Video Game / Doom 64

To Hell with you.

Doom 64 is a 1997 First-Person Shooter in the Doom franchise, originally released for the Nintendo 64. Despite its name, it is not a direct-port of the original game, but instead a sequel with completely new levels, graphics, and sound design.

Taking place after the events of Doom II, the governments of Earth have decided to quarantine the demonic threat by bombarding all UAC facilities on Mars with a lethal amount of radiation. Years later, a stray satellite detects a powerful entity that has survived the fallout and is resurrecting legions of slaughtered demons to launch another invasion. To stop the invading hordes, the Doom Marine is called out of retirement to put an end to this new entity and rip and tear his way through the forces of Hell one more time.

Contrast to the previous mainline installments of Doom, Doom 64 featured a darker atmosphere, forgoing the rockin' metal-inspired tunes in favor of haunting and unsettling ambiance, and adding an increased emphasis on puzzle-solving and exploration. The darker tone and style of music could be seen as a follow-up to the PlayStation ports of Doom and Final Doom as they share a similarly dark atmosphere and its soundtrack was scored by the same composer, along with reusing many of the sound effects and sharing a similar codebase from those ports. On a technical standpoint, Doom 64 was the first 3D-accelerated id Tech 1 engine game that featured effects such as fog rendering, an advanced lighting system, and animated parallax skies among other technical innovations for its time.

While Doom's first two entries saw ports to a plethora of consoles during the '90s and onward, Doom 64 remained exclusive to the Nintendo 64 for many years, and since Midway Games' dissolution in the late 2000s, it made obtaining the rights to the game difficult. There were efforts by Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal to bring the game to PC with a Doom II total conversion titled Doom 64: Absolution, followed by an unofficial port using data from the Nintendo 64 cartridge with Doom 64 EX. Around 2020, Nightdive Studios and Bethesda were able to obtain the rights to Doom 64, and on March 20 of the same year, released an updated port of the game to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC through Steam and Bethesda.net to coincide with the release of Doom Eternal; it was later released on GOG.com and Epic Games Store in 2022.

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This video game provides examples of:

A-G

• Abandoned Laboratory: Compared to the earlier games, the techbase levels here have a much more ominous feeling, with darker colors, dimmer lighting, and screens barely functioning or completely dark.
• Always Night: The levels set in the UAC facilities take place under a night sky.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In the 2020 rerelease, after you clear Hectic, you'll permanently have the Features option unlocked, with it being carried over even if you start a new game, unlike in the original where after you turned the game off, you would need to beat Hectic again or input a password to regain access to it.
  • The gamma slider option was added at the last minute due to testers complaining they couldn't see anything with the game's default darkness level.
• Artifact Title: When the game was rereleased in 2020 for 8th gen consoles and PC, it retained its original title despite not being on Nintendo 64, obviously.
• Artifact of Doom: The Unmaker is apparently carved from demons' souls.
• Art-Shifted Sequel: Doom 64 uses brand-new textures and different sprites for weapons, enemies, and power-ups. They use more muted colors to enhance the Bleak Level atmosphere of the entire game. The enhanced sound effects from the PlayStation / Sega Saturn ports are imported to further enhance the atmosphere.
• Ascended Glitch: In the vanilla Doom engine, it was possible to create invisible platforms by creating a sector within another sector, but giving no "owner" to either side of it, causing the engine to render the platform as transparent. Doom 64 continues to support this behavior, but now supports sectors that may raise and lower silently to provide passage across suspended floor/ceiling textures, creating the effect of full 3d bridges. This effect is shown off heavily on "Level 23: Unholy Temple" with the usable bridges visible from the temple's moat where you start.
• Attract Mode: Done with a twist, the game presents the "DooM" logo by flying the camera around a rendered battle scene with space marines battling a variety of heavy weight monsters around a giant replica of said logo. Finally, the camera aims downward to ascend into the sky and show said logo made out of level geometry as the different sectors level out with each other and the floor around the logo vanishes to reveal the Unmaker symbol behind it. If you wait even longer before playing, gameplay demos of a few select levels will play. The previous fan-made Doom 64: Absolution total conversion and Doom EX port by Kaiser couldn't implement this feature due to the difficulty of getting demos working properly, however, it was restored in the official 2020 re-release of the game.
• Balance Buff: Many of Doomguy's weapons have been buffed.
  • All hitscan weapons now fire instantly, unlike the original two Dooms where they had a 144 millisecond delay (about 8-9 frames with 60 FPS) before firing.
  • The Chainsaw was fortunately buffed with it gaining a second blade to double its hit-rate and damage output, as well as had its hit detection issues fixed. It's quite a bit more viable and can safely stunlock everything to death besides Hell Knights, Barons, and Cyberdemons (whose pain chances are still too low to be kept stunlocked by it), while it's not outclassed by the Berserk Fist for ammo saving as it's safer against the enemies it can keep stunlocked.
  • The Fist also had its hit detection issues fixed, making it and the Berserk Fist quite easier to effectively utilize, especially against larger enemies. It is additionally more powerful and has more consistent damage output, dealing 3-24 damage in multiples of 3 (30-240 when berserked), instead of the 2-20 in multiples of 2 (20-200 when berserked) it did in the original two Dooms.
  • The Chaingun has a faster firing speed, being improved from 525 shots per minute to 600 shots per minute, improving its DPS and allowing it to more effectively keep enemies stunlocked.
  • Doomguy reloads his Shotgun and especially the Super Shotgun faster than before, with the former having its firing rate improved from 57 shots per minute to 60, and the latter being improved from 37 to 44, overall providing a substantial upgrade to their DPS. It also allows you to view the screen better since in Doom II, you had view blocked due to the reload. As a result, you'll drop mid-level enemies and beyond that much quicker. With enough practice dodging, it's a usable weapon against even the final boss.
  • The Rocket Launcher's rockets move at a faster speed, having their movement speed increased from 700 map units per second to 900 map units per second. This allows you to hit enemies with rockets sooner and makes it easier to use the Rocket Launcher against far away enemies.
