Trivia / Doom 64

• Ascended Fanon: The new, demonic-looking laser gun was never identified by a name in the original release, but fans christened it "the Unmaker" due to its resemblance to an unused weapon of the same name from the original Doom's early design document, Tom Hall's "Doom Bible". The 2020 remaster includes an Achievement for finding the weapon, which officially refers to it as the Unmaker.
• Author's Saving Throw:
  • The Spider Mastermind and Icon of Sin in Doom and Doom II respectively got complaints for being underwhelming final bosses due to different reasons. Doom 64 attempts to provide a worthy Final Boss with the new Mother Demon, who uses the Revenants' homing rockets and unique dangerous lines of fire on the ground to keep players on their toes when battling her with conventional weapons, Unmaker aside.
  • One of the most criticized aspects of the original Doom 1 and 2 is that their secret levels either felt like reject maps or were overly gimmicky and just not fun to play, and that there was no real reason for a player on a continuous playthrough to seek them out beyond seeking 100% Completion. So in response, the devs of Doom 64 made sure to make the secret maps stand out and reward the player for finding them, with three of the secret maps containing the Demon Keys that will power up the Unmaker and make the final map easier (plus the first secret map with a Demon Key gives the player an Unmaker much sooner than they could find it in the normal level progression), while the fourth secret map, Hectic, gives access to a "Features" menu that allows the player to use a level skip (which also allows them to access three additional secret maps that can't be accessed through normal level progression) and activate various cheats at will. This gets a nod in the introduction to "Hectic" where the text entices you to beat it for a reward (the aforementioned cheat menu).
• B-Team Sequel: The only Doom game that was not developed in-house at id Software, although it does reuse their original engine and they had final approval on all of the game's content.
• Colbert Bump: Doom 64 didn't gain much attention back in 1997, since it had the unfortunate luck to be named as if it was a port at a time when nearly every major console was getting a sub-par port of Doom save for the PlayStation version, and it was up against the likes of GoldenEye 007 and Star Wars: Rogue Squadron when they were considered state-of-the-art. Stop Skeletons From Fighting's review of the game would bring more eyes to Doom 64 (and its fan remake, also mentioned by Derek) in the early 2010s from outside the Doom fandom. Other popular streamers/youtubers like Vinesauce Vinnie and Civvie 11 showcasing the game would also help get it more attention throughout the 2010s from outside the fandom. Then of course the various fan ports would help make the game more accessible to a modern audience, allowing people to try the game for themselves after seeing these popular creators cover it, and allowed the PC-centric Doom fandom to play it, who would otherwise never want to play Doom on an actual Nintendo 64. This would all culminate in the game getting a modern rerelease in 2020.
• Development Gag: "The Absolution" (MAP28) was the original name of Doom 64 before it was changed for branding reasons.
• Executive Meddling:
  • The reason it was retitled to Doom 64 over The Absolution. This attempt at brand recognition backfired as it caused many to think the game was yet another port of the original Doom rather than a new game.
  • Doom 64's planned sequel was canned mid-development because Midway's higher-ups believed there was a lot more money to be made from the Quake 64 port they were working on at the time and so cancelled the Doom 64 sequel to devote all resources to Quake 64.
  • Everything that went into Doom 64 needed id's approval. The extent of what content got cut because of their disapproval is unknown, but according to Tim Heydelaar that is at least the reason why the Mayan-like temple-themed level seen in early previews got scrapped, as id wanted the game to stick to Doom's established lore of starbases and hell.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Averted 23 years after release. Of all the Doom games that have been ported and/or re-released on various consoles over the years, Doom 64 took the longest to officially leave the platform it originated from, and for a while the only way to play it was secondhand from used game shops and auction sites. Unofficially, there was a total conversion by a fan named Samuel Villarreal called Doom 64: Absolution that re-created Doom 64 on PC with all the advantages a PC could offer, and he later released a more faithful version titled Doom 64 EX. Samuel would later become the lead engine developer for the official port, and Doom 64 was finally rereleased on the same day as Doom Eternal for Switch, PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Samuel Villarreal, known in the Doom community by his tag Kaiser, was a big fan of the original Doom 64, and went through the effort to extensively datamine and reverse-engineer the game to create an unofficial PC port for the then-Nintendo 64 exclusive. Through his efforts in the mid-2000s he created Doom 64 TC (also known as Doom 64: Absolution), a total conversion mod of Doom 2 that closely resembles the original game but with a lot of his own content and alterations added, and would then later create Doom 64 EX, a port that uses an actual Doom 64 ROM to give a near-identical replica of the original game but with PC features, like the ability to play with keyboard + mouse. Eventually over a decade after his original work, Samuel would join Nightdive Studios and end up leading the development of an official Doom 64 port for the PC and all modern home consoles, 22 years after the original game's release.
