During a GDC talk about the creation of Doom’s excellent music, composer Mick Gordon filled in the audience on one particularly eerie Easter egg the general public had yet to find. As a cheeky ode to the uproar among fundamental Christians during the early days of metal in the 70s and 80s, Gordon hid a voiceover clip in one of the channels of a stereo drone track. It’s not exactly a message from Satan ordering the listener to kick a stranger in the face, though. If isolated in mono and played in reverse, you hear something surprising. 

Listen to the clip, first played normally, and then in reverse:

“Jesus loves you” sounds as ominous as any demon wishing you a bad day, it turns out. “Do you know how many news websites wrote about that one?” said Gordon, “Friggin’ none!”

We got you, man.

Gordon also stated that only four out of five easter eggs had been found on the Doom soundtrack, the most obvious of which players discovered shortly after the game released. Using a program that generated audio patterns that mimicked image files, Gordon assembled the number of the beast (666) and tucked it away into one of the songs.

It’s only visible using a spectrograph to visualize the audiotrack, but the occult origins of the original Doom must have made it a big target for those seeking hidden messages. If you ask me, it’s still no Richard D. James. I find the subliminal demonic messaging of Doom comforting in a way. It’s nice to know that something our parents said would ruin us is still kicking around, not ruining us.

Getting Doom to run on devices that were not designed to run Doom is a satisfying pursuit, and YouTuber vexal knows this better than most. Only vexal's Doom experiments – or at least the one where he uses toasters as an input device – are not real. It looks feasible, but sadly, it's not real.

That doesn't take the shine off his latest video, which has a Porsche 911 running Classic Doom. It took me a few watches to be convinced that it is fake, because vexal's droll delivery and the fact that Doom has been known to run on anything from ATM machines to oscilloscopes makes it seem real. But alas, it's not. We'll get there, though. I believe it.

Superhot team—the studio behind last year's uber-stylish and highly inventive shooter Superhot—launched a competition last month which encourages entrants to design mods and artwork inspired by its flagship game. Named #MAKEITSUPERHOT, the contest is judged by the devs, ModDB, and IMGN.PRO, and its top prize includes a publishing contract worth $50,000. Due to close on February 27, the latest entrant which has caught my eye is Ludus Regard's SuperDoom—a mod which, as you may expect, combines Doom with Superhot. 

Similar to how WhyNott's PORTALHOT mod melds the time-manipulating FPS with Valve's intuitive puzzler Portal, SuperDoom combines two familiar games—echoing the pixelated aesthetic of id's corridor blaster, while at the same time mirroring Superhot's chic pristine backdrops and jarring red-coloured enemies and bullets. 

Creator Ludus Regard is yet to add Superhot's distinctive slow motion-meets-bullet-time mechanic, yet it's already shaping up rather nicely. Here's the mod's first dev diary which looks at how it all works in practice: 

On its ModDB page, Ludus Regard says it's his intention to implement time-manipulation into SuperDoom this week. As it stands, incapacitating enemies by way of projectile weapons is possible, so too is punching enemy weapons from their hands and knocking them flat out by virtue of melee combos. Like Superhot, it's only possible to carry one weapon at a time, and, as you may have spotted above, bullets mimic the red trail of the mod's inspiration. 

Superhot Team's #MAKEITSUPERHOT contest kicked off on January 17 and will run through February 27. Head in this direction to see its most recent entries. 

And since we're talking Doom, why not check out this video of Doom 2 being played on a tiny display inside a single keyboard key because, well, that's pretty awesome. 

ZDoom, the enhanced port of the (original) Doom source code, was first released in 1998 and has received some 75 updates over its 19 year history. Its most recent release arrived in February of 2016, and we've learned this version (2.81) will be its last. The creator of ZDoom, Randy Heit, has announced he is ceasing development of the storied source port. Posting on the ZDoom forums on January 7, he said:

"I am hereby eschewing further ZDoom development. There will be no future releases. Consider QZDoom or GZDoom as replacements."

