Doom 64

Doom 64, released March 31, 1997 for the Nintendo 64, is a sequel to Doom II. The game has all new graphics and is based on a modified Doom engine. Doom 64 was released by Midway, in cooperation with id Software.

The plot focuses on events following the original games in the series. An evil entity known as the Mother Demon has survived and brought back the decaying dead creatures you once killed. It is up to you, the lone space marine, to stop the legions once again.



Story
Quoted from the Doom 64 manual:

"Your fatigue was enormous, the price for encountering pure evil. Hell was a place no mortal was meant to experience. Stupid military doctors: their tests and treatments, were of little help. In the end, what did it matter - it was all classified and sealed. The nightmares continued. Demons, so many Demons; relentless, pouring through.

Far Away...

The planetary policy was clear. An absolute quarantine was guaranteed by apocalyptic levels of radiation. The empty dark corridors stand motionless, abandoned. The installations sealed.

The Present...

A long forgotten relay satellite barely executing, decayed by years of bombarding neutrons, activates and sends its final message to Earth. The satellites message was horrific, from the planetary void there came energy signatures unlike anything sampled before.

The classified archives are opened. The military episodes code named "DOOM" were not actually completed. A single entity with vast rejuvenation powers, masked by the extreme radiation levels, escaped detection. In its crippled state, it systematically altered decaying dead carnage back into corrupted living tissue.

The mutations are devastating. The Demons have returned even stronger and more vicious than before. As the only experienced survivor of the DOOM episode, your commission is re-activated. Your assignment is clear: MERCILESS EXTERMINATION."

Gameplay developments
Changes were made to the computer Doom engine for use in Doom 64, and gameplay elements were altered. Doom's core gameplay, however remained the same: the exploration of demon-infested corridors, looking for keycards, switches and ultimately the map's exit while surviving deadly traps and ambushes.

Key differences from the computer games in the series include:
 * 32 exclusive new levels
 * New, larger sprites for all enemies, items, weapons and projectiles which were anti-aliased when close to the player to prevent pixelation.
 * All new textures, scrolling skies, limited room-over-room architecture and more advanced line triggers.
 * Colored lighting and more advanced effects (until Doom 3, Doom 64 possessed the most technically advanced graphics of all Doom games).
 * Synth ambient music tracks instead of MIDI rock music
 * More ambivalent usage of Satanic imagery (pentagrams, inverted crosses, depictions of sacrifice) than the computer version of Doom with differing usages of horror schemes.
 * No commandos, arch-viles, spiderdemons or revenants (removed due to the limited storage capacity of Nintendo 64 cartridges).
 * The nightmare imp and Mother Demon were introduced as new monsters.
 * The player's viewpoint is from chest level, rather than eye-level, making all objects and characters appear larger in relation to the player.
 * The super shotgun reloads much quicker, nearly the same reload time as the regular shotgun. This makes the Super Shotgun one of the most essential weapons in the game.
 * The hell knight and baron of hell can hurt each other with their projectiles, and infight as a result, contrarily to the PC version where there is a hardcoded exception for them.

Weapons
All the weapons from the original computer game are present, but redrawn. A new weapon known as the Unmaker or the LaserGun (referenced in-game as "What the !@#%* is this!") has been added. It was first mentioned in the Doom Bible and was planned to be featured in the computer Doom games but never appeared. Its appearance in Doom 64 is its only official appearance, and with the power of three ancient artifacts (known as "Demon Keys") found in the game, it becomes more powerful by additional beams with each key found.

The Demon Keys are also a means to clear MAP28: The Absolution quicker: Each teleporter in the map has a symbol representing each key behind them and if the player has the right key, the corresponding teleporter is disabled.

Levels
Doom 64 featured 32 original levels:

Source ports
The following source ports are capable of running Doom 64:
 * Doom64 EX

Doom 64: Absolution TC for Doomsday
Since the release of the Doom source code for the computer games, programmers have created feature-enhanced versions of the computer Doom game in their own source ports. Several fans of Doom 64 decided to work to convert the game's exclusive content to the computer using Doomsday. This stand alone mod, built on the 1.7.14 release of Doomsday, titled Doom 64: Absolution, was released in 2003. It includes near-perfect representations of the original Doom 64 game along with some new maps of its own. It appeals to many fans as a way to play through the game on a computer without using emulation.