  • The creators behind Doom 64 (Tim Heydelaar, Randy Estrella, and Danny Lewis, among others) were big fans of Doom and had already been creating their own WADs for years by that point, and were stoked to create an official Doom game and meet the original Doom creators. Tim shared a tale about them flying out to id's offices to discuss Doom 64 and excitedly getting to deathmatch the id guys, where the Midway crew promptly got destroyed.
• Refitted for Sequel: The Unmaker was supposed to show up in the original Doom according to its production bible, but made its debut in this game.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: The game was developed and published by Midway with the Doom IP licensed, meaning that the code was under the ownership of Midway and later Warner Bros.. This prevented the game from getting another official release until 2020, when Bethesda finally got the rights back and worked with Nightdive Studios to develop a port of the game for PC and 8th generation consoles.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: According to Tim Heydelaar, the reason Doom 64 is so dark visually is because he and the other level designers created their maps in offices with no windows and with the lights off, so the game looked great to them in such conditions. It wasn't until the game went into QA testing, where the game was played under florescent lighting, that the game's darkness issues came to light and testers complained they couldn't see anything, leading to a gamma slider option to brighten up the game being added at the last minute. The 2020 remaster would also go on to feature a higher default brightness level, and includes an overall and environmental brightness setting for extra measure.
• What Could Have Been: There are plenty of things that got changed or scrapped during development of this game:
  • In an interview with Tim Heydelaar, one of the level designers of Doom 64, he stated how he wanted to include a well-hidden Easter Egg in MAP20: Breakdown, and over 20 years later in a thread about unused Doom 64 stuff on Doom World, he stated it was completed but someone else must have quietly removed it before release. According to him, when the final trigger for the secret was activated, a series of darts would start shooting across the room in a pattern that spelled out initials and had a heart inbetween as some sort of love note. However, the triggers and unused scripts for the Easter Egg still remains in the game without a purpose.
  • Split-Screen deathmatch multiplayer was considered, but later scrapped due to suffering from slowdown and the belief that the ability to see where the other players were rendered it pointless. One imagines that the developers started kicking themselves a year later.
  • An early preview screenshot◊ shows a level completely unlike anything in the final game, with Doom Guy outside a Mayan-like temple, under a purple skybox that was not in the final game either. According to the developers, the game's levels were initially planned to explore various interpretations of Hell, but this level and its associated themes got scrapped as ID wanted the game to stick to Doom's already established themes.
  • Another early preview screenshot◊ shows a weapon that does not match the appearance of any in the final game. When asked about it, Tim Heydelaar wasn't completely sure what it was but thinks it was the initial appearance of the Rocket Launcher, as he remembers it having a different appearance early in development, rather than it being some new weapon that got scrapped.
  • Unused data for the Revenant suggests it was intended to be in the game, while its punching sound got reused for the dart traps' firing sound, and its missile sounds got reused for the homing missile traps and for the Mother Demon's homing fireballs.
  • Among the sculpted models used to create the Doom 64 monsters, there existed a different Cyberdemon◊, which had both of its legs cybernetic, a metal plate over its stomach, and rocket launchers on each of its hands. This Cyberdemon also appears in the initial planned cover art◊. If this was the original design of the Doom 64 Cyberdemon or was meant to be an upgrade to the existing Cyberdemon is unknown.
  • Other unused models are some sort of two-headed Hell Hound◊, and a female-looking Gigeresque creature◊ which many fans assume to be a take on the Arch-vile, suggesting there were plans for more new enemies that didn't make it into the final game for unknown reasons. When asked about unused enemies, Tim Heydelaar stated he did not remember them but said it was possible and they would have had to be approved by ID.
  • According to Tim Heydelaar in the aforementioned Doom World thread, there was a direct sequel to Doom 64 planned, and that would have reused ''The Absolution" title mentioned below. The sequel would have featured multiplayer this time around as the top priority, with Tim claiming the multiplayer was fully functional and there was some levels for the single-player completed too, which would have took place on the Moon or some planet surface. Unfortunately at the time Midway was working on the Quake 64 port and the higher ups believed there was much more profit to be made in getting that port done than doing another sequel, so Doom 64's sequel was cancelled a couple months in to divert resources to Quake 64.
• Working Title: The original name of the game during development was The Absolution. The reason for changing the original title to the Doom 64 moniker was for brand recognition, however the working title was used as the name for MAP28. Unfortunately, this lead to many people to assume the game would be just another port of Doom rather than an entirely new chapter in the classic series.

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