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{{Redirect|Doom 2|other topics with similar names|Doom2}}
  
'''Doom II: Hell on Earth''' is the first sequel to [[Doom]], released by [[id Software]] on [[Timeline#1994|September 30, 1994]]. Featuring 32 levels in a single linear episode, Doom II continues Doom's story, seeing the player returning to Earth to single-handedly fight off an invasion of the planet by demons.
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'''Doom II: Hell on Earth''' is the first sequel to [[Doom]], released by [[id Software]] on [[Timeline#1994|September 30, 1994]], followed by the official release party on October 10{{cite web|author=David Taylor|title=idNews: DOOM II release party invitations |url=https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action/g93IhS4aYaw/uvT5wlaZY4kJ|publication=Google Groups|publishdate=23 September 1994|accessdate=30 September 2019}}. Featuring 32 levels in a single linear episode, Doom II continues Doom's story, seeing the player returning to Earth to single-handedly fight off an invasion of the planet by demons.
  
 
Doom II includes several gameplay enhancements over the original Doom. Most notable are the introduction of several new monster types, plus an additional weapon (the [[super shotgun]]). While the original game was distributed via shareware and mail order (to purchase the full game), Doom II was the first game developed by id Software to be sold commercially in stores, with cooperation of distributor [[GT Interactive Software|GT Interactive]]. This represented a change in business model for id that would later be adopted more widely.
 
Doom II includes several gameplay enhancements over the original Doom. Most notable are the introduction of several new monster types, plus an additional weapon (the [[super shotgun]]). While the original game was distributed via shareware and mail order (to purchase the full game), Doom II was the first game developed by id Software to be sold commercially in stores, with cooperation of distributor [[GT Interactive Software|GT Interactive]]. This represented a change in business model for id that would later be adopted more widely.
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One of Doom II's most significant changes over its predecessor is that it takes place over a single linear sequence of levels - the episode-based structure of the first game was abandoned, as was the map shown on [[intermission screen]]s; this means that the player no longer has to find new weapons at the start of each episode. Occasional textual interludes are used to advance the story, in the same fashion as the first game's episode endings.
 
One of Doom II's most significant changes over its predecessor is that it takes place over a single linear sequence of levels - the episode-based structure of the first game was abandoned, as was the map shown on [[intermission screen]]s; this means that the player no longer has to find new weapons at the start of each episode. Occasional textual interludes are used to advance the story, in the same fashion as the first game's episode endings.
  
While Doom II's level design is ostensibly based on structures and locations on Earth, in practice it retains much of the abstract design of the first game. Early levels present a [[STAR|techbase]] theme representing the military starport. The mid-game presents levels with an urban city theme that the player navigates attempting to find the origin of the demonic invasion. The later levels are intended to represent Hell merging with reality, and therefore have a style reminiscent of the [[Inferno]] episode of the first game, culminating in a subterranean miasma of [[Dante Alighieri|Dantean]] flowing magma and hot springs.
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While Doom II's level design is ostensibly based on structures and locations on Earth, in practice it retains much of the abstract design of the first game. Early levels present a [[STAR|techbase]] theme representing the military starport. The mid-game presents levels with an urban city theme that the player navigates attempting to find the origin of the demonic invasion. The later levels are intended to represent Hell merging with reality, and therefore have a style reminiscent of the [[Inferno]] episode of the first game.
  
 
Doom II's new monsters include the [[heavy weapon dude]], [[Hell knight]], [[mancubus]], [[revenant]], [[arachnotron]], [[pain elemental]], [[arch-vile]], and [[Icon of Sin]]. The [[Wolfenstein SS|SS trooper]] from [[Wolfenstein 3D]] appears in a cameo in two secret levels which reproduce maps from [[Wolfenstein 3D]]. [[Commander Keen]] also appears, albeit in effigy. According to [[Sandy Petersen]], the new monsters of Doom II had originally been intended for the first game and had been left incomplete - this is corroborated by the timing of their sculpting by [[Gregor Punchatz]] as well.{{cite web|author=Saral, Mahmut|title=An interview with legendary Sandy Petersen (Call of Cthulhu, Doom, Quake, Age of Empires and much more!)|url=https://donanimgunlugu.com/efsane-sandy-petersen-ile-roportaj-192559/2|publication=Donanım Günlüğü|publishdate=5 December 2018|accessdate=8 December 2018}}
 
Doom II's new monsters include the [[heavy weapon dude]], [[Hell knight]], [[mancubus]], [[revenant]], [[arachnotron]], [[pain elemental]], [[arch-vile]], and [[Icon of Sin]]. The [[Wolfenstein SS|SS trooper]] from [[Wolfenstein 3D]] appears in a cameo in two secret levels which reproduce maps from [[Wolfenstein 3D]]. [[Commander Keen]] also appears, albeit in effigy. According to [[Sandy Petersen]], the new monsters of Doom II had originally been intended for the first game and had been left incomplete - this is corroborated by the timing of their sculpting by [[Gregor Punchatz]] as well.{{cite web|author=Saral, Mahmut|title=An interview with legendary Sandy Petersen (Call of Cthulhu, Doom, Quake, Age of Empires and much more!)|url=https://donanimgunlugu.com/efsane-sandy-petersen-ile-roportaj-192559/2|publication=Donanım Günlüğü|publishdate=5 December 2018|accessdate=8 December 2018}}
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{{featured article}}
 
[[Category:Games]]
 
[[Category:Games]]

Revision as of 02:30, 1 October 2019

Doom II title screen
"Doom 2" redirects here. For other topics with similar names, see Doom2.

