John Romero Looks Back At The Birth Of The FPS

The Doom Gut Talks Catacomb 3-D And The Following 33 Years

The name John Romero is famous among PC gamers, and rightfully so as he was there at the beginning and was the driving force behind raising the first person shooter to a work of art.  Catacomb 3-D was the precursor to Wolfenstein 3D, the game most remembered from that period and was released back in 1991, cementing his reputation in the industry.  He reminisces about DOOM and the WAD file format which allowed players to quickly create their own maps and helped give birth to the modding community.

He also discusses the modern FPS industry and what he thinks of the evolution of the genre he helped create.  He’s more fond of battle royale style of games because of their inclusive nature.  Shooters like CounterStrike are unforgiving for players that don’t posses a certain level of skill and are simply not fun for those players.  In the chaos of battle royale, from Battlefield to Fortnite, even those that aren’t great at FPS games can still have a load of fun.

As you might expect, he also talks about the growing number of boomer shooters and how his decades of experience designing games lets him include surprises and features in retro style games which he never could have managed back in the 90’s.

Read more of Ars Technica’s interview with the John Romero right here.