DF Retro: The Making of Doom on Super NES - The Original 'Impossible Port' - Randy Linden Interview
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- One of the original 'impossible ports', somehow Nintendo's SuperFX chip was repurposed to bring the classic Doom onto the Super NES way back in 1995. But how was this technological miracle achieved? John Linneman and Audi Sorlie talk to Randy Linden - the SNES port's programmer - to get the full story.
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In my opinion, this is a DF Retro "Legacy" series. Keep these stories coming. Innovators like this deserve a platform to tell their story.
Yes...very inspiring. Artist's spotlight.
As a developer, I have mad respect for programmers of this era. It looks so tough! Nowadays, we may complain about some little bugs and flaws in our dev tools but we're so privileged in every possible way!
As I said, mad respect ✊
Yeah man. Definitely a totally different time. Back then, devs did the most they could with what they developed for not just because they had to one-up the competition to sell some product, not just because these beautiful systems remained common-place well beyond their prime, but because they got something out of the challenge of doing so.
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" does not apply to programmers. If you think you can, you basically HAVE TO, just to see what would happen at least. The challenge, the curiosity, the innovation... what an era.
Real talk, it became a keyboard-cowboy cock-measurong contest near the end of the 16 bit console war but they had fun and the consumers benefitted.
this man really is the walking definition of 'thinking outside of the box'. genius!
literally, lol
He's a LEGEND!
What is he working on now though? He would be amazing in the emulator scene
@@wile123456 as far as i know he did worked in emulation, but was taken to court, i don't know if he winned or not, but i do know that thanks to the outcome Emulators are legal
@@wile123456 Randy has been working on a multiplayer mobile game called Cyboid that is a lot like Quake Multiplayer. Aside from that, he's always happy to lend people a hand in the Romhacking scene in regards to the SNES version of Doom's source code. He really is a fantastic guy.
Such a lovely conversation. Massive respect to Randy, and well-hosted by John and Audi!
After his explanation and the fact he didn't have source code for DOOM, and no development kit from Nintendo shows that he is a true legend. I have even more respect for him now after understanding these facts. Incredible!
This was the version my brother and I first experienced DOOM. The red cart was neat and honestly, I don't care what people might say today, there was nothing quite like it on the console. I still like this version, just as Street Fighter Alpha 2 on the same console, to this day.
Street Fighter Alpha 2 was on playstation 1. Are you sure you played the super Nintendo version?
@@theguest103 Indeed, there are some high profile videos about the SFA2 port, you'll see it was considered as much as an 'impossible port' as DOOM, it was released late in the console's life, but back then, it was really cool to play a recent arcade game on the SNES.
the ai suffered badly in the sfa2 the game is soooooo easy even on 8 stars
@@SevenCompleted True, the computer AI is easy, but back then, we played mostly against friends and brothers, the arcade was still very strong. Recently, it was discovered the code had some bug, the 'freezing' before each round was fixed and there's a rom with this patch, it seems it wasn't a limitation, but an oversight of some sort.
Amen brother. It just works and is fun.
Randy releasing a patch for his 25 year old game is the kind of commitment we love to see.
I always remember playing Doom on PC first. Then going over to a friends house, and also borrowing his SNES doom. Something so comfy about sitting on the couch to play doom, plus I really liked the different tone the music was. Seeing the bright red cartridge sticking out of the grey console was the icing on the cake
It's so cool to know that playing "the inferior version on console" was not a thing back then and not frowned upon.
I imagine that just the fact that it ran and was playable at all on the couch, on the TV, with a controller was amazing.
Very similar to my experience, my brother and I also got tense playing it, those grunts weren't common on the 16-bit games, specially in a 3D game where monster could be behind or hidden somewhere next to you, and the soundtrack is sinister, we were kids and thus, easily impressionable, even the cart was something else, a bit heavier and red, with those extra chips you could see on its bottom, cool stuff.
@@iau yes I rented it just bc it was doom running on snes. I played it first on pc and didn't really like how slow it was on snes though.
@@iau Back in the day, you were happy to be able to play the dang thing at all.