Doom II: Hell on Earth is the first sequel to Doom, released by id Software on September 30, 1994, followed by the official release party on October 10[1]. Featuring 32 levels in a single linear episode, Doom II continues Doom's story, seeing the player returning to Earth to single-handedly fight off an invasion of the planet by demons.

Doom II includes several gameplay enhancements over the original Doom. Most notable are the introduction of several new monster types, plus an additional weapon (the super shotgun). While the original game was distributed via shareware and mail order (to purchase the full game), Doom II was the first game developed by id Software to be sold commercially in stores, with cooperation of distributor GT Interactive. This represented a change in business model for id that would later be adopted more widely.

Story

The Ultimate Doom's story ended with the Marine protagonist's defeat of the second Spider Mastermind in a gateway between Hell and Earth. Stepping through a portal to Earth which opens after the creature's death, however, there is a cliffhanger ending - it is discovered that the demons which invaded the Mars moonbases have now invaded Earth as well.

After Earth's major cities are left in ruins by the attack, the human survivors await evacuation from a starport, but the demons have surrounded it with a barrier of flames. All of humanity's remaining soldiers make a desperate assault on the starport, but eventually they are annihilated and only the Marine remains.

Fighting through the starport, the Marine manages to lower the demonic defenses, allowing the survivors to escape to the safety of space. Left behind, he at first prepares for death, but soon receives a radio message from the ships' commanders that they have pinpointed the source of the demonic invasion not far from his current location. He fights through the ravaged city, where Hell's reality is once again beginning to merge with our own, twisting and corrupting the heavily damaged ruins. After finding the portal to Hell and returning once more to the underworld, the Marine eventually confronts the ultimate source of the hellspawn, a gigantic demon. Pumping his rockets into the creature's exposed brain, it dies, devastating miles of Hell's surface in all directions in its death throes, ending the invasion and giving humanity a chance to rebuild.

Gameplay

Doom II CD from the Depths of Doom collection.

In terms of gameplay, Doom II is similar to the first game, adding only incremental changes to its formula in the form of new monsters and a new weapon. To progress, the player must still navigate non-linear levels, find keys, and unlock new areas while defending against an onslaught of demons. Technologically and graphically the game is identical, though due to more complicated levels and larger fights the base system requirements for the game were higher.

One of Doom II's most significant changes over its predecessor is that it takes place over a single linear sequence of levels - the episode-based structure of the first game was abandoned, as was the map shown on intermission screens; this means that the player no longer has to find new weapons at the start of each episode. Occasional textual interludes are used to advance the story, in the same fashion as the first game's episode endings.

While Doom II's level design is ostensibly based on structures and locations on Earth, in practice it retains much of the abstract design of the first game. Early levels present a techbase theme representing the military starport. The mid-game presents levels with an urban city theme that the player navigates attempting to find the origin of the demonic invasion. The later levels are intended to represent Hell merging with reality, and therefore have a style reminiscent of the Inferno episode of the first game.

Doom II's new monsters include the heavy weapon dude, Hell knight, mancubus, revenant, arachnotron, pain elemental, arch-vile, and Icon of Sin. The SS trooper from Wolfenstein 3D appears in a cameo in two secret levels which reproduce maps from Wolfenstein 3D. Commander Keen also appears, albeit in effigy. According to Sandy Petersen, the new monsters of Doom II had originally been intended for the first game and had been left incomplete - this is corroborated by the timing of their sculpting by Gregor Punchatz as well.[2]

Also introduced is the super shotgun, a more powerful double barreled version of the shotgun from the first game. The Megasphere is additionally introduced as a more powerful version of the Supercharge power up, offering a maximum amount of both health and armor.

Reviews and sales

Doom II sold over two million copies, the most sales of any id Software game at the time. The new and varied enemies, and its innovative non-linear level design were praised by critics. While well-received, the game was regarded by some as a disappointment due to the lack of major new features and boring level design. It was released around the same time as Star Wars: Dark Forces and Duke Nukem 3D which presented more obvious enhancements to the genre.

There was no shareware version of Doom II released and it was only sold in retail stores. Internally Doom II is referred to as the "commercial" version, though an enhanced version of the first game was also later re-released in stores as The Ultimate Doom. Official ports were made to various platforms, including the Apple Macintosh, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, and Xbox.

Levels

Doom II's levels are divided into three "episodes", though these are not official. The sky texture for each episode is different, and an intermission screen describes the progress in story in transitioning between them. There are also two secret levels. There are further story interludes before level 7, before each of the secret levels, and after finishing the game. Old versions of SETUP.EXE give names for these episodes, though this was later removed.

