joystqfeatures posts

Today is the 15th anniversary of the release of Doom, the sci-fi first person shooter from id Software. On Dec. 10, 1993, the original shareware version was uploaded to a single FTP server. That's all it took for the game, about one space marine fighting an invasion from Hell on the moons of Mars, to spread across the world like wildfire on tens of millions of PC hard drives.

While the game wasn't the first FPS ever made, the release of Doom arguably launched the genre into the mainstream of gaming. The PC shareware version of the title became a massive hit with some people saying the DOS version of the shareware were installed on more PCs at one point than Microsoft's then current version of Windows.

Click on the logo above to continue reading Happy 15th Birthday Doom!

Download the Doom Shareware here at Big Download
Download the Doom III Classic mod (a remake of the original Doom in Doom III) here at Big Download

FPS (as in frames per second, not first-person shooter) is a quick-and-dirty way of judging whether or not your rig has the cojones to support your chosen display resolution and eye candy predilections. Simply put, can your system churn out the graphics fast enough to keep up with the demands of the game(s) you're running?

If the answer is "yes," do you have any headroom to up the graphical ante? If the answer is "no," what are your options? Okay, options other than spending lots of money; spending money is always an option, but we do occasionally want to be practical around here.