  • The regular Imp (a low-threat enemy) now has a separate and improved counterpart called the Nightmare Imp. They're harder to see due to being partially invisible and their fireballs travel much faster so they're a much more credible threat to the player.
• Big Bad: The Mother Demon is the one who rebuilds the demon army to attack humanity once more.
• Bittersweet Ending: Doomguy kills the Mother Demon, but decides to remain in Hell indefinitely in case the demons ever come back. Bad for him, good for the rest of humanity. But given that Doomguy is implied to be a massive Blood Knight, it doesn't really seem so bad for him. Then Doom Eternal reveals that willingly staying in Hell actually took a huge toll on his sanity, and left him a broken shell of a man... though it also led to him being in the right place to stop The Legions of Hell when they invade Earth again. It really is a mixed bag.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: The final level has Doomguy fight a massive horde of demons coming from three different gates, and then the Mother Demon who is the Final Boss. However, by unlocking the secret levels from earlier levels and solving certain optional puzzles in them, he'll gather special artifacts which can be used in the final level to shut down the gates and interrupt the horde, which is helpful to save up the ammunition. In addition, the artifacts will also empower one of the weapons (the Unmaker) and give Doomguy the chance to defeat the Mother Demon much more quickly.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing: While the Cyberdemon isn't a full unique boss like in the original Doom, it appears more sparingly than in Doom 2. You'll only fight one in Level 17 and Level 25 (pairs if on higher difficulty), not counting the bonus levels which aren't part of the main campaign.
• Boss Room: The Absolution is a large battlefield where the Mother Demon awaits. A very large army of mooks will come at you as well unless you have the special keys that close the doors where they come from.
• Bowdlerise: The Japanese version of the game changes the color of the blood splatter effect when monsters are shot from red to green, though any red blood on monster corpses and gore decorations is left intact.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Finding the super secret level "Hectic", the game breaks the typical third person narrative and speaks directly to the the player about how "Only the best will reap its rewards." Sure enough, clearing this secret gauntlet level directly affects the option menu, allowing access to cheats, and a level selection menu with even more secret difficult levels inaccessible by regular means.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • "Hectic" is a very tiny level with a small handful of enemies, but is packed to the brim with dirty tricks and One-Hit Kill traps (the first room of the level is full of power-ups that will kill you if you try to get them, except for two you can only get in a very specific way). The worst part is the blue key section where you have to kill four Hell Knights, two on either side of you, while balancing on a ridiculously narrow platform above an inescapable pit of lava, armed only with a rocket launcher that has a good chance of knocking you back into the pit with its kickback, which is also almost guaranteed if you get hit (you can find slightly more firm footing in the doorway you came into the room through, but that leaves you a sitting duck for the Hell Knights' fireballs). If the level is too much for the player there is an open exit right in the beginning room for the player to take whenever, but if they go through all the level's trials and get all the keys to get through the exit behind the key gates, they'll unlock the Features menu that will grant them the ability to activate cheats and access to a level skip feature, which is the only way to legitimately access 64's secret "fun levels".
  • The secret "fun levels", that can only be accessed through the level skip from the aforementioned Features menu, are quite brutal too from Pistol start (which you have to do since level skip removes everything you have) despite their "fun" moniker.
    • Cat And Mouse has you up against a Cyberdemon in a cramped maze while you run around scrounging up barely enough rockets to kill him, with no other resources in the level but a Berserk Pack on a pillar in an acid pool that trying to get leaves you a sitting duck for the Cyberdemon, and the cramped layout of the level makes avoiding the splash damage from his rockets difficult, while he teleports around to make evading and predicting him all the more troublesome. There are also Nightmare Imps scattered around in cages to harass and distract you as you're trying to evade the Cyberdemon's rockets that will kill you in one direct hit. Killing the Cyberdemon will end the level.
    • Then Hardcore is another cramped maze-like level where you're surrounded by an army of Mancubi and then an army of Arachnotrons after you pick up a Megasphere, armed with nothing but a Rocket Launcher and 64's nerfed Plasma Rifle with barely enough ammo to kill them all and just the aformentioned Megasphere for health, while they'll teleport around to prevent you from ever being safe. Then upon killing them all you must then fight a Cyberdemon with what little ammo you have left plus a Super Shotgun, while he teleports around and the crampness + elevation issues means splash damage when dodging his rockets is near-unavoidable.
    • Playground comparatively is quite a breather after the prior two levels as it's an open area and there's no teleporting monsters, but the beginning onslaught from the surrounding Arachnotrons on some high up pillars can get you quickly killed if you don't kill enough of them to get a safe spot fast. However after that it's smooth sailing as after killing them all the map opens up even more with a Cyberdemon rocket duel where you can easily circle-strafe him, and then a Mancubi onslaught where the beginning with them surrounding you is rough but once you get outside them you can then easily circle-strafe them too.
    • The March 2020 re-release adds another "fun" level, aptly named Panic. Here you fight a horde of Arachnotrons in a small square arena with many pillars, while like in Hardcore they'll teleport around upon crossing hidden linedefs. Then once they're dead, two Cyberdemons appear who will also teleport around, and killing them ends the level. While all this is going on, there are homing missile launchers on the outside edges of the outer pillars, meaning that nowhere in the map is safe at any time. This map is at least gracious enough to give you a BFG9000 unlike the other "fun" maps, but you only have enough ammo for six shots with it, and if you use it up on the Arachnotrons, you'll be forced to rocket duel the two Cyberdemons, which with the two of them teleporting around in such a cramped level is practically suicidal.
• Call-Forward: The ending screen of The Lost Levels in the 2020 rerelease has one to the Slayer's Testaments from Doom (2016).
  A grim vision takes hold of your mind as the demon carcasses steam in your wake. Stretched before you is a path of perpetual torment... A path through DOOM...
• Chainsaw Good: Exaggerated, as the chainsaw has two blades to show that the weapon is twice as powerful as in the previous games.
