Dooms been ported to pretty much every system under the sun, from highly-publicised console releases like the SNES and Jaguar through to graphical calculators and cashpoints (no, really). As such, its hard to blame Sega for their desire to get Doom out as a launch-title for their ill-fated 32X add-on a great port would have proved that the humble Megadrive was capable of standing toe-to-toe with the heftier consoles. How much pressure Sega applied isnt certain, but despite heavy investment from ID Software (John Carmack and American McGee were both reportedly involved with the port) the 32X version arrived on store shelves in a scrappy and unfinished state. Maps from the first two episodes exist in the game but theyre incomplete, with certain triggers and even entire corridors missing. As a result, its not possible to complete certain levels with 100% items, and the BFG weapon cant be collected without cheating. Cheating isnt advised, however, even though its the only way to see everything that the game has to offer. If cheats are active, players will reach the penultimate level and then find themselves facing an old-fashioned DOS prompt. According to the manual, this is supposed to be the developers joke the game would return you to the first level and tell you to try again without cheating. Unfortunately, this wasnt implemented either. Instead, the player is left asking themselves questions. Why am I seeing a DOS prompt?, How do I type into this thing? and perhaps most importantly, why did I buy a 32X in the first place?
