He may have made Daikatana, but this video proves that Romero still knows how to design an FPS.
Earlier this year, John Romero surprised gamers everywhere by releasing a new level for 1993's Doom. Well, technically the level in question replaced the first episode boss level of the original game, but the Tech Gone Bad add-on still served as the first new piece of Doom content from either Romero or Carmack that fans have gotten to enjoy in some time.
If you're curious about how and why Romero decided to develop content for Doom once more, you might be interested in watching this 40+ minute video of Romero playing through his own creation while providing commentary .
The video is a fascinating one if for no other reason than it provides the rare opportunity to watch a developer play through their own creation. Romero notes at the start that his motivation behind the creation of the level was to ease himself back into the practice of designing first-person shooter levels once more, but that it also has something to do with a desire to re-explore the Doom landscape in order to see what was possible. The original E1M8 level apparently called out to him as it represented a point in the game where he felt that he could have creatively escalated certain design concepts.
As for the fairly significant increase in difficulty that this level sports, that seems to have been based on Romero's desire to punish veteran Doom as well as heighten yet another design element of the original experience.
Watching Romero break down every inch of the level design is not only entertaining from an artistic standpoint but particularly fascinating as it relates to the many design tricks it took to make Doom work on older PC gaming technology. The amount of digital smoke and mirrors on display is nothing short of impressive.