• Composite Character: The Mother Demon is sort of a composite on steroids between the removed Revenant and Archvile, with her having the Revenant's homing fireballs but fired in quads, and her having an attack that shoots fire trails across the ground, which will launch the player into the air like the Archvile's attack. Additionally in the backstory she had the ability to revive demons like the Archvile can, though thankfully for the player, she wasn't programmed to have this ability in-game.
• Control Room Puzzle: The 24th level (Unholy Temple) features some obstructing bars in specific areas that can only be removed when the color-coded switches found in a lava room from the second floor is pressed in the order shown next to the bars themselves. For example, the bars obstructing a cache in a wide yard with Barons of Hell in the second floor can only be removed when the aforementioned switches are pressed in this sequence: Red, Blue and Yellow. Removing all such bars is necessary because their guarded caches each have in turn a switch that removes one of the obstructions leading to the exit. Pressing the switches in a non-existent combination will seal shut the control room and lock the player into a fight with a Hell Knight, though defeating it will revert this.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The game's opening cinematic, rendered using the in-game engine, sees a small force of marines taking on a host of high-level demons, including Cyberdemons, Mancubi and Arachnatrons. None of the marines are armed with anything heavier than a chaingun. The result is gruesomely predictable, perhaps best summarised when a marine charges recklessly down a corridor towards a Cyberdemon, who reduces him to Ludicrous Gibs with one well-aimed rocket. We don't even get to see a single demon go down, and the camera rises into the air to reveal the structure the battle takes place around is none other than the DooM logo while the music becomes more somber and potentially disturbing.
• Curtain Call: Like Doom II, the game has one after the final text sequence when you defeat the Final Boss, individually displaying and naming each enemy in the game. They normally show off their walking animation in this sequence, occasionally firing in the direction of the camera as well, until you press a button, at which point that enemy dies and the sequence moves on to the next enemy. It also includes the player character himself in this sequence, after which it goes back to the starting Zombieman and continues looping like this until you quit the game or start over.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: The Mother Demon. If you thought the Cyberdemon's 4000 HP was huge, this one has 5000! If you did not collect the keys, enjoy wasting a lot of ammo against a plethora of enemies before facing the Mother Demon. Fortunately, the spot where the Mother Demon is located respawns supercharge soul spheres. Unlike the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind, the Mother Demon is not immune to splash damage.
• Dancing Mook Credits: Just like in Doom II, the ending lets you watch the walking, attacking, and death animations of each of the enemies in the game (including Doomguy himself).
• Darker and Edgier: Doom 64 continues the horror elements introduced in the PlayStation and Saturn ports of Doom, including more sinister music, and redesigning the demons to appear far more intimidating. The camera is also at chest level instead of eye level so everything is larger and more intimidating. Also literally darker when it comes to color palette, which was a point of contention for many years (although considerably improved in the 2020 rerelease).
• Determinator: A powerful "mother" demon resurrects everything Doomguy had killed in his previous fights. His response? Eradicate anything between him and the Mother, kill her, and then stay in Hell to make sure the demons don't try anything like that ever again. The 2020 rerelease makes this even more badass by revealing that the Mother Demon's sister then tries to straight up kick him out of Hell, only Doomguy to quickly fight his way back in and kill the sister.
• Disc-One Nuke: The Unmaker and its Demon Keys upgrades. If you decided to go to the first secret level in the game (after Map 4), you will get the Unmaker and one of its Keys. The first Demon Key makes it shoot powerful lasers rapidly on top of each laser already dealing double the damage of a plasma bolt, thus making the Plasma Gun that you get later in the game obsolete for the entire game.
• Dolled-Up Installment: The original name for Doom 64 was "The Absolution" but id Software and Midway decided to brand it with the "Doom" name to drive sales, despite taking a considerably different tone and style to previous Doom installments. This isn't the strictest example as id had creative and supervisory input on the development of the game and the game itself runs on the Doom engine but remains the only Doom game not internally developed at id. The original name lives on via the game's final level ("The Absolution").
• Drone of Dread: The soundtrack for this game consists of dark drones and eerie synth notes to go along with the darker atmosphere.
• Dual Boss: On the highest difficulty, you fight a pair of Cyberdemons instead of just one during the game's two Cyberdemon encounters.
• Duel Boss: The "Fun" level "Cat and Mouse" is basically you trapped in a maze with a single Cyberdemon. There are a number of Nightmare Imps locked in cages to harass you with fireballs, but they're little threat (since the Cyberdemon will kill you with one good hit anyway) and easily dealt with.
• Easter Egg: If you wait several seconds after dying, you will see some taunting text at the top left corner, such as hysterical laughter or the ever so profound observations of things like demons' feet or the immortal "Look at me! I'm flat!". Certain maps also hide secret self-deprecating text (probably) left in by the map designer, though you'll be lucky if you found it by accident.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • Map 24, "No Escape", requires defeating every Cyberdemon in the level. There are 1-2 Cyberdemons in a gated area. What makes this exploitable is that there's enough of a crack to shoot bullets, shotgun shells, and Unmaker lasers. If you have enough ammo from the previous level, you can literally dodge every event trigger in this level that would have generated enemies and simply shoot those Cyberdemons to death.
  • The Final Boss of the Lost Levels, the Resurrector (which is identical to the Mother of Demons and is said by the developers to be her sister), is made this due to the level's design itself. First, you are required to acquire a fully upgraded Unmaker before facing her due to the demon keys. Once you gather the 3 keys to unlock the door, Ressurector's gate pillars will lift up and she will move to the teleporter after less than a second. Due to a small gap and having enough ammo, you can spam the Unmaker long enough before she can reach that teleporter, instantly ending the fight. Even if you ran out of ammo, the narrower and more corridor-based arena means her deadly homing projectiles are much easier to avoid due to exploding on walls before it reaches you. If you decide to ignore the enemies and speed through the level, you can pit the Ressurector against a Cyberdemon, who can defeat her quickly.
