Marine Doom: A Mod Too Far?
It is important to remember that Doom was one of the most successful computer games of the 1990s. While it was not the first by a long shot, helped shape first person shooters to come, and Dooms effect on the world of computer games can still be seen today.
The reason why Doom is still played, and enjoyed by millions, 20 plus years is quite a simple answer: Doom can be modded by anyone with any basic stills of computers. Because anyone can make mods for Doom, or Doom II, that means that even say, the United States Marine Corps can make one.
Marine Doom running on Crispy Doom version 5.3, with Doom II
The year was 1996, then US General Charles C. Krulak Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps issues a directive to use war games (AKA "military simulation") for improving "Military Thinking and Decision Making Exercises". He would entrust the Marine Combat Development Command with the task of making, exploiting, and approving of computer-based war games to train U.S. Marines for "decision making skills, particularly when live training time and opportunities were limited".
Their code was adapted for the commercial Doom II before its release, and requires a commercial copy of Doom II 1.9 to run.
Marine Doom is a bad mod for Doom II, that is a single-level PWAD. In 1996 the mod was made available for public download thanks to Sergeant Daniel G. Snyder.
In the game, a fireteam, comprising four Marines, is supposed to accomplish a specific mission, the default being the destruction of an enemy bunker. In order to allow coordination of their movements, these soldiers play on separated computers in the same room. The fireteam consists of a Team Leader, two riflemen, and one machine-gunner.
ReferencesI. Marine Doom - DoomWiki https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Marine_Doom
II. Mod via The Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/marine1
Written by Clive "James" Python, 13/07/18
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