According to John Romero, an iconic figure at id Software, doubling the development cycle for DOOM was a worthwhile move.

In an episode of the Deep Dive podcast by Nightdive Studios, Romero discussed how id Software revolutionized PC gaming in the early ’90s with a rapid release schedule. They released an eternal classic faster than most hero shooters added one character to their lineup. The technology they had at their disposal marked the beginning of Carmack’s programming legend and the era of fast-rolling 2D graphics in platform games.

While we take this capability for granted today, PC platformers before Commander Keen couldn’t keep up with the specialized hardware that powered console platformers. Id Software famously offered Nintendo the chance to develop Super Mario Bros. 3 as a PC port. Only after Nintendo rejected the offer did the team create Commander Keen. Romero credited this success partly to Carmack’s reading of Power Graphics Programming by Michael Abrash, a programmer and later id Software employee. In 1991 alone, Carmack and his team published three Commander Keen sequels, a prequel to Wolfenstein, Catacomb 3D, and a host of other games.

“We had technology with Commander Keen that no one else had on the PC yet. It was ready to be taken advantage of. The PC was released in August 1981, and it’s now September 1990. In nine years, no one has done what John Carmack did in just a few hours at night. Wolfenstein 3D was the first time we could say, ‘We’re going to take as long as it takes to make a game.’ Before that, it was always two months. We made games for two months for about a year and a half. So finally, we said, ‘No more time limit. We’ll do it as well as we can.’ It took us four months to upload the shareware version of Wolfenstein. We knew we were doing something special because we’d never seen anything like it. We boiled the essence of the game down to the player’s speed and movement and got rid of everything that prevented the player from doing that. The results spoke for themselves,” said Romero.

He noted that this cycle was a luxury for the four-person team that made up id Software at the time. Compared to today’s multi-year development cycles, though, it was mind-blowing. Game making has become exponentially more complex in the years since then, but id Software built differently. They invented technical and design solutions for 3D worlds at breakneck speed in a hothouse in Shreveport, Louisiana. It’s still an incredible time and place in gaming history.

Source: PCGamer