Doom: The Classic vs Modern Debate

Behind the scenes, in the gelatinous chamber where the RPS Hivemind's life-sustaining anti-plankton is grown, Jim and I had a brief debate. "We should have a weekly iPhone post", quoth he. "But so many people will be angered by such a thing", quoth I. We both then stared at our own iPhones with a mixture of pride and shame, and we wondered. How would the goodly, but sometimes distressingly irate, readers of the Rock, the Paper and the Shotgun feel about such a thing? While we continue to wonder, we can at least justify this: John Carmack, the Great Brain of id Software, talking about the trials and tribulations behind the upcoming iPhone port of Doom, and the issues inherent in visually tweaking (or not) a true-blue PC classic.

It's interesting regardless of whether or not you own one of dem phones, dem phones, dem iPhones because it offers a few (tech-centric) insights into the making of the original Doom all those years ago, as well as that aforementioned discussion of whether graphical updates for a modern age are greater or lesser in import than retaining the game's original aesthetic - regardless of whether it was initially intended to look that way or was merely limited by the hardware of the time. This being Carmack, half of what he writes is so technical as to be insensible, but there's certainly a few interesting talking points thrown to the crowd.