To Guide or Not to Guide: The Lost Episodes of DOOM by Mendoza, Klie, & Carter (1995, Sybex)

There were plenty of computer-related and game-related books published prior, but Doom well and truly blew the doors off the industry. Before Doom, you got books about playing different sorts of games. After Doom, you got books about making different sorts of games. iD Software's decision to open up their code to allow easy end-user modification turned Doom into not just one of the best-selling pieces of software in the industry's history, but essentially turned every registered and licensed copy of the game into a potential resume for people looking to break into the world of 3D game design and development.

Doom made it possible for a single person working in a dorm or at home to put together a project that could be downloaded and experienced by millions of people all over the world. If you had a computer with internet access in the mid-90's, and you played video games, I guarantee one of your bookmarks pointed to the (now-defunct) Walnut Creek FTP site, where patches, shareware episodes, documentation, FAQs, editing programs, save games, demo recordings, and thousands of user-made levels resided in their 'idgames' sub-directory.

By 1995, the public was used to seeing new books about Doom crop up on the shelves of their local Waldenbooks or B. Dalton's. Some of them were straight-up strategy guides, discussing how to dismantle the baddies and defeat the puzzles for the main game, or wreck your friends in Deathmatch. Others were geared toward the more creative side, often sweetening the text with a bonus disc containing other user-made levels and utilities, like Tricks of the Doom Programming Gurus from SAMS.

Then there was The Lost Episodes of DOOM, which worked to straddle the line like it had been pulled over for a field sobriety test.

Note: All images used in the article were scanned by me from their source materials.

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To Guide or Not to Guide?

The Lost Episodes of DOOM was assembled by three legends of the Doom community. Jonathan Mendoza was a recognized strategy guide author, having composed The Official DOOM Survivor's Strategies and Secrets for Sybex a year earlier in 1994, while co-writers Christen "Chris K" Klie and Robert "Bob" Carter were WAD wizards extraordinaire, known for bending the limits of the Doom engine to fit their own perverse design needs. Taking a page from Mendoza's previous publication, which included a pair of 3 1/2" disks containing the shareware for Doom's first episode, "The Shores of Hell", The Lost Episodes of DOOM also includes an envelope in the back of the book with a single floppy. On the disk is the complete twenty-four level, three-episode pack; a version of DEU, the Doom Editing Utilities; and a Binary Source Partitioner which, when used in conjunction with DEU, allows the buyer to construct their own caverns of chaos and missions of mayhem.

Lost Episodes is something of an anomaly among strategy guides -- it contains not only the game itself, but also maps, pictures, and step-by-step instructions for how to beat every level and find every secret. Since Mendoza put it together with the help of the WAD authors, it includes explanations from the developers on the hows and whys of each individual map's creation. It's a publication which commits to spoiling itself up front, so you're either buying a walkthrough with a ton of free Doom maps, or a three-episode map pack with a free 246-page FAQ. Take your pick.

While the cover claims the twenty-four levels are only available by picking up this book, it's not telling the whole truth -- roughly half of these levels are retreads of materials already available. The entire first mission, "Massacre of Callisto", and half of the second mission, "The Killing Fields of Io", were previously published online as their own levels packs by Chris K. Robert Carter's levels, on the other hand, are all new designs with the exception of "Somber Io Promenade", originally released as a stand-alone Deathmatch map. That said, the level of design here is really top-notch with the creators showcasing their abilities at making both sprawling, epic-scale creations and more compact, intimate stages.

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Guide (With Reservations).

If you're a Doom fan, this is a no-brainer. An entirely new, three-episode campaign built by some of the most respected WAD authors from the day is something anybody worth his keyboard and mouse should be interested in playing. Just be aware of what you're getting yourself into if you decide to plunk down the money.

First of all, these levels are built to go with the retail edition of Doom v 1.666. Trying to use it with earlier or later incarnations of the executable, including versions of The Ultimate Doom you may have picked up from GOG.com or bought retail twenty years ago, or modern-day source ports like ZDOOM, will result in compatibility issues with the demo recordings, and the program will crash to DOS from the title screen with an error. In this case, one has to manually load the levels from the command line in order to get them to work. This is tedious, and hardly the end of the world, but it's not as "drag and drop" friendly today as it was in 1995.

Second, you'll need a 3.5" floppy drive in order to make use of the files on the disk, something not all computers ship with these days. It's not hard to track down a USB floppy drive, and if you're a hardcore classic gamer you've likely got access to one of these artifacts, but it's an added cost if you're going to take the plunge.

Third, even finding these levels today can be a problem. While you can get access to half of them (and all of the editing utilities) from sources online now, the remainder are only available from this compilation. And while the book itself is cheap, with copies going for as little as a couple dollars online, they rarely include the companion floppy. A book with an intact disk will set you back more than $20, more than its original cover price. Be prepared to pay if you want to play.

If you can get past all that though, The Lost Episodes of DOOM is quite the unique little treasure for your strategy guide library. With WAD authors who went on to do paid design work for other companies, and had their creations showcased in products like The Master Levels for Doom II, this in my opinion is far superior to picking up one of those generic 2,000-map compilation discs that flooded store shelves in the mid-90's. These maps are primed to kick your butt, with tons of necessary items hidden behind secret passageways or requiring some serious dexterity and/or switch-flipping and puzzle-solving to obtain:

As this level map from the first mission should make painfully clear.

None of these levels is a straightforward blast-fest, which gives this storyline a different feeling from the Martian invasion showcased in Doom. Fortunately buying this also arms you with the secrets to kicking its ass at no extra charge, so don't be afraid to take the plunge since, in this case, the developers literally cannot outsmart you unless you start using the pages for latrine wipes.

For those wanting more of a preview of what you can expect, the Doom Video Vault channel on YouTube did a full run-through of all twenty-four levels a few years ago. You can watch any or all of them here (played with the Brutal Doom source port) and form your own opinion about whether it's worth dropping the cash yourself.

So what are you waiting for, Marine? Jupiter needs help. Get your ass out of your cryotube, pick up your pistol, and answer the distress signal already!