Plasma gun



The plasma rifle is a fully automatic weapon that fires blue-white balls of plasma. It shares the player's stock of plasma cells with the BFG 9000.

The plasma rifle first appears in the level E2M1: Deimos Anomaly in a secret area, and in fact appears in all the levels of The Shores of Hell. It first appears in a non-secret area in E2M5: Command Center.

In the press release beta, the plasma rifle fired green and orange plasma balls, alternating between the two colors. This was similar to the BFG 2704, which fired 40 of the same projectiles at once. Before the final release, these plasma balls were made blue, and the appearance of the gun itself also changed slightly.

Although the plasma rifle does not inflict blast damage, firing it in close quarters demands a certain amount of concentration on the player's part due to its "auto-aiming" feature, which may steer the plasma a few degrees away from center &mdash; and therefore right into a wall &mdash; if the nearest monster happens not to be directly in front of the player. (For example, using the plasma gun on the Cyberdemon in E4M2: Perfect Hatred, without placing oneself in his line of sight, requires aiming at a point slightly to his left.)

Appearance statistics
The IWADs contain the following numbers of plasma rifles: