Fun Times: Browser Doom, Heretic & Hexen

While adult-me might have baulked at Killing Floor's testosteronal presentation, I still revert gladly back to dumb little teenage-me whenever I play the original Doom. To this end, I am diligently ensuring I'm able to play the thing anywhere and anywhen. There is nowhere in my house from which I cannot reach Doom within a matter of seconds, be it on my PC, my 360, my hacked iPhone. In case of grumpy, old-man-y emergency: fire up the game. This has become even easier now there's a proper-shiny, free in-browser version of id's medium-defining dumbass shooter. Bonus: it includes Heretic and Hexen too.

It's the work of one of Newgrounds' habitual mega-brains, a chap named, simply, Mike. An earlier version of his Flash port of Doom scooped a £3000 prize in an FHM-sponsored webgame compo, half of which he donated to charity and the rest to the free software foundation. What a gent.

The game is Doom (and Hexen and Heretic) as you'd expect - no fancy/silly modified graphics or whatnot - the major exception being that it doesn't support standard mouselook due to a foible of Flash 10. Yes, I'm afraid it requires Flash 10 and thus cannot be said to be truly browser/OS agnostic, which will no doubt turn at least 12 of you into rage-pumped looneymen. But it's free and it's ace, so at least let the rest of us enjoy it in peace. Back to mouselook - you need to hold down the left mouse button to look around, which in turn shunts fire over to the spacebar, and use to the R button. Sounds a little clunky, but honestly it works just fine.

What next for old man Doom, then? I do miss the site itplaysdoom.com, sadly long-deaded, but at one time quite the litany of unlikely devices that could handle id's singleplayer masterpiece. Perhaps RPS could resurrect it here.... Check out some of the late site's more unlikely Doom finds courtesy of the Waybackmachine, however.