Columbine High School massacre

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Revision as of 16:40, 5 May 2007 by Fraggle (talk | contribs) (Doom connection and the Harris levels: merge in Harris levels as well.)


The Columbine High School Massacre occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Jefferson County near Littleton, Colorado, United States. Two teenage students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, executed a planned shooting rampage killing 12 other students and a teacher before committing suicide. It is considered to be the second worst school shooting in U.S. history, the worst being the Virginia Tech massacre.

Part of a rash of similar shootings, the events triggered a wide-ranging debate about the effect of violent entertainment, particularly the videogames Doom and Quake.

Doomworld posted an editorial defending Doom and the staffers of the time participated in a variety of press interviews. Andrew "Linguica" Stine and Matthew "Mattrim" Dixon were interviewed by SFGate.com. Javier "Dukrous" Heredia defended Doom as part of an interview by CNN.

Doom connection and the Harris levels

One of the two gunmen, Eric Harris, was an enthusiast of the Doom series, owning some of the Doom novels and having made Doom levels under the nickname "RebDoomer". In a video tape recorded before the shooting, Harris expressed enthusiasm for the planned shooting, saying it would be "like fucking Doom." He also pointed out that the shotgun was "Straight out of Doom".

An urban legend spread that the Harris levels were designed to look like the halls of the high school, populated with representations of Harris's classmates and teachers, and that Harris "practised" for the Columbine shootings by playing these levels over and over. However, though Harris did design Doom levels, they were not simulations of Columbine High School. After the shootings, many websites refused to provide downloads to the levels, seeing the shootings as something the community should dissociate itself from. Although this position has largely dissipated, Ty Halderman still regularly rejects the maps from inclusion in the idgames archive.

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