo on top of the screenshot. They really thought they had something, somehow.

Sadly it seems his first map was never published, or perhaps never uploaded to /idgames. For just being his second map, he showed some great promise that could rival even pro mappers from the time. Btw, if you ever feel lost, need help or want to search more about a map, consider looking at the Doom Wiki. A lot of the maps here, I have created and/or edited wiki pages for them. BASE.WAD has one :)

Thanks. Decided to include the original updated version for og Doom just for the sake of keeping it vanilla, since it was meant to be the original version, so I wanted players to experience how it was originally introduced to the world.

I played this one some time ago. I liked the open spaces haha not because of the gameplay but it made it feel a little more surreal with the pyramidal architecture and ''plaza'' style. Still, shit WAD, but at least tried something different. GS's Arena | Alain Arrault | 1995 An simple DM arena for Doom 2 designed in the good ol' days when deathmatch mode was actually more popular than singleplayer mode, at least when it came to number of maps released. This one is a welcoming surprise that tries a lot of creative new venues to DM design, but still has some clear flaws when it comes to balancing. While not a good map in the sense of gameplay, it does look pretty good and packs some nice areas that are quite fun to look at. Bloody Rust 3 | Various | 2020 Finally! The good stuff. Bloody Rust 3 is a fantastical mini-episode of 6 maps with a bunch of gloriously fun maps designed around the theme of ''rust and gore'' with some really good level design that makes special focus on tight combat and exterior landscape, something I really enjoy. The maps are generally short and fast-paced, self-contained and mostly easy to navigate with straight paths. Some of the key placement can be a little hard to spot at times (especially if you like 'em chunky pixel resolution) but the general design of the maps allow for a very quick playthrough with constant action. Gameplay wise it is a beast. I played on HMP and got my ass kicked multiple times by cleverly placed traps and some gruesome fight in close-quarters, something which I really enjoy, particularly the way some scenarios were designed around creating arena-like areas for you to combat. The atmosphere and mood of the mapset is also top notch, and I love the fact that it has so many exterior landscapes that add up to the outwordly vibe, that skybox in particular is glorious. This is the kind of WAD that deserves a full review which I will do later, but overall, my opinions on it are straight A. My only gripe would be the final fight. The moment I saw that the map was made by @NoReason, I knew this was going to be a full on massacre, on goddamn it was. More than 5,000 monsters holy shit. I am not a slaughter fan, so I lost my patience quickly and despised the gameplay. Not my cup of tea. However, the map, as usual, was tremendously well designed and looked like a monstrous industrial nightmare, bleeding with rusty detail and fantastical architecture. What a fun WAD!

wtf and no Brutal Doom not even a runner up bs

Always love little references to retro sci fi works in WADs. Reminds me of the Altair WADs that reference Forbidden Planet.

Before playing, I was wondering, to those of you few who keep track of the WADs you play, how do you do it? What kind of system you use? I have an Excel spreadsheet with all my WADs, categorized by author, number of levels, difficulty, publishing date, and rankings, but I've come to dread it lol I have over 700 entries and writing a new entry every time a play a random WAD sometimes feels like I spend more time just cataloguing everything than actually playing. In other words, being obsessed with keeping track of everything can be quite tiring.

Hey brad, reporting this crash when playing SIGIL II, right at the exit of the first level, it always crashes when I go through the exit/portal. Not sure why.

Surprisingly short, I was hoping at least 2 hours of back-and-forth between them, but it lasted like 30 minutes. Still, a very charming and engaging stream, I really loved hearing the two again after so many years. Carmack in particular doesn't do much stuff related to Doom, so hearing him talk and tell stories about it again was a highlight. Must admit I was not a fan of the moderating. Not the person himself, but I would have preferred no moderator at all and just the two of them having a casual chat.

Thanks a lot to @Dynamo for the sidebar write up about WAD archeology! It was a pleasure reading it and I'm quite happy to see the efforts of archivists and WAD hunters such as @Arrowhead, @Mad Butcher, @thestarrover, @VVL, @Never_Again, @deathz0r (who's an archeological living piece by himself already!), @FEDEX, @Roofi, @Walter confetti, @Wadmodder Shalton, and everyone that has participated in helping find and replay/recover those ancient pieces of WAD history. I think WADs from the 90s and early 2000s are an enigmatic and charming piece of history that deserves to be remembered and respected for establishing the stepping stones for the massive growth of this community. I personally have the belief that no matter the reason, all pieces of work, amateurish, expert, avant-garde or boring, deserve to be preserved. I personally spent more time playing WADs from 1994 this year than anything else, and despite all the general jank and low quality of most of the releases back then, I've had a very rewarding and fun journey that I hope I can continue, always looking for those secret hidden gems in shovelware CDs or abandoned hard drives. Thanks a lot!