• Elite Mooks: The Nightmare Imps are as frail as Imps, but their fireballs are more powerful and faster, making them harder to dodge.
• Enemy Roll Call: The game shows each enemy along with the name in the ending, but some of the names differ from those in the manual. This leads to canon ambiguity of the enemy names.
• Equipment-Based Progression: The Unmaker has Artifacts that make it a much more powerful weapon as you progress through the game.
• Evil Is Not Well-Lit: The game is much darker (literally) than the first two. Even the UAC base levels take place at night, and in Hell the sky is permanently dark and stormy. The darkest levels are (appropriately enough) "Dark Citadel" and "Dark Entries".
• Evil Smells Bad: The opening text to "In The Void" describes the place as smelling like "death and demon carcass".
• Evolving Weapon: The Unmaker. When you first get it, it fires only a single laser and isn't anything special. If you manage to collect all three Demon Artifacts hidden throughout the game, though, it shoots multiple lasers in a spread pattern and is even more powerful than the BFG 9000 (to the point that only about a half-dozen shots are needed to kill the Final Boss).
• Expansion Pack: The Updated Re-release for the game includes The Lost Levels, a set of six maps (plus a bonus seventh map) taking place after the events of the main story.
• Fan Remake: Before it was given an official PC port in 2020, fans took to releasing their own mods to recreate Doom 64 in the PC Doom engine.
  • Doom 64 Absolution, a total conversion mod for Doom II created with data extracted from the Doom 64 ROM file. There are some differences in level order to go along with Doom II's level sequence and three new campaign maps, along with two bonus maps. There was also two new custom enemies added in, the Nightmare Spectre and Nightmare Cacodemon, and the maps were altered, sometimes significantly ("The Lair" for example is nearly an entirely new map). It was then succeeded by Doom 64 EX, which aimed to restore some features that were left behind in Absolution, and provide a much more faithful recreation of Doom 64, removing all the custom content and map alterations from Absolution while providing a near identical PC port of the original game. It was so impressive, that its creator, Samuel Villarreal (known within the Doom community by his tag "Kaiser"), would end up joining Nightdive Studios and heading the official 2020 ports, over a decade after he first created Absolution and 64 EX.
  • Doom 64 Retribution, another Doom II TC made specifically for the GZDoom source port. It follows the original level sequence with altered maps and enemy placement, though it includes the extra levels from Absolution as a bonus episode. Retribution would ultimately form the basis for Doom 64 Consolation Prize, which replaces the Doom 64 monsters, weapons, and powerups with their Doom/Doom II counterparts, allowing it to be used with gameplay mods like Brutal Doom and Demonsteele.
    • Retribution would be succeeded by Doom 64 CE, a GZDoom port that utilizes the IWAD file from the official 2020 PC port to provide a faithful experience within GZDoom, but with a bevy of customizable options to modify the gameplay and aesthetics, and compatibility with popular GZDoom mods. It also inherently includes popular mods such as Nashgore and Smooth Doom among the toggable options, customized specifically for Doom 64. On top of all that, it optionally includes all the cut Doom 2 enemies (aside from the Icon Of Sin) who are all redesigned to fit the game's art style (for example, the Arch-Viles now look like Mook version of the Mother Demon, retroactively making her a Queen Mook to them) and the custom enemies from Absolution, which can individually be enabled, as well as the The Lost Levels maps from the 2020 rerelease, the new maps from Absolution, and several other episodes of custom Doom 64 maps that were originally made for Absolution.
  • Doom 64 for Doom II, which recreates Doom 64's levels using vanilla Doom II assets. Like Absolution, the level sequence has been changed, maps have been altered, and the music replaced by tracks closer in style to those from PC versions of the previous game. It also keeps the Chaingunner, Revenant, and Archvile.
  • Brutal Doom 64 from the creator of Brutal Doom, yet another TC for Doom II. which combines Doom 64's levels-with certain graphical enhancements-and weapon and monster sprites with the enhanced enemy AI and over-the-top gore of Brutal Doom, though it lacks the latter's taunt and execution mechanics in order to maintain Doom 64's horror-based atmosphere. It also brings back monsters omitted from the original game and introduces a new monster called the hellhound. There's also a tactical mode that adds a stamina meter, the need to reload your weapons, and an assault rifle inspired by Brutal Doom's rifle. The maps and the gameplay mod come in two separate files, meaning you can either play the enhanced levels with the gameplay mod of your choice, or play any WAD with Brutal Doom 64 monsters and weapons.
• Foreshadowing: On "Level 12: Altar of Pain", you find the Unmaker for the first time outside of secret levels, presented ceremoniously on the titular pentagram altar. This is also a subtle hint to a major secret found on level: The secret exit to "The Lair" where you can power up the Unmaker with one of the Demon Keys. If one overlooked the first Secret Level, this is likely the first one they'll find due to an arrow-shaped platform north a short distance from the altar structure, visible on the Automap.
• Fragile Speedster: Nightmare Imps move fast and have one of the fastest projectiles among the enemies, but it still only has the very low 60 HP a normal Imp has.
• Game Mod: Since the release of the KEX Engine remaster, the game has seen some community projects made for it.
  • Doom 64 Reloaded is an expanded version of the game made for the KEX Engine remaster that features additional details to the game's environments, new levels, more secrets, and even more music.
  • Doom 64: Complete Edition is a ROM hack for the original Doom 64 that adds various quality-of-life improvements such as fixing the default in-game brightness, the ability to turn off the N64's unique 3-point filtering to make the game resemble its MS-DOS predecessors, controller improvements, adds a new Hardcore! difficulty level, restores the third zombieman's sighted and death sounds, and adding new messages when finding secrets or Artifacts similarly to its KEX Engine remaster while restoring the unused second medkit pickup message. This ROM hack also allows those with the KEX Engine remaster to import The Lost Levels and togglable medkit sprites back into the N64 version, allowing players to experience the new levels even on original hardware.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In the story, the Mother Demon has the power to resurrect fallen demons, making them stronger than before, and is how hell's forces come back in this game after the events of Doom 2. However when you fight it at the end of the game after wiping out a small army of demons, it never tries to revive any of them, as it wasn't programmed to have any sort of reviving ability in-game.