Episode 1: "The Space Station"

1: Known as Circle of Death on the intermission screen.

Episode 2: "The City"

Episode 3: "Hell"

Secret levels:

2: These two levels do not appear in the German version.

Bonus Xbox level:

The new episode, No Rest for the Living, originally designed for the Xbox 360 version:

Weapons

Doom II manual
  1. The super shotgun is a new weapon which Doom II introduced to the series.

Monsters

Doom II includes all the monsters from Doom:

Doom II also has new monsters, which are:

Legal issues in Germany

According to the German Strafgesetzbuch section 86a, the usage of unconstitutional symbols is forbidden outside of certain contexts such as research, teaching and others. Because the two secret maps Wolfenstein and Grosse use swastikas, the German version does not contain these maps to prevent the game from being the subject of search and seizure procedures (as Wolfenstein 3-D had been). This means that it is forbidden to sell, hire or otherwise give the game to anybody, although merely owning the game is legal.

On 31 December 1994 (date of official announcement), however, the game was put on the Index of the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften (Medien), which means only that the game can not be advertised, sold, rented, or otherwise given to minors. This restriction applies to all versions of the game, except for the Game Boy Advance version.

The German release is engine version 1.666, and doom2.wad is a little bit smaller than is standard. Under MS-DOS, when the player attempts to use the level warp cheat for either of the secret maps, the game instantly crashes.

On the 4th of august 2011 the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien deleted Doom from the Index on request by ZeniMax Media.[3][dead link]

However, the official announcement state, that not all versions are delisted.

"Lediglich die amerikanische Fassung von 'Doom II - Hell on Earth' wurde in der Liste belassen, da diese zwei zusätzliche Level mit Darstellungen aus dem indizierten und bundesweit beschlagnahmten Spiel 'Wolfenstein 3D' enthält."

Translated: "Only the American version of 'Doom II - Hell on Earth' has been left in the list, because it contains two additional levels with representations from the indexed and nationwide-seized 'Wolfenstein 3D'".

Speedrunning

IWADs
PWADs

Current records

The Compet-N episode records for Doom II are:

Run Time Player Date File Notes
UV episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:05:44 Looper 2011-02-14 0544uv01.zip
UV episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:09:52 Radek Pecka 2003-08-08 0952uv11.zip
UV episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:08:59 Radek Pecka 2004-09-28 0859uv21.zip
UV run 0:21:55 Looper 2014-12-14 30uv2155.zip
NM episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:07:11 Juho Ruohonen (ocelot) 2003-09-02 0711nm01.zip
NM episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:11:19 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2002-03-24 1119nm11.zip
NM episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:13:35 Vincent Catalaá 2002-07-22 1335nm21.zip
NM run 0:29:39 Henning Skogstø 2009-07-23 30nm2939.zip
UV max episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:25:50 Radek Pecka 2001-06-15 2550uv01.zip
UV max episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:47:10 Radek Pecka 2002-04-18 4710uv11.zip
UV max episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:39:16 Radek Pecka 2002-08-29 3916uv21.zip
UV max run 1:53:18 Radek Pecka 2002-04-22 30uvmax4.zip
NS episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:14:25 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2002-01-27 1425ns01.zip
NS episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:23:48 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2002-01-11 2348ns11.zip
NS episode, MAP21-MAP30 0:18:27 Jan Vida (Doomgeek) 2002-07-15 1827ns21.zip
NS run 0:56:00 Drew DeVore (stx-Vile) 2004-05-30 30ns5600.zip
UV -fast episode, MAP01-MAP10 0:25:52 Ian Sabourin 2002-04-27 2552fa01.zip
UV -fast episode, MAP11-MAP20 0:57:44 Radek Pecka 2002-08-31 5744fa11.zip
UV -fast episode, MAP21-MAP30 1:01:35 Vincent Catalaá 2001-02-15 6135fa21.zip
UV -fast run 2:08:04 Radek Pecka 2003-06-24 30famax2.zip
UV Tyson episode, MAP01-MAP10 1:44:45 Looper 2011-11-29 10445ty1.zip

The data was last verified in its entirety on May 10, 2013.

TAS runs

See also

Trivia

  • Various screenshots on the back cover of the original Doom II game box display scenery and an arachnotron sprite which are not found in the officially released game. These were likely screenshots from a pre-release version of Doom II which had differing level structure and graphics than what was included in the official commercial release. These unconventional screenshots have been later used in various Doom II re-releases, including the Doom95 repackaging in 1995, the Steam release in 2007 and on id Software's own Doom II page.
  • The Doom II cover art was drawn by occult/fantasy artist Gerald Brom.

Sources

  • This article incorporates text from the open-content Wikipedia online encyclopedia article Doom II.

External links

References

  1. David Taylor (23 September 1994). "idNews: DOOM II release party invitations." Google Groups. Retrieved 30 September 2019.
  2. Saral, Mahmut (5 December 2018). "An interview with legendary Sandy Petersen (Call of Cthulhu, Doom, Quake, Age of Empires and much more!)." Donanım Günlüğü. Retrieved 8 December 2018.
  3. Announcement of the BPjM (german)