To me the SNES version was such a step down from PC I never bothered with it. But such a cool bit of gaming history. NOne the less.
This guy is pretty much a genius, one of my role models as a programmer, one of the most talented people I've ever heard of. Kudos for him! Incredible to know him and a bit more of how he worked on this legendary project. Bring 'im more times!
See his interview at Cacodemontube
I remember seeing SNES Doom in a coming soon video playing at Best Buy. I was stunned. I bought it as soon as it was released for around $80 USD. I had a lot of fun with this version of the game. The SNES music is still my favorite of all the versions.
Paying $80 in 1995 money though...
@@Clay3613 Games were very expensive back then.
@@Clay3613 that's why most of the games I played were rentals. No wonder Nintendo tried to fight that
The expensive price is probably due to the Super FX2 chip inside.
@@Ivegotsomewater81 yes. Super FX enhanced games were always more expensive along with SVP powered Virtua Racing on Megadrive
Original X-Band player here. I recall coming face-to-face with another player once and panicking before I realized he was looking the other way even though the SNES rendered his Doomguy sprite as if it was always facing me. ;)
Funny thing about this, there's a SNES DOOM Wad for open sources, the monsters can fight each other in this version, even though they only face the camera, so Cacodemons and other monsters launch fireballs, green magic from all sides, even from behind, it makes no sense but it's funny to watch that.
This is one of the coolest DF Retros so far. Really really cool to hear the inside scoop on Doom for the SNES and thank you Mr Linden for a great deal of childhood enjoyment.
seriously stunned how well the Dirt Track FX game looks and runs. great interview!
That blew me away. I refuse to believe that's genuine SNES output. It looks super close to ExciteBike 64.
@@darkl3ad3r I own Dirt Trax FX. It really does run quite smoothly for an FX Chip game and in fact even has a proper two player mode with all of the bikes out their. Obviously the performance takes a major hit in two player split screen but it is still very playable and some of the tracks are absolutely amazing and much better than the first, rather dull track they always show footage of.
Yes except this game among fx games don’t run in full screen size because it’s technically impossible on the snes due it’s limited bandwide, i was very very disappointed about that.
@@johneygd Ha! Have you ever seen Stunt Race FX? That runs in a really small screen. Both games were, and still are, tons of fun.
@@davidaitken8503 i have played and beated both stunt race fx & doom on snes,i can get used with the controls BUT it simply misses the fun because of this,
Doom on pc and gba is much more fun because of it’s responsive controls & and all the sound effects etc,,,
Randy showing the original Amiga adapter cable was a great moment.
I didn't have money to buy a PC in those times, but I played SNES Doom for uncountable hours. You have my deepest gratitude, Randy. 😊
This was my first exposure to Doom. What a way to experience it, but my preteen-self didn’t care! The lack of a save feature was brutal though.
I spent hours with SNES Doom as a kid since it was the only way I could experience the full game at the time.
Same here. It was pretty brutal, and not in a good way.
Things were very hard to make out, I actually confused the tunnel lights in the walls with a passage, frequently got lost in the mess of pixels.
When I got Ultimate Doom on PC was a night and day difference.
No saves, damn. Did you complete it? thinking about it I finished Doom on the pc in pretty much one night, so it was doable.
@@obi-potobi790 yea not sure why they couldn’t at least have a password system. Never beat the whole game. Beat the first 2 episodes a lot, but never the last 2 if I remember right.
This was the same way I got to play it too! I saw a kid I know playing it on his home computer, but we didn't have a computer at the time, so the SNES version was a blessing for me. It seemed perfect to me back then!
Randy Linden is such a master assembly language programmer. If only more people in the industry were as skillful as him, there would be a lot more graphically impressive and optimized games out there.
I'm impressed how clear and confident his memory of that project was. Many developers have a hard time going into such detail from a project that long ago.
Maybe because he's the main (and only?) programmer?
And others can't remember because they worked on a team, with other programmers
@@chaleeman Good point. Although he undoubtedly worked on many other games afterwards, so I'm still impressed he remembered to that specificity.