• Gimmick Level: The 23rd level, "Unholy Temple", starts and progresses like a conventional level. However, once the player finds all three colored keys (red, blue, yellow) and reaches a special room showing a column with three distinctly-colored locks, a unique mechanic kicks in: In certain parts of the level, there are closed doors whose locks show all three standard colors, but trying to open them won't work even after all keys are gathered. Instead, each door of this kind has its lock showing the colors in a specific order (read from left to right), indicating the order in which the player has to trigger the colored locks in the column of the special room so that door can be opened. In turn, opening the doors grants access to switches that remove, one each, the bars that obstruct the exit. Thus, the player has to backtrack through the level to take note of the color sequences in the doors' locks, open said doors from the special room, and press the switches that open the path to the exit. This is the only level in the game where this mechanic is employed,
• Glass Cannon: Lost Souls; they only have a measly 50 HP, which is even less than an Imp's. However, they're very aggressive and will quickly get in your face to attack repeatedly until stunned or killed, causing them to easily rack up damage quickly on an unsuspecting player, especially in the groups they're usually encountered in.
• Grand Finale: Doom 64 effectively served as this for the classic Doom games since Id had already moved on to the Quake series. A sequel was originally planned, but it was cancelled since Midway had turned its its attention to porting Quake to the Nintendo 64. However, it wouldn't be the end of Doomguy's story. Doom Eternal confirms that the Doom Slayer introduced in Doom (2016) is in fact the original Doomguy; long story short, he ended up falling into an alternate dimension sometime after the end of 64. Doom Eternal also has the two-part DLC pack The Ancient Gods, which shows the Doom Slayer trying to revive the Dark Lord for the Final Battle.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Finding the exit to the secret level "Hectic" in the first level is perhaps the biggest example of such in the series. In the first level, upon blowing up all the barrels in the level, a wall concealing a teleporter will open up in an already secret area, for a very brief few seconds before permanently closing for the rest of the level (which means a player will have no chance to get to the secret exit unless they save the very first barrel in the level near the secret exit for last, let alone knowing about it in the first place). There's absolutely no indication that blowing up the barrels will do something (nor are barrels ever used as a trigger for something in any other point in the franchise), and the only hint in-game that the secret exists is a seemingly inconsequential small blood stain on the floor in front of the wall concealing the secret exit. Hectic is this hidden for good reason however, as the level puts the player up against incredibly unfair situations with minimal resources and has a load of instant death traps, while rewarding a player who manages to clear the level with access to the "cheats" menu, which grants the player things such as god mode, unlimited ammo, and the ability to warp to any level (including three secret "for fun" levels that cannot be accessed by normal gameplay).
  • The method for unlocking the secret exit in "Holding Area" (Level 4) is also not obvious. There is a balcony where you can exit the level normally, but also a combination lock with four switches, one at each overlook and a teleport pad to take you to the secured door after inputting the correct code. If you are refraining from consulting a walkthrough, then the combination appears to be a guessing game. Brute force isn't practical because the level only allows one combination attempt per session and there's no Save Scumming allowed on the Nintendo 64.

H-Z

• Happy Ending Override: At the end of Doom II, it seemed like Hell would never threaten humanity again due to Doomguy trashing the place. Then Doom 64 reveals that a single demonic creature survived and has managed to resurrect all of the monsters. Now they're invading Mars again, and it's up to you to stop them before they reach Earth.
• Hero-Tracking Failure: Still present just like in the original game, where enemies directly fire at your position unless you have the Partial Invisibility powerup (where then they fired haphazardly in random directions). There's a belief that the Cyberdemon leads its shots now in Doom 64 but this is a myth, as it still fires all its shots at your current position. However the Cyberdemon does now actually fire from its Rocket Launcher instead of shooting from its center like in the original, which with the Cyberdemon's height means its rockets are fired at a downward angle, and so far enough away the rockets can hit the ground near you and hit you with splash damage, making it more difficult to completely dodge his rockets than in the original.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of the game, Doomguy decides to stay in Hell to make sure the demons never menace the world of the living again. Over time he is driven mad by the toll that constantly fighting demons takes on his mind, and he is found by the Night Sentinels, who take him into their ranks. After a serious powerup by one of the Maykrs who rule over the Sentinels, he soon becomes one of the order's only survivors after the order is betrayed by both their superiors and one of their own, and goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against the forces of Hell, becoming the Doom Slayer of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Just like in the original Doom, where difficulties aren't explicitly named, and correspond to the amount of enemies on each map, as well as the quality of the enemies around (e.g. on the lower two difficulties many larger demon spawns like Hell Knights or Mancubi will be Imps instead). Also, unlike regular Doom, there is no Nightmare difficulty equivalent.
  • Be Gentle!: Equivalent to the original's "I'm Too Young To Die", which has the least amount of enemies, and doubles the ammo you get from pickups as well as reducing the damage you sustain to half.
  • Bring It On!: Equivalent to the original's "Not Too Rough", has the same enemy placement as the easiest difficulty but without the double ammo and half damage.
  • I Own Doom!: Equivalent to the original's "Hurt Me Plenty", which has more enemies and replaces some enemies with more dangerous ones
  • Watch Me Die!: Equivalent to the original's "Ultra-Violence", which has even more enemies than the "I Own Doom!" difficulty.
• Infinity -1 Sword: In the base campaign at least, the Rocket Launcher is very easy to find, ammo pickups are surprisingly plentiful and it offers better range and Splash Damage when the Super Shotgun isn't optimal. The Rockets also travel faster than in earlier games, so it's easier to use at longer ranges. Like in previous games, you may pool up to 100 rockets for a rainy day if you so desire. Just be careful of the new recoil effect that pushes you back slightly (and obviously don't fire it point blank at someone).
