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DOOM II: Hell on Earth

Trivia

DOOM II: Hell on Earth was awarded Game of the Year 1994 by both PC Gamer magazine and Computer Gaming World.

Contributed by John Romero (1016) on Sep 02, 2009.

The final boss of the game shoots out cubes, which contain demons, from his brain. This is similar to how Satan gives birth to his daughter Sin in John Milton's Paradise Lost, where she is born out of his head (a parthenogenesis based on Zeus and his daughter, Athena).

DOOM II actually preceded the retail release of its predecessor. While the shareware version of DOOM was available before DOOM II's box release, it wasn't until the release of The Ultimate DOOM in 1995 that the full version of DOOM was finally available on retail shelves.

In regards to the novels mentioned above, the authors of all four in the series are Dafydd ab Hugh & Brad Linaweaver, and the four books in the series are sub-titled "Knee Deep in the Dead", "Hell on Earth", "Infernal Sky", and "Endgame". (This information might make it easier to find them...)

DOOM II features two secret levels. Both pay homage to earlier id Software titles. Level 31 - "Wolfenstein" (accessible from Level 15 - "Industrial Zone") is a recreation of the first level of the first episode of id's Wolfenstein 3D in the DOOM engine. The map layout is almost identical. Even the secret areas from the original game can be found in the same places, and some additional secret areas have been added. The brown-uniformed guards from the original are replaced by blue-uniformed SS troopers (complete with re-recordings of their original exclamations "Schutzstaffel!" and "Mein Leben!") and dogs are replaced by "pinky" demons.

When using the secret exit (also present in the original), Level 32 - "Grosse" can be accessed. This is a recreation of the last level of Wolf3Ds first episode. The end boss Hans Grosse (hence the level name) is replaced by a Cyberdemon. In the room behind him, there is another reference to an earlier id title: four Commander Keens are hanging by their necks on ropes. They have to be shot and killed to reveal the button that exits the level. The sound effects heard when shooting at them are renditions of PC speaker effects from the first three Keen games. According to John Romero (source), this gag was artist Adrian Carmack's idea, who never wanted to work on Keen again.

Both levels also feature music taken from Wolfenstein, rearranged from the original FM sound to General MIDI.

The levels are missing from the version of the game sold in Germany due to restrictions on the use of swastikas and other Nazi symbols. The Game Boy Advance version does feature the levels, but removes all Nazi symbolism.

The Steam download version of the game is listed as Windows 2000/XP/Vista platform because the executables are modified to use a DOSBox variant (v 0.70); additionally the traditional setup.exe is missing.

It is confirmed that neither Valve or id Software contacted the DOSBox project staff and initially the game didn't includes the TXT files that must be present under the GPL license (so they failed to fulfill 2 points of the GPL license).

Two days after the launch, there was an update that includes COPYING, AUTHORS and THANKS.txt of the DOSBox 0.71.

Contributed by DarkDante (3731) on Aug 08, 2007.

On December 31, 1994, DOOM II: Hell on Earth was put on the infamous German index by the BPjS.

Note: Indexed products by the BPjS/BPjM are illegal to sell or make available to minors in Germany and it is illegal to advertise for it in any form. But there is absolutely no law forbidding any adult to buy such a product. The only exception is when a game was in addition also confiscated (or put on the so-called "List B" for BPjM games), but this is rather seldom the case.

In this particularly case here, DOOM II: Hell on Earth was just indexed, but not confiscated.

However, due to the fact that advertisement also means the presence of a product on the shelves of a store, the product will disappear from the public. But it can be bought in supporting stores "under the desk" (per request).

BPjS/BPjM = German Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften/Medien = Federal Examination Office for Youth-Endangering Publications/Media.

[Side note: it's now more then a decade since release, but it appears that the BPjS/BPjM never found out that the two Wolfenstein 3D secret levels exist...]

