![]() It sounds arrogant, but it was more than just youthful bravado – they’d had eureka moments in the office and released they were breaking new ground. So much so that the team felt confident in hyping the next project, Doom, as “the greatest game ever!” in pre-release publicity. They appreciated the hard technical work we did to make it possible for a PC to be like a Nintendo.” “The people who reviewed the Commander Keen games were just, ‘Mind blown!’. “People were aware of us after Wolfenstein – and Commander Keen!” he recalls fondly. What was the atmosphere like in the early days? Even before Doom, John Carmack, Tom Hall, and John Romero were getting noticed. Games were a passion right from the start for the young Romero and inspired a period of voracious learning, and he landed a gig coding for the US Air Force aged 15.Ī big chunk of the book is about his adult experiences working in the games industry, the programming breakthroughs of the early 1990s, turning the PC into a games machine, learning about business, and subsequent disagreements in the boardroom. “I heard from people that they really appreciate me being candid about my experiences.” Breakthrough games and worldwide acclaim ![]() Everybody in the family knows about everything that happened,” he tells us. In preparing the book, Romero spent time “fact-checking” and making sure friends and family were comfortable with the stories he would tell. I hope people in a similar situation might see themselves in the book and see that they can get through it as well – I thought it’s important to put the difficult stuff in there so that people could identify with some of those stories.” But it was a difficult experience growing up. I love my family, so I didn’t want to write anything that made people think I didn’t like where I came from. “But writing about them not in a harsh way either was important for me. “It was definitely difficult to write about those things,” he confesses. He writes matter-of-factly about his formative experiences, his young parents living with very little, the support of his grandmother, and about domestic violence – the “poverty and alcoholic chaos”, he calls it in the book.ĭoom Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero (Abrams Press, £21.99), out Thursday, 20th July. Afterwards, people said, ‘You should really put that in a book!’ That’s a good idea, so I just laid it all out there.” Instead of hearing about a specific game, the organisers asked that they’d like to learn about my life and what made the person who made Doom. “I could tell people were shocked and surprised!” he says, recalling the first time he spoke publicly of his childhood. Before reading about his first games experiences, we’re hit with an eye-opening account of a difficult childhood, including drugs and murder, all before page 5. He’s part Mexican-American, part Yaqui and Cherokee. The photo of John Romero is by Natalie Greer Studios, supplied by Abrams & Chronicle. The memoir, Doom Guy: Life in First Person by John Romero, published by Abrams Press, will hit shelves on Thursday, 20th July. Today you can read an excerpt of his chapter on mobile gaming, too, thanks to publisher Abrams Press. Everyone will always be playing games in their hand John Romero took the chance to sit down with him last week to discuss his journey, his philosophy and passions, and the technical challenges he’s overcome as a games developer. ![]() In a nod to his most famous creation and its protagonist, the book is called Doom Guy: Life in First Person. Doom celebrates its 30th anniversary this December, and Romero publishes his autobiography later this July. Now he’s an indie developer again, working on an as-yet-untitled Unreal 5 project. Hyperspace Delivery Boy! developed by Monkeystone Games. Over 20 years ago, his outfit Monkeystone Games realised the future would be portable and developed early hits Hyperspace Delivery Boy! and Congo Cube, as well as the mobile port of Red Faction. ![]() Following Ion Storm and the challenges of Daikatana, Romero went from being an FPS A-lister to a pioneer in handheld and mobile gaming. They saw the id Software developers become idols of the burgeoning 1990s games industry.īut Romero also has a history with mobile gaming. Titles like Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3-D and Doom broke technical boundaries. With John Carmack, Tom Hall, Adrian Carmack and others, he defined the first-person shooter genre. ![]() But the word applies to John Romero, who was one of the first true rock stars of gaming. That’s true even in the games industry, where the collaborative nature of development creates few genuine celebrities. ![]()
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