From a game developer standpoint, he barely shared any details on the project at all, to be honest. Like, he said how the dev card worked, how memory was limited and for some reason he rendered screen in 5 thirds, but not elaborated why exactly it was done this way, and he mentioned he wasn't using the obvious idea of doubling lines with HDMA, but not elaborated why. The SNES DOOM engine differs greatly from the PC one by the very design, and that what makes is possible at all, so it would be very interesting to know any details on how this design come to life, how it renders the things, and which short cuts it takes, but alas, none of this info is there.
@@shiru8bit Now I'm impressed with you! I'm sorry it wasn't as detailed as you wanted.
what a fantastic historical interview!!! well done all !!!!
Holy shit, im so fucking happy that you guys interviewed the absolute programming LEGEND. Randy Linden is one of my all time favourite heroes of programming. One of the greatest problem solvers in all of software engineering imo, and someone who myself and many modern programmers could learn an insane ammount from.
Just hearing him say so casually "yea i built my own tools, assembler, etc and reverse engineered the superfx chip," is awe inspiring for me :D
That man is an absolute legend. It's amazing you got to interview him and for so long. MVG surely must have watched this given his own video on SNES Doom.
I loved this video. I own a copy of this game, in The original red cartridge. I am still amazed to see the SNES running It! That's why, in my opinion, the 16bit era was the golden days of gaming. The Sega/Nintendo war made them look for The impossible and the different.
Thank you so much for Doom on the Super. Just loved it and had so much fun. Secret rooms and passages!!
Still have my copy today. I remember my mom just got me both Doom and Doom Troopers for my birthday because She wasn’t sure which one was the Doom I wanted. Ended up with what I wanted and a pretty damn fun side scroller.
90s moms were different
@@robarmstrong5404 What a silly thing to say.
@@RootVegetabIe I don't think you get it
@@bmx7596 Then explain it, please.
Came for the Doom, also got a cool backstory of a few other moments in time. I can only imagine what kind of excitement, accomplishment, and pride must of been felt with that Starfox presentation.
SNES Doom is so amazingly impressive, I genuinely love this version! I particularly love that it doesn't make the level design compromises of the other versions of the day -- it has the crushing ceilings, the light level changes, enemies in dark areas are hard to see, it has the world map and episode end story texts, all of it is just as it should be. You won't find things like those in any other '90s console version of Doom. Really my only complaint is about the way you get stuck on walls, that's a little annoying. Other than that it's great, and I have finished the game on SNES. Great work.
Dirt Trax FX is very good as well. Of the Super FX racing games it is by far the best, it easily outdoes Stunt Race FX in performance and fun factor.
This is incredible! I would love to experience that 25fps version of the rom!
There are everdrive super fx chip … are TH-camrs put this on test?
@@nostrnastr9439 Give me the rom and I will play it on my everdrive lol.
It's possible to overclock the FX chip. Ask the Googles.
I remember walking by an old computer store display window with a PC running DOS launch era Doom, I was immediately captivated by the shadows, the lighting, the ambient sound effects … it was truly a milestone. I immediately acquired the Shareware version which was being sold for like $5, and installed on my Compac PC with only 4mb ram. a memory I will always cherish.
Man, I absolutely LOVED this version of DOOM. I had a PC that could never in a million years play DOOM and this was my 'Go To' version. I had great fun with it, loved the way it played on the SNES controller and to this day the music is still the way I prefer those tracks. Thanks for the great time and wonderful memories!!!
Thanks to this port of Doom, I have great memories of Xmas 1995! I was obsessed with Doom at the time, but didn’t have a PC and only played it now and again round at a friend’s house on their PC. But we had to use a keyboard which I couldn’t work with so was rubbish at it. When I finally got it for the SNES I played it to death and managed to complete the whole campaign on the Nightmare difficulty finding all the secrets. Great memories, thank you Randy for making it possible!
The red cartridge is the icing on the cake!
DF retro pumping out amazing videos, I've been blown away by the quality of the content this summer
Such a good channel.
Man, this guy seems so chill and humble despite being a literal fucking genius. Great interview y'all & can't wait for the Bleem portion.