• Limited Animation: First-person weapon sprites like those of the Shotguns have simpler animations than in previous Doom games due to limited cartridge space.
• Magikarp Power: The Unmaker goes through this until it becomes the game's Infinity +1 Sword. When you first pick it up, it only fires a single laser at a slow rate. Finding the first Artifact makes it shoot faster, the second gives it a Spread Shot effect, and the third further ups the effect, effectively reaching beam spamming levels. The main factor holding it back is the very scarce Cell ammo.
• Missing Secret: The 24th level "No Escape" is the penultimate level in the game, and the final level, "The Absolution", is the 25th. However, if the player looks at the automap on The Absolution, they'll noticed The Absolution is listed as "Map 28", seemingly implying the player missed out on a series of three secret levels between "No Escape" and "The Absolution". However, there is no secret exit on "No Escape", and the player will always advance to "The Absolution" upon clearing "No Escape". Now Maps 25-27 do exist, but they're very small "fun levels" that just put the player up against a Cyberdemon and some Mancubi/Arachnotrons, that can only be accessed by codes or by finding the impossible-to-find-without-a-guide secret level Hectic and then clearing all its extremely difficult challenges to get access to the "cheats menu", then using the cheats menu to warp to the "fun levels" inexplicably slotted in maps 25-27.
• Mission-Pack Sequel: At the game's heart is Doom II as the base. It has been upgraded with scripting, environmental traps like dart and homing missile launchers, completely new textures and sprites, completely new levels and story text, as well as support for hardware acceleration (Nintendo 64 originally). The upgraded engine also allows a greater illusion of 3D such as the appearance of over-and-under bridges that can use solid floor textures.
• Motion Parallax: The skies are animated through parallaxes.
• Multi-Mook Melee: The final standard level, The Absolution, begins as a very large horde of enemies (of all species minus Zombieman and Cyberdemon) come from three large gates to attack Doomguy. Defeating them all is necessary to begin the Final Boss battle against the Mother Demon. If certain keys were collected from the secret levels, these gates can be closed before too many enemies come into the arena, allowing the player to save a lot of ammunition for the final battle.
• Nerf: The Plasma Rifle has its firing speed reduced by about 1/3, which ended up making it completely obsolete thanks to the Unmaker. It doesn't help that you actually find the Unmaker earlier if you opt to visit the first secret level Outpost Omega, plus you receive the first Demon Key to boost the Unmaker's rate of fire. The Lost Levels corrected this by making the Unmaker only available late in its last level. This was a common nerf on Doom ports back in the 90's as the PC version's Plasma Rifle could overload slower processors from the sheer amount of sprites they had to process.
• No Body Left Behind: Unlike the first two games, Doom 64 makes the deceased enemies disappear, due to technical reasons.
• Nostalgia Level: "Level 9: Even Simpler" plays a lot like "Dead Simple" and has a similar arena-style layout, but has the player face a wider variety of monsters rather than just Mancubi and Arachnotrons. The level now has a hell-themed motif instead of a tech base theme like its predecessor. The level's name also hints at it being a sequel of sorts to Doom II's iteration.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • The intermission text you receive upon completing an act of the game or before entering a secret level has nothing but absolute silence to accompany it as each line fades onto the background with the Unmaker insignia.
  • Played With in the 17th level "Watch Your Step". It starts out with no monsters and a lot of ammo and power ups. It's still rather creepy due to the music as well as the weird red fog that pervades the level. As you progress, monsters start to spawn in, starting with weak ones but they get increasingly hard until you face your first cyberdemon.
  • "Wait For It" (the track for level 15: Dark Entries in the main game)is basically a musical version of this. Despite being minimalist and ambient (and nearly silent at times), it's still very creepy.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Monster Infighting between different types of demons when they hit each other is one of classic Doom's most novel features, but it had the tendency to neuter enemy crowds if they consisted of various enemy types. While custom map makers would find ways to work around (or with) this problem to create interesting and difficult combat scenarios involving masses of different enemies, Doom 64 would instead add a new programming flag that can be applied to monsters on maps, which when enabled will prevent them from infighting with other monsters altogether. This new flag mainly gets used in the arena-styled maps where the main obstacle is fighting a large horde of enemies in a compact map, which would have been otherwise trivialized if Monster Infighting was present in those maps (as seen in some of the fan ports that did not implement that flag, most notably making the final level a joke before the Mother Demon).
• One-Man Army: The manual reveals that the events of the previous games did in fact leave Doomguy with severe PTSD. Nonetheless, when Hell rears its ugly face again, he's unhesitatingly back in the fray to single-handedly put down another demonic invasion, and the game ends with him deciding to stay in Hell forever to ensure that no demon will ever threaten humanity again (though Doom Eternal reveals that doing so ended up taking a further toll on his sanity).
• Paper Tiger: The seemingly-improved Pinky Demons look more dangerous, with their larger size, newly-added hand claws, and bigger teeth, but they're no deadlier than the classic Pinky Demon (being nearly identical stat-wise, with only a very slight movement speed increase). In fact, your new double-bladed Chainsaw makes even quicker work of them (while still being effective even with fast monsters enabled, unlike with the original Pinky), and your Super Shotgun will still one shot them with ease.
• Password Save: Doom 64 uses this to save the player's progress, although it also supports a regular save function.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • The Partial Invisibility powerup just like in the original, since it randomizes what direction enemies fire in, making it no longer possible to predict where they'll fire and making it all the more likely you'll strafe into enemy projectiles instead of dodging. It's still useful against hitscan enemies as you can't dodge their instantaneous fire anyway and thus the powerup can save you some unavoidable damage against them, but this in itself is of limited use, since the only hitscan enemies in the game are the lowly Zombiemen and Shotgun Guys - no Chaingunners or Spider Masterminds - and they're never placed in a way to really exploit that hitscan ability.