Since its inception, ZDoom has been one of the pillars of the Doom modding community, removing many of vanilla Doom's limits, providing support for Doom engine games like Heretic, Hexen, and Strife, adding a console, and allowing for higher screen resolutions, more music formats, new camera effects and skyboxes, and much more.

And, while ZDoom will not receive further updates, it's not exactly going to vanish. In his post, Heit stated that the co-author of source port QZDoom, Rachael "Euranna" Alexanderson, will manage ZDoom's forum and wiki from now on. On the Doomworld forums, Euranna had some words of reassurance:

"ZDoom means a lot to many of us. But it's important to remember it is not completely dead. It still lives on in some form. While its main Github repository may never be updated, development in GZDoom is still in full swing. The forum and the wiki will continue on, if nothing else to support GZDoom and its child projects, along with the legacy that ZDoom has offered us."

Heit did not provide a specific reason for ending the development of ZDoom, but I sent him an email and will update this post if I receive a response. You can grab the latest and final version of ZDoom here.

God bless the PC. Player-created Doom WADs have kept a decades-old series from becoming obsolete, using the openness of the platform to experiment with level design and theme for more than 20 years before finally settling on HDoom’s ultimate conclusion: anime, comedy, and sex.Don’t ask me how I found it (it was Twitter), but the first I ever saw of HDoom, which I presume stands for Hentai Doom, was a gif. It features Doomguy grappling to the back of Cyberdemon, somehow managing to achieve penetration despite being a quarter of the size of the monster, who stands immobile and flushed with a sincere sexual passion. It’s one of the greatest moving images I’ve ever seen.The gifs don’t stop there. Doomguy gets a blowjob from a Baron of Hell, goes all the way (every which way) with an imp, and more. Take a look for yourself. But the gifs have a purpose. They’re part of a playable Doom WAD where you shoot demons with a love pistol, engage in pillow fight foreplay, and flirt with demons in a hot tub.

The super shotgun is around, if demons aren't quite your bag.

The creator, HDoomguy, says the flirtations are just the beginning of a fuller visual novel system, "Our coder (TheZombieKiller) did an amazing job with making the built-in VN (visual novel) system work—and can theoretically do a lot of the same elaborate stuff you'd expect in a full-fleged VN." They continue, "On that note, we're hoping to do a lot with it in the future by having a seperate VN mode alongside the more traditional Doom gameplay. I'm still working out the story and characters and the like, but I'm hoping to go for a lighthearted comedy much like the rest of HDoom."

A bit more NSFW-sleuthing (at work) led me to this page where you can take a look at art designed for further dialogue and sex scenes. Whether or not they’ll all be integrated, I’m not sure, but the amount of original art indicates HDoom isn’t meant to be a quick, easy joke. It’s genuine erotica with a comedic edge. 

HDoomguy is in on the joke. "I think that since the whole idea is inherently pretty absurd and crazy from the get-go, I might as well push it to 11 and have a lot of fun with it."

Repurposing Doom’s hypermasculine characters and B-movie tropes in an equally exaggerated sexual fantasy is a pretty hilarious contrast—and for the right people, a nice way to get warm. 

"It definitely has a strong degree of self-awareness for one thing, which I think is genuinely something that makes creating the mod so much more fun." says HDoomguy. "If I had to pick one, I think the humor comes through best in the whole idea/execution of the mod itself—the very idea of removing all of the violent elements from one of the most famously violent and action-packed games and then replacing it with fluffy, lighthearted sex and comedy is kind of a subversive gag in its own right." 

Hell, even if demons with huge boobs aren't your thing, the sprites are undeniably detailed and authentic to Doom’s early ‘90s art style.HDoom isn’t complete, but you can track the progress or play it for yourself by downloading the in-progress package from HDoomguy’s Tumblr page. You’ll also need the latest versions of Zandronum or GZDoom, as well as a copy of Doom or Doom 2 installed. Once you’re good to go, give it a try. After that, I recommend exploring couch co-op.

I've always wondered, if only you could fuck these creatures, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances... Now, that would be interesting.