Fully titled Doom II: Hell on Earth, Doom II is the 1994 sequel to id Software's legendary Doom (though I hardly think I have to mention that), published by GT Interactive. As the title implies, the rampaging demonic horde that the player fought off Phobos, Deimos, and Mars, is now rampaging on Earth. Unlike what Raven Software did with the Doom engine for their game, Heretic, id didn't make any really noticeable improvements upon the engine. Nevertheless, Doom II was more popular than the original with more levels, monsters, and a double-barreled shotgun.
Doom II abandoned the nine-levels-in-each-of-three-episodes format that its prequel and several other games in the first-person shooter (FPS) genre used. Instead, all the levels (save the two secret levels) were presented one right after the other. This removed having to start stripped of weaponry every nine levels as the player started a new episode.
Doom II's two secret episodes were recreations of the first and last levels of the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D (an earlier id Software FPS in which the player battled Nazis). Wherever there was a brown-uniformed, pistol-brandishing soldier in Wolfenstein 3D, there were four blue-uniformed soldiers with a submachine gun each. The sprite representing these soldiers firing is actually flawed: Regardless of which direction they fire in, they always seem to be facing the player when they shoot. The German Shepards found in the first level of Wolfenstein 3D were replaced with Doom's bull/pig-like demon. The guy wielding two chainguns in one of the Wolfenstein 3D levels was replaced with Doom's cyberdemon. There were also a few secrets and Doom II weapons added to these levels. Due to a ban on Nazi material, the German version of Doom II lacked these two levels as they contained graphics of swastikas and giant portraits of Adolf Hitler.
The levels of Doom II were, for the most part, much tougher than those of the original. Doom II's weapon arsenal was the same with the exception of the addition of a double-barreled shotgun. A few new monsters were added but otherwise the goodies and baddies were all familiar to anyone who had played Doom. The player begins level one with the brass knuckles and pistol.
Weaponry:
Power-ups:
The Bad Guys:
Cheat codes:
Doom II requires either MS-DOS 5.0 or higher on a 386DX 33MHz system that supports VGA graphics with at least 4MB of RAM and 20MB of hard disk space or Mac OS 7.1 or higher on a 68040, 68LC040, or Power PC system with 8MB of RAM and 17.2MB of hard disk space.
Thanks Master Villain for reminding me about idbeholdL.
As mentioned above, the three-episode structure of the original was ditched for a simpler, linear progression through a series of 30 levels. Whilst 'Doom' had a, cough, 'plot' ('Y00 g0tt4 fr4g the deem0nz, doodz!'), 'Doom II' did not. It was a constant, unremitting river of ultra-violent carnage, with no 'escort missions', no 'hostages' and nothing that you were not supposed to shoot. As such, it was very theraputic, especially in four-player co-operative mode. No matter how well intentioned, co-operative games would swiftly transform into friendly fire grudge matches, made amusing by the fact that everybody started in the same room.
There were 30 levels, of which the last involved firing a rocket launcher into the brain of a giant goat. Yes. Some of the later, more complex levels absolutely required a 486DX2/66 or early Pentium to do them justice, which wasn't much fun if you had, say, a 486DX/33.
One other change was that the cheat code to turn off clipping was altered from IDSPISPOPD (which stands for 'Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris', apparently not a reference to the famous band) to the more conventional IDCLIP.
This was followed by Quake, which ditched many of the classic Doom elements such as the BFG9000 and the monster-packed levels, and the more satisfying Quake 2, which brought them back again.
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