  • The third upgrade for the Unmaker, which adds additional bolts fired off to the sides that fan outwards when you fire and converting it from a pinpoint-accurate laser minigun into a wild-firing laser spread gun. While this increases its effectiveness against hordes of enemies at short to medium range (which is something you'd probably prefer the BFG for anyway), it results in a lot of wasted cell ammo when shooting at the Unmaker's preferred targets: large single enemies like Cyberdemons kept at a safely long range.
• Purposely Overpowered: Only one new weapon was added to the game, namely a demonic laser called the Unmaker. When you first find it, it's actually extremely underwhelming, merely firing a pulsing laser beam that does fairly mediocre damage at an average firing rate, just wasting energy cells that would be much more destructive from the BFG. However, if you can find three of the game's secret levels (and good luck with that!) and obtain the Demon Artifacts hidden within them, each one powers up the Unmaker to increasingly powerful levels. Even with only two Artifacts it's easily the strongest weapon in the game, capable of chewing through tough enemies like Barons of Hell in seconds and even tearing a Cyberdemon apart with ease, once you collect all three then the only thing standing in your way is your stock of energy cells. Notably, a fully-powered Unmaker reduces the final boss from one of the toughest and most-dangerous boss monsters in Doom to an absolute walkover that gets stunlocked and dies in seconds (and possessing the Artifacts allows you to skip The War Sequence you'd normally have to battle through before it spawns in).
• Random Number God: Just as in the original Doom, this is prevalent throughout all damage calculations, with every attack's damage being randomized.
• Real Is Brown: While it has colorful environments, the vast majority of the setting is dark military bases and castles.
• Red Sky, Take Warning: Not only is Hell's sky red, but in some levels it's on fire.
• Reformulated Game: The redone levels and enemies, darker graphics and horror-inspired soundtrack gave the game a much different ambiance than the original game, even if the gameplay is for the most part still the same.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Subverted in "Cat and Mouse"; it's a Duel Boss fight between you and a Cyberdemon, where the two of you duel with rocket launchers. Unfortunately, the Cyberdemon can suck down rockets like rock candy, while you're little more than a One-Hit-Point Wonder (you can survive the blast of one or two near-misses, but a direct hit, or even a close miss, will One-Hit Kill you).
• Scenery Porn: A morbid example (since the game takes place in abandoned laboratories and Hell itself). One could say that the demons (as well as the UAC) have pretty nice taste in architecture. Then again, Doom 64's levels tend to be more detailed than the classic Doom games.
  • Some levels (like Map 14, "Eye of the Storm", or Map 23, "Unholy Temple") resemble medieval castles and Gothic cathedrals.
  • While some of the skies can be menacing, they can pretty cool to look at. Special mention goes to the green fire sky in the aforementioned Unholy Temple.
  • Interestingly, Level 13, "Dark Citadel", has a section that is an underground library complete with bookshelves full of literature.
  • "Terror Core", "Altar of Pain" and "Eye of the Storm" in the second act of the game have animated skies with distant thunder and lightning adding extra immersion to their castle settings. The effects really make the three levels stand out.
  • Behind its yellow key door, Level 10 "The Bleeding" has an underground cavern with green grass, a small stream of water, and a small waterfall. It looks like something you'd see in The Legend of Zelda. It's also quite strange considering this is a Hell level.
• Sealed Evil in a Duel: After once again entering Hell to stop the Demons from attacking humanity, the Doom Marine decides to stay there for good, in order to prevent them from rising up yet again.
• Secret Level: Like previous editions of Doom, there are multiple secret levels to be found.
  • The three standard secret levels in the main campaign provide tangible rewards found nowhere else. Each gives one of three Demon Keys to power up your Unmaker weapon, provided you solve a puzzle in each level. You can also find significant perks, such as an Unmaker as early as the first act of the game. Each Demon Key also reduces the difficulty of the final level significantly by allowing you to close one demon portal per key.
  • A super secret level called Hectic, accessible by reaching the secret exit of the first normal level, doubles as a Brutal Bonus Level for featuring traps that are extremely difficult to overcome. But if the player prevails, they will unlock a set of features like accessing hidden levels that are unavailable otherwise.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Monster infighting is still present, working with the same mechanics as in the original games, just with Hell Knights and Barons being able to infight each other unlike in Doom 2. However in some levels, mainly arena-type levels where you have to kill a large crowd of monsters in a smallish contained area to advance, such as Even Simpler and The Absolution, a special flag is set that prevents monsters from retaliating against each other, preventing the player from being able to easily cheese these levels by having the monsters all kill each other.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: According to the manual, Doomguy was severely traumatized by his experiences in the first two games. Nonetheless, he voluntarily steps up to stop the forces of Hell from invading Earth again.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The Super Shotgun is even more useful here, as the cycling animation between shots is shorter, allowing you to dish out damage faster.
• Shout-Out: The game's opening logo is one to the opening credits of Batman (1989), with the camera slowly panning around an abstract structure only to pull out and reveal structure is actually the game's logo, all the while a Suspiciously Similar Song to Danny Elfman's Batman theme gets players pumped for the action about to commence.
• Simple, yet Awesome:
  • The Double-Bladed Chainsaw is twice as dangerous as the classic Doom model and now a very good choice for monsters you can reliably stun with it. Pinky Demons & Cacodemons don't stand a chance against it once you close the distance. Hearing it violently make contact with a monster can be so satisfying.
  • The Chaingun isn't that much more powerful than its classic counterpart, but it now reverberates and shakes as you fire it to enhance the thrill of letting it rip on a hoard of monsters, feeling more like the light machine gun it's meant to be.
• Stealth Prequel: When the Nightdive remaster of Doom 64 was released alongside Doom Eternal, The Lost Levels revealed that it was not only a sequel to Doom II, but also a prequel to DOOM (2016), the latter starting where the former ended.