Impressive upload, I enjoyed it all.
Biggest plus? The background ambience. Love the choice of subtle conspiracy tone music in the background, really adds to the story, like story time.
Makes you sit down and actually listen more.
It's always cool to hear about how people have so much passion for something that they make the impossible work. Randy really did amazing stuff with this version of Doom. I remember playing it all the time on the SNES. Very cool to learn the basics of how it was ported so well.
This is so cool to see the actual man who made the game talking about it, really special
It is, so many good memories because of him
My first DOOM experience as a kid was on the SNES. We didn't a PC capable of playing DOOM at that point and time so when a friend of mine got DOOM for SNES we used to stay up on the weekends scaring ourselves playing it. It will always have a special place in my heart just for that. Would love to get my cartridge signed by Randy one day.
Whoa, had no idea that doom was used the superfx chip. For a game that didn't look "traditionally 3d" (i.e., drawn with triangles, like with SMW2), that's really cool to hear.
This is some of the best content you've guys put out in a long time. More of this style video please, these are great!
I love this dudes room. He knows the value of only keeping the essentials.
It’s a reflection of how he managed this SNES port too 😁.
Holy crap. I suggested to Linden on youtube comment that he should reach out to Ars Technica or someone to talk about his work and he seemed really interested in the idea but wasn't sure where to start; so I suggested he speak to MVG. I like to think that he did and that lead him here. What a dude.
Please no MVG... they guy is a hack. You know the only game he lead on was terrible? Blade runner enhanced. Terrible version that should never have been made.
@@sssembler Eh, his game might not be good, but he is very knowledgeable when mentioning different rendering or hacking technologies, and is a passionate gamer (he owns more consoles than I do, ha!) and keeps a sizeable collection as well.
Besides, I'd say don't judge him based solely on ONE of his works, and one he worked at early on his career at that.
I'm not saying he is comparable, after all it is the only game he lead on, but imagine if people called Da Vinci a hack based solely on something he finger painted as a kid, instead of looking at everything he did since then.
@@tommapar I haven't watched MVG's content or seen his work so I don't have an opinion on him so I can't say anything about that, but wasn't BR Enhanced released like last month? How is that early in his career?
@@tommapar The guy tends to make mistakes in his videos. Take everything he says with a grain of salt.
@@evelin1006 Many do. DF isn't perfect, either.
What a fantastic interview! DF Retro keeps on delivering such great content. Thanks John and Audi, and thanks Randy for the time!
I've still got my SNES and I've still got my Doom cartridge. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻🙏🏻
DF Retro is a blessing. Put this on Netflix.
Absolutely marvelous interview. I'm really looking forward to the Bleem part, as I remember vividly that project back then. Please, keep these interviews coming.
Doom is the first video game that I played on PC in 1994. Amazing graphics for that time.
Wow.. what an epic/iconic/fantastic interview with one of THE legends of early console development wizardry. This man deserves all the praise he receives and so much more. Thank you DF for making this happen! I was very disappointed when you cut the interview "until next time".. I guess I will be impatiently waiting until the next part of the interview is released to hear the story of Bleem straight from the source. Can't wait!
This interview was spectacular. I really enjoyed it. Even though y’all consistently talk way over my head, it’s always a pleasure. Hope you all are going to do similar interviews in the future. Thanks again for your work!
Always interesting to listen to the stories from people who shaped my childhood and young adulthood.
Fascinating how they worked on these games with all this passion to put a smile on my younger face.
What an incredible interview, Randy is such a lovely chap. Thank you so much for making this.
Would love for you guys to get more interviews like this with impactful vintage game developers.
Fantastic interview. Thank you for doing it! Please, more of this content!
It baffles me that an official licensed game back then would require to use third party resources and not have access to the source code. This is insane!
Yeah, that's the craziest part. "How did you do it?" "well, first we reverse engineered this other game, so we would know about the hardware we were going to be working with, then we reverse engineered the game we were porting"... wat.
@@PoulWrist Exactly. This is really strange, even from a business perspective.
