Doom was, for the 32X add-on, exactly what a showcase for any new platform should be: proof that it could handle something the competition couldn't manage in the living room. As a lone marine, the player fights through bases on the moons of Mars that have been flooded with demonic creatures following a failed experiment. Progress is purely arcade-fast: you search for colored keycards, use them to unlock locked sections, press on walls suspected of hiding secret chambers, and collect an arsenal ranging from a pistol through a shotgun and chainsaw to a plasma gun. Enemies move along their own axis, so combat becomes a dance around pillars and a retreat into wider spaces, where opponents can be turned against each other and left to slaughter one another. The game handles vertical aiming for you, so all your attention goes toward dodging and never standing still.
Technically, the conversion builds precisely on what the 32X added — a pair of powerful processors on top of the Mega Drive. The picture runs in a smaller window framed by a border with the weapon and status indicators, which saves performance and keeps the pace noticeably brisker than the home conversions of the time running on weaker hardware. But that speed comes at a price: part of the levels and enemies didn't fit onto the cartridge, the textures are coarser, and the music plays through the Mega Drive's sound chip in FM form, sounding rawer than on PC. This doesn't undercut the atmosphere, though — if anything the opposite: dark corridors, metallic screeching, and the roar that sounds the moment a monster spots you still work even in this simplified form.
At the time, this was one of the main arguments for buying the add-on, and also a source of controversy, since comparisons with the computer original were merciless. For the first-person shooter genre, though, it marked an important step: it showed that console audiences were ready for this type of game. Today, the 32X version is mainly a technical curiosity and a pleasant, fast Doom for a few evenings — it still plays wonderfully, just know that it's a shortened cut of a great classic.
Game 1 of 15 for SEGA 32X
The same title elsewhere (2)
The PC/DOS version is the original and remains the definitive edition — it ran at higher resolution, supported mouse-and-keyboard controls, and had music through sound cards like the Sound Blaster or AdLib. The Atari Jaguar port became famous for a different reason: under time pressure the developers cut the music entirely, so you play through in near silence with only sound effects, even though the speed and smoothness of the action were praised at the time as remarkably good for a console. The SEGA 32X version came off worst of all — its levels had to be shortened and rearranged compared to the original, resolution and frame rate were lower, and its thin music plus sluggish pace still make it the weakest and least recommended way to play Doom.
