On the heels of a jdosbox update, I figured it’d be cool to try ALL the early pre-release versions of Doom!  I’ve setup the links so you can click on any picture, and it’ll launch the appropriate jdosbox emulator, with the disk image.  Just click & go!

So here we go!

This is a pre-alpha version of DOOM from early February 1993 — only 2 months of work had been done to this point.

This is the first version that was made semi-public.  As you can see the HUD is the inside of the helmet.  The sky doesn’t work, but you can move around, and see the monsters from various angles..

Yes, it’s the DOOM ALPHA!  (Actually, we’re just try to release theseevery two weeks or so.  This WAS going to be a pre-beta, but a certainperson let us down Super-Nintendo cart-programming-wise, so it’s just analpha.  Nonetheless, here ’tis.)

It feels more doom like… But you can’t kill anything, and they can’t kill you… better textures and whatnot.

From the notes:

It’s an ALPHA version of doom (I just run it to make sure)called “Doom: Evil Unleashed”.  Start up screen says Doom Alpha byId Software.

It has the basic Doom engine, but:

• It has the basic Doom engine, but
• The imps and pink demons are in the game they don’t move or anything just stand there
• No barrels (as noted above)
• A lot of graphics from wolf is used (eg medic kit, gold treasure cup)
• The map key is “a” not tab
• The strafe and open door key are both alt
• No sounds!
• The two weapons you start with are (1) bayonet and (2) rifle
• There is no run key (that I could find, so makes getting around really slow)
• It is quite easy to recognise some of the structures in the game (so the whole map structure is now over two years old).  I can’t quote exactly were they are from but I do recognise them.
• In the screen options there is high, medium, low, <another one>, and HIGH RES, so it looks like there use to be a high res mode that was taken out in the official release.

This is the press release pre-beta version.  As you can tell from the screen shot it’s basically DOOM.  Some things are different though.  The readme is pretty long, and I think it’s better to just link it here.  I took the CPU cap off this one as it really seems to want to run FAST.  But I’m probably just screwing something up in the world of jdosbox.  But it does run, and quite nicely on my core i7.

So there you basically have it… Lots and lots of DOOM!