This is to die for. Learning first hand these details about how the game was developed and how Randy thinks they can squeeze more performance out today is amazing.
Bravo to you, Randy Linden. What an incredible interview. Sounds like Doom - Super NES was a real work of love and creative engineering, software and otherwise. Really glad to get this new perspective on it, all these years later. Thank you.
Amazing video guys, can't wait to see the rest of the interview!!
As someone who's learning coding/programming this is absolutely fascinating!! The sheer amount of work he must have put into creating his own tools is insane!!
Fascinating! Thank you for this interview and for the editing
"No matter how basic a program someone writes, I'm always impressed that they've written it, because programming is hard." What a good guy.
It's amazing that the code also doesn't seem to just be full of dirty hacks everywhere to cut corners; of the parts I've read so far, it's actually really well engineered and focuses on doing things efficiently in a manner that is understandable. Performance is saved very deliberately through design decisions, such as keeping monster collision and movement AI very simple compared to what's used by PC Doom and most other ports.
When programming for maximum computation and memory efficiency, messy hacks have no place. The code that exists is going to be very deliberate, as you say.
@@JimBob1937 Exactly, why games from the past do so well, even by todays standards.
Meanwhile, Destiny and Halo need their monthly updates to the code 😑
@@acardenasjr1340 , to be fair, there is a programming efficiency vs computation efficiency trade off. The level of complexity difference between the original Doom and the newest Halo is massive. The newest Halo would still be in development for quite a while if it were given the same treatment as Doom, almost to the point of being impractical.
@@acardenasjr1340 , with that said, the newest Doom shows you that efficiency gains can still be had with modern complexity games. That game is very nicely optimized.
I remember seeing it reviewed in magazines at the time and the fact that it was really only being ported to far more powerful consoles for the most part. I think the actual potential of the Super FX 2 chip really wasn't explored and for the most was just considered to be something that was designed to push polygons on screen but games like Doom and Yoshi's Island showed it really could have done so much more.
I love watching this kind of technical shop talk about how things were accomplished. Randy is extremely talented.
Really fascinating interview - thank you for doing this!
awesome stuff! they guys passion comes through and is honestly inspiring
What a really awesome interview. Could listen to this guy all day
Love it. I'm not sure what your analytics say, but I'd like more of this type of technical content. As an electrical engineer and a software developer (assembly all the way up to managed languages), it is a pleasure to see a developer work so closely with the hardware. Shows he is definitely part of the old guard, with (most) newer programmers being so far removed from the hardware that their code runs on.
Doom is the most important PC game of all time because it single handedly popularize PCs as a gaming platform
Funny, I first played it in Sun BSD UNIX workstations 😁
The interesting thing is a lot of those gamers only played the shareware version, as Doom was not sold in retail until after Doom 2 as Ultimate Doom. Versions like the SNES and playstation versions are how many played the non-shareware version in the mid 90s.
Probably the most important in general, with maybe Super Mario Brothers on the NES. It astonishes me that the game has a strong modding community 30 years after it came out. It's crazy to think there's a generation or two of people who just haven't a clue about the impact this game had. Their only experience is the modern Doom games, which I don't care much for at all.
Thanks DF! Always creating such insightful and entertaining content! What a fascinating interview!
Great interview guys.
I had no idea John Coffey was a Doom fan; and now I can't get that image out of my head.
Loved this interview! Keep up the fantastic work gents!
Need more of these making-ofs. Great stuff.
Wonderful interview! It's incredible to think about how much work that is, but people also forget that this era of console programming often did not have hardware support for integer multiplication or division of any kind usually. The kinds of tricks you need to use to overcome some of these limitations are crazy fun.
Really interesting and insightful. I'd love to see more of these kinds of interviews with developers in the future.
This guy really knows his stuff. Very interesting to hear his knowledge and memories
It’s so awesome that geniuses like this guy exist in this world
Great interview! And hat-off to Randy for pulling it off. Hearing about possible improvements sounds amazing !
Great interview! Can't wait to hear more. Randy Linden is a Goddamn legend! His BLEEM saga was so important to video game preservation and emulation. Can't wait to see the next part.