• Super Title 64 Advance: Doom 64. It was originally supposed to be called The Absolution, but got its name changed to follow along with the naming convention of other Nintendo 64 titles. Unfortunately, this led to people mistaking it for yet another port of the original game (like Hexen 64 and Duke Nukem 64 were), thus hurting its sales due to the stigma surrounding most of the concurrent Doom ports at the time, when in fact it is a unique game.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
  • Level 17, "Watch Your Step", starts with you in a large open arena, empty of enemies, with an array of most of the game's weapons and copious amounts of ammo strewn around the perimeter, with a side passage leading into another section with even more weapons, including a BFG 9000. Enemies start spawning in here, in moderately threatening numbers, but it's when you return to the central area again that you get thrown into a massive pitched battle against a vast host of enemies, culminating in the game's first encounter with a Cyberdemon (or on "Watch Me Die", two Cyberdemons!).
  • The final levels of both the original Campaign ("The Absolution") and The Lost Levels ("Final Judgement") open with you being offered every single weapon in the game^note except the Chainsaw in The Absolution for some reason, including the Unmaker, as well as a large amount of ammo, a Megasphere and even an Invulnerability Sphere before you descend into the final battle arena. Final Judgement goes even further by having a second chamber absolutely stuffed with even more additional ammo before you hit the switch the set the demon horde loose on you.
• Symbol Swearing:
  • Doomguy's reaction upon finding the Unmaker: "What the !@#%* is this!"
  • The game mocks the player if they do not reset after dying. One of the messages is "YOU LAZY @&$#!"
• Tagline: "To Hell with you."
• Tank Controls: The default settings. You can change the controls to better fit the player's preferred play-style.
• Title Drop: Played with, as the final map is named after the original title for the game: The Absolution.
• To Hell and Back: While the original ending has Doomguy deciding to just stay in Hell to make sure everything really does stay Killed Off for Real this time, the epilogue campaign in the Updated Re-release reveals that Hell itself tried to teleport him back to Earth, forcing him to fight his way back into Hell.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • The Unmaker. Yes, it's a powerful Purposely Overpowered weapon when upgraded with demon keys and will trivialize any combat in the game even without having all three of the keys. However, it also uses the same power cell ammo used by the BFG, which is additionally very scarce in Doom 64 (you'll be lucky to find more than 100 cells in any level, and they're often hidden in secret areas too that you can easily miss). And, the Unmaker burns through ammo quite quickly if you just hold fire to spam it instead of carefully using as much shots as you need to kill each enemy (while being less ammo efficient than the BFG against sufficiently large hordes of enemies). So if you rely on it too much you'll easily run out of ammo and be left unable to use it at all for quite the while. You might find yourself wondering if you should use it or not on large numbers of "pest" enemies (like Demons/Spectres, Imps, Cacodemons, etc.) if there might be a more urgent use for it later (e.g. a Pain Elemental ambush or a Cyberdemon), and indeed, there are high-threat encounters that are worth saving the Unmaker for.
  • Unsurprisingly, this also makes the BFG land in this. Being the BFG, it's so strong that it would invalidate all your other non-Unmaker guns if it weren't for finding enough cells to fire a mere three shots on a good level. Plus there's fretting about whether you really need this much firepower against a horde or if it's better to save cells and use your Rocket Launcher to get the job done. Additionally since it shares its ammo with the Unmaker, you may be left unwilling to use it out of concern of if you'll actually make more efficient cell usage out of it.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Blood Keep has a nasty cheap shot up its sleeve. Entering the final room reveals a bunch of Lost Souls ready to rush you, so moving into the corner to avoid getting surrounded sounds reasonable. But once you beat all the enemies, all of the floor except the direct path from the entrance to the locked exit descends into lava with no way out; if you don't have the reaction speed to notice the floor descending and move onto the main platform in time, tough luck, you're already dead.
• Unintentionally Unwinnable: "Even Simpler" is a remake of "Dead Simple" from Doom II, only with Pain Elementals thrown in. You have to kill every enemy, including the Lost Souls they shoot out, to advance. If they're killed next to some walls, however, the Souls they are supposed to shoot out get sucked into the walls, making it impossible to kill them.
• Updated Re-release: The 2020 re-release brought the game to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC with higher resolution visuals, runs at 60 FPS on consoles (and up to 1000 FPS on PC), controller rumble support, various graphics settings (such as a recreated N64-styled three-point filtering and anti-aliasing), and an entirely new episode added that bridges the gap between the classic and modern Doom games.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Absolution is where the Mother Demon awaits, being a large battlefield with three large gates from which hordes of enemies will come to torment Doomguy one last time before their queen arrives. It's possible to shut down the gates if the secret levels' keys were collected prior.
• Video Game Demake: Doom 64 for Doom II, a recreation of Doom 64 under the limits and feel of the original Doom, with liberties taken where necessary. There is no Unmaker, but the Chaingunners, Revenants, and Arch-Viles are there, and the Mother Demon was recreated using Dehacked and has the attacks of the Mancubus, Arch-Vile, Cacodemon, Revenant, and Pain Elemental.
• Who Forgot The Lights?: Many of the levels have dark rooms and corridors where the only source of light comes from dim sources (and the most common colors of choice for them, such as deep blue or bright red, aren't very helpful for the player's eyes).
• You Don't Look Like You: While the other monster redesigns at least look similar to the designs from the previous games, the Cacodemon and Pain Elemental have been radically altered. Cacodemons are now dark brown in color, have yellow eyes with cat-like pupils, and have arms with chains dangling from the wrists (their backs have stretched, torn open skin exposing red flesh similar to the original Cacodemon design, possibly implying the new look are flayed Pain Elemental skins stretched over the old Cacodemons). Pain Elementals are colored purple instead of brown, their eye is green instead of red, and they have two mouths on each side of their body. Also, the zombieman and shotgun sergeant look identical (rather than the sergeant being bald) due to space limitation on the original cartridge, meaning they are indistinguishable until they shoot or you kill them and see what they drop (the shotgunners have grey pants instead of tan pants, but this isn't something you're going to notice in a hectic firefight).

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Finally...the mother of all demons is dead!
The blood pours from your eyes as you stand in defiance.
As the only marine to survive the slaughter—you decide to remain in Hell and ensure no demon ever rises again.
The end.^note LOOK AT THOSE DEMON FEET!