Doom 64

Overview

For twenty-three years, Doom 64 was gaming’s most overlooked masterpiece. Not because it was hidden — it sat in plain sight on store shelves in 1997 and sold modestly well for an N64 title. But its name implied something that discouraged the people who would have loved it most: the word “64” made it sound like a port, and the PC Doom community had already played the original. Why play a console port?

Doom 64 is not a port. It is an entirely original game — 32 new levels, redesigned enemies, an exclusive weapon, and an atmosphere significantly darker than anything id Software released. It was, effectively, the best Doom game released between the 1993 original and Doom 2016, and almost nobody knew it until Nightdive Studios finally ported it to modern platforms in 2020.

What’s Actually New

Everything players assumed was ported is original. All 32 levels were designed from scratch — none of them appear in any PC Doom game. All enemy sprites were redesigned by Midway’s artists with a darker, more fleshy-grotesque aesthetic than the angular demons of the original. The music is entirely different — Aubrey Hodges composed ambient electronic pieces instead of adapting Bobby Prince’s classic metal soundtrack. The Unmaker weapon — a demonic laser gun that gains additional beams when powered up with secret Demon Keys — doesn’t exist anywhere else in the Doom catalog.

The engine is modified Doom — same DOOM.WAD-family code structure — but the content is Midway’s original creation. Whether it should have been called Doom 64 at all is a reasonable question. As an original Doom sequel, it would have been received very differently.

The Atmosphere

Doom 64’s most distinctive quality is its tone. The original Doom was a horror game that was also cheerfully violent — demons were energetic, environments were often brightly lit, and the experience combined tension with exhilarating momentum. Doom 64 removed most of the cheer.

The environments are darker. Dynamic colored lighting — reds, blues, purples — creates a genuinely hellish atmosphere in ways the original’s consistent palette couldn’t. Enemy designs are more disturbing: the Imp’s silhouette is more gaunt and feral, the Hell Knight is more hulking, the Pain Elemental more organic and wrong-looking. The level designs emphasize isolation, with long corridors, large empty rooms with sudden enemy ambushes, and cramped passages that force close-quarters combat.

Hodges’ ambient soundtrack suits this tone precisely. Where Bobby Prince’s metal tracks made the original Doom feel like a heavy metal album with a game attached, Hodges’ electronic drones and minimal compositions create unease. The music suggests something deeply wrong beneath the surface — which is, after all, what hell is supposed to feel like.

Level Design

Doom 64’s 32 maps rank among the finest in the franchise’s history. Map 01 through Map 20 represent a steady difficulty escalation through well-constructed environments that reward the core Doom skills: map awareness, ammo management, enemy pattern reading, and the ability to circle-strafe through ambushes while maintaining spatial orientation. The later maps grow more complex and elaborate without becoming confusing.

The secret maps — accessible through hidden exits in the main campaign — contain the Demon Keys that upgrade the Unmaker. Finding all three keys requires thorough secret-hunting and delivers the payoff of the fully powered three-beam Unmaker, one of the most viscerally satisfying weapons in classic Doom’s history.

The Long Wait

When Bethesda released Doom Eternal in March 2020, they quietly released Doom 64 alongside it — the first time it had been officially available outside of an N64 cartridge. Nightdive Studios handled the port, working from the original source code to produce versions for PC, PS4, Xbox, and Switch.

The response from critics was embarrassingly positive for a 23-year-old game that had been commercially available and physically accessible the whole time. Reviews praised the level design, the atmosphere, and the Unmaker. The “lost Doom game” narrative provided an appealing frame, but what the reviews actually demonstrated was simpler: Doom 64 was very, very good, and the people writing about Doom in 2020 hadn’t played it when they were supposed to.

Players who are now discovering it for the first time are catching up to what N64 owners in 1997 had known all along.