Regarding Eric Harris, he went under the names 'RebDooMer', 'Rebldomakr' and 'Rebdomine', and hosted a set of WADs on AOL. In his AOL profile he listed himself as a 'professional Doom and Doom2 creator', although his WADs appeared to all be for Doom2, mostly deathmatch, and he was not paid for them. The most polished is UACLABS, which is a simple pair of levels for Doom2. They are short, crude but entertaining, and give no clue as to Harris' later actions; the architecture does not appear to be that of Columbine High School. Harris' AOL directory, which is mirrored at http://columbine.free2host.net/aolhp.html, also includes what appears to be a menu image reading "Quake Files", although no Harris-designed Quake levels have surfaced; he seems to have hosted a Quake level designed by another person, and a utility for viewing and altering Quake sprites. Harris seemed to lose interest in Doom at the end of 1996. The text file for 'Bricks.wad' credits "My good friend Dylan Klebold for helping me play-test this WAD", although as before it bears no resemblance to real-life architecture.

Another interesting fact about the Columbine school shootings is that Harris, in addition to being an avid player of the game, made some levels which bear an uncanny resemblance to Columbine High School. According to the rumour, Harris and his friend Klebold modeled the levels after the school, filled it with enemies meant to represent students and teachers, and played through it again and again...until the day they decided to do it for real.

That's just the rumour and no-one knows if it's true or not. The site hosting Harris's levels was taken down years ago, but you can probably still find them if you search hard enough.

In April 2005 a full port of this game was brought to XBOX as part of the Doom 3 special edition. Also see The Ultimate Doom.

Doom II has a few references to Ultima games. One of the quit messages is "You want to quit? Then, thou hast lost an eighth!", reference to Ultima IV, and the alternate title of Map 11 (Circle of Death) is "The 'O' of Destruction", which is a reference to Ultima VII's Hoe of Destruction.

The Game Boy Advance version is the only one not banned in Germany, as the blood in that version was changed to green in an attempt to preserve the GBA's kid-friendly reputation.

Doom II was the first game to be rated by the ESRB, as its predecessor naturally inspired it due to the violence controversy.

The US Marine Core created their own Doom2 wad files for training in 4 man co-op levels. You can find more information at the following website. http://www.tec.army.mil/TD/tvd/survey/Marine_Doom.html

Contributed by Santa (847) on Nov 28, 2003.

While it's a well-known fact today, I just thought this should be recorded for posterity (heh): after the much-publicized Columbine high-school shooting, "Doom 2" became a showcase for media finger-pointing and for a collective lawsuit by parents of teenagers killed in the shooting. The reason was that Klebold and Harris were both into Doom and Quake, and Harris even made some amateur levels for Doom 2.

One of DOOM 2's sound effects has been continuously used since the game's release, in TV shows, movies and commercials. Which sound effect? It's the 'shee-koufff' noise that you hear when the final boss spawns a flying cube.
I guarantee, if you watch any amount of TV or movies, you will have heard that exact sound several times in the years since 1994.

The thing I'm not sure about is this: Did id actually create this sound effect or did it exist before DOOM 2?

Contributed by Sam Jeffreys (3331) on Jul 12, 2003.

In the map "Downtown" you can see a very big black building. ID Software's offices in Texas are in a building that looks like that one.

If you play the boss's sound file backwards, it is actually John Romero.

Wanna play any Doom game at 1024x768x32 with dynamic colored lighting, completely customizable controls, mouselook, and 3D sound? Go to the Links page and visit the JDoom site!

Did you know there is an interesting, well-written novel series based on the games? The books are about the aventures of Flynn Taggart, a Marine Corps. member sent to Phobos, the moon of Mars to stop the aliens from conquering earth. The books are very good, but unfortunately are hard to find.

The Doom 2 engine has some minor speedups over the original Doom engine. Removed, however, is the "low-res" option that made 386 gameplay possible.

Contributed by Tomer Gabel (4476) on Oct 01, 1999.