I remember begging my mom to get me this game when I was a kid on the SNES. The game came on a red cartridge and was $80! I look back and think of how crazy that was but I had so much fun playing on the slow frames wonder.
$80 was cheap. Virtua Racing on the Sega Genesis cost around $100 and in some places a little more 😱.
@@jsr734 Nooooo way! lol SNES games used to be like $40-$50 bucks back then. I'm not familiar at all with the Genesis prices but I will take your word for it.
@@visualsviavenom Yeah. Sega really overshot the mark with that one. Virtua Racing was an excellent port of the arcade game but the tech in the cartridge was just too expensive and the game flopped. It was priced anywhere from $100 to $120 and that was back in the 90's. I laugh every time I hear some modern gamer whining about having to pay $60 to $70 for a game in the year 2022.
@@davidaitken8503 That's wild!
Adjusted for inflation 80$ in 1994 is like 160$ today. Pretty mad.
Guys - audi should be on the right and side of the screen (switch positions with John) - looks like he has his back to the other two.
yeah very odd editing choice
Amazing interview, really great to hear Randy's memories of working on this port. Can't wait for future episodes, would be interesting to hear his thoughts on how far PS1 emulation has come since Bleem!.
Very cool interview. Thanks for doing this. Cheers.
Great video as always John, thank you for making it.
What a pleasure to watch. Thank you John! Respect to you guys!!!
Love these dev interviews. Fascinating about the amiga being used as the dev machine. I had amigas growing up so always a fond place in my heart for stories about them.
Fascinating interview!!!
Great video! Man... it is still gonna take a few years before I even understand how these 1980s games were developed. 40 years ago. But thanks to videos like this, my knowledge is increasing all the time!
Absolutely excellent interview!
It's interesting hearing these older game devs refer to game controllers as "joysticks", even when they don't actually have a joystick.
I assume it's because the word "controller" has many *different* meanings to a programmer.
Also inertia from when "joystick" was the more common term, or from platforms where most if not all controllers _are_ joysticks.
Referring to an analogue stick as a 'joystick' is a modern misnomer, since the technology and functionality of an analogue stick is completely different to that of a joystick.
It's probably also a vestige of home computer platforms. Controllers for computers used to be quite exclusively referred to as joysticks, though in recent times the term has been usurped by "gamepad".
I was lucky enough as a child in the 80's that my dad gave me his PC's after he upgrades so my 1st Doom experience was that. We did get the SNES version as well so Doom is all over my memories. Even now I have GZDoom on my PC lol As for Bleemcast...had that too. Will be watching for the next episode.
if you feel nostalgic you could try Crispy Doom. It;s a source port that looks close to the original version of doom with a few enhancements.
@@FoxDie77777 "Looks close" is a massive understatement - you can basically get Crispy/Chocolate Doom to be a functionally and visually exact recreation of the original DOS executable if you want to.
It's super impressive, and I like to play as authentically as possible, honestly. Athough I can't really live without automap rotation - it's way more intuitive, and technically it has a basis in authenticity, since it was featured both in this port and in Doom 64.
@@alfo2804 i like the mirrored corpses and colored blood
DOOM talk is always a welcome treat.
Absolutely fascinating interview. Learnt so much from this.
That was a treat to watch. So cool to hear the story behind it all.
Simply inspiring. What a genius. Thank you Randy and the DF team.
Great topic, I am waiting for more interviews with Randy. He is awesome.
This is why I subscribed to this channel. Keep em coming.
Hearing the 5 thirds part, shows how difficult programming can be. But a person with the passion and tinkering capability can achieve anything. Amazing.
This version was my introduction to Doom and I loved it so much! To this day I still play Doom and other retro first person shooters without saving during levels!
This man is my hero. I played so much SNES Doom back in the day!
Randy is an absolute legend! and this DF Retro was truly epic, can't wait for the next one
Amazing interview, pure gold
So cool, I love this kind of video, this guys are genius ! Waiting for the next episode 👍
Am amazing interview! Thank you for posting.