As you enter one of the final rooms of E1M2, fireballs bombard you from multiple directions.
The demons casting them are on raised platforms, obscured by flickering lights, while a swarm of enemies lies waiting in a pit below. After you survive the onslaught and approach a darkened section of the wall, a switch reveals itself, opening up two paths to the exit. This level, Doom’s second, was the turning point for John Romero in the development of what would become an eradefining shooter. But the seed of his action gaming heritage was planted over a decade beforehand at an arcade in Tuscon, Arizona.
It was here, at Spanky’s, that the young Romero was first exposed to pinball machines and electromechanical games, along with the likes of Atari’s Pong. But, as he succinctly puts it, “everything changed with Pac-Man”. This early exposure to fastpaced action left an indelible impression, leading to excursions to his local university to code simple games on mainframe computers. “I was 11 years old, so I was sneaking in only during the summer when there were hardly any students and no one would kick me out. I could just sit there and program and learn, and nobody cared,” he recalls fondly. “During the school year, I would go to computer stores.” It was a selfstructured education that saw Romero create dozens of games while still in his teens, and led to his first industry gig with Origin Systems in 1987.
We catch up with Romero ahead of his Wolfenstein 3D post-mortem session at Develop Brighton in July, for a retrospective look at what must be one of gaming’s most varied careers, encompassing everything from the genesis of the firstperson shooter genre, social game development, the foundation of multiple legendary studios, and even an unreleased educational MMOG aimed at children.
MAJOR MAYHEM
Developer Capitol Ideas Software Publisher Nibble Magazine Format Apple II Release 1987
I knew early on that I needed to learn how to make stuff fast; I needed to know how to code really well to make my games
