Today I have a story. A story of fantastic proportions, one of the soaring victories and tantalizing defeats. A story, much like my others, of something weird, amazing, and unique enough it would feel like a disservice not to share. You see, ESPORTS has not always existed in the depth and variety that we now enjoy. There was a day, once, before the internet, a bleak era when the only option to find tougher competition was over phone lines, through a maze of DOS prompts.
A time often lost to the depths of history, back when when playing a game with multiple players often meant gathering together to sit in the same room and play one another on the a single machine. This is a scene where John Romero, John Carmack, and Tom Hall introduced oddities to the lexicon like “frag” and “gibs”.
And in that scene, in 1995, no event was greater than Judgment Day.
Romero happily creating DooM, unaware of the tailspin his career would later perform.
John Romero likes to tell people he invented FPS network play. I've never believed that, and after some research it turns out that Maze War and Midi Maze beat him to the punch by several years. It's doubtful anyone at id owned an Atari ST or PSD-1 or whatever the hell a Xerox Star is, so his claim is probably partially right in that they had no knowledge of past projects. Regardless, it's difficult to argue that the day of true mano-a-mano competition was ushered in with anything besides the creation of computer-to-computer play in Doom, and the software that let people do it cross-country.
Online play in those days had yet to reach the convenience and ease of use we have today (feel free to imagine a Battlenet 2.0 joke here). Remember the days when all games had to use third party clients to connect to each other? MPlayer, Heat, WON, Kali, Microsoft Gaming Zone? To do that in Doom, the technology was even more obtuse and primordial. If you wanted to connect to other players, there was DWANGO, a DOS based client that could only be run outside the memory-filling confines of Windows.
DWANGO went on to support other games, seen here
In 1994, when Doom deathmatch was quickly gaining fame, the only way to play was with people on the same network, which typically meant being in the same house or office. Not satisfied with that, Bob Huntley created the Dial-up Wide-Area Network Game Operation (DWANGO) which let you play against people by dialing into a central server in Houston (and later other cities) and setting up modem-to-modem play through phone lines. A service that charged between $8.95 a month, and had ten thousand monthly subscribers by the time 1995 was half over. Like when Twin Galaxies created their international scoreboard, it signified a fundamental shift in how players compared themselves to others. No longer was being the best on the block good enough, to call yourself good it had to be compared to a nearly limitless player pool from all across the city, state, or country. It signified a change in the community, an evolution to a much broader scope for competition and a huge increase in the amount of time needed to become the absolute greatest.
And in those conditions came Judgment Day '95. Sometimes referred to as Deathmatch '95, it was a uniquely modern event in an impressively early time. Announced in September 1995 through a surprisingly modest press release, DWANGO told players they had a very unique opportunity: to win a trip to the Microsoft HQ in Redmond, Washington. There they would play for a grand prize of a gaming rig (and a lifetime supply of id titles, though I've always wondered if this promise was kept).
The structure of the qualifiers share a strikingly similarity to early video game events, but were decidedly modern as all play was a 1v1 arena done through the magic of proto-internet play. Players would sign up via the DWANGO service, then receive their opponent's name and several days to complete each round. The matches themselves were a combination of three games: Doom 2, The Ultimate Doom, and Heretic, the total frag score at the end of a five-minute bout in each game determined the winner. The brackets were single elimination on each of the 22 servers, with the winners getting a free trip to Redmond to compete at the grand final event. They also flew in two European Champions, though I've yet to find someone who knows how they were selected.
The Grand Finals were held on October 30, 1995, the night before Halloween. They were held at a party Microsoft was having to showcase Windows '95 and launch Microsoft Game Studios, which led to a pretty immense scene as you can guess. There was a Ferris wheel, a full-sized circus tent with food, and a three-story light-up volcano. Jay Leno was the host, and GWAR played on the main stage. Bill Gates touted Direct-X as a gaming platform in one of the most bizarre public relation videos ever recorded.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KN0K58EfJSg Rumor has it this was never supposed to be seen again after the party.
Amidst all the commotion the competitors had their own stage, where they battled for a gaming machine supposedly worth $10,000. Having successfully unveiled WinDoom at the Game Developers Conference months earlier, Microsoft wanted to use this opportunity to show a newer game running on their software: Hexen, the Raven Software sequel to Heretic. I've never been able to find much about the actual format of this stage of the tournament, much less a full player list, but as near as I can tell it was a single elimination with each set being a ten minute deathmatch.
Going into the tournament Thresh, early deathmatch superstar, is largely remembered as being a favorite along with another North American named Merlock. I stole a quote from an old GotFrag article about how it went down.
By virtue of having already played most of the top players around the country and beaten them, I was considered one of the favorites to win the tournament. Another player who went by the handle "Merlock" was considered the other favorite. Due to a random draw, we ended up facing each other in the semi-finals. I ended up beating him something like 10-5. Merlock got so upset he slammed the keyboard and threw his chair off-stage. It was quite the scene, particularly since LAN tournaments weren't all that common back then.
Having powered through his toughest opponent, Thresh went on to kill in the finals a well. Even now I can't find the name of the opponent he faced in the finals, though I'm sure someone or somewhere out there has it. This is Thresh's take on the match some years later.
Although I didn't practice the game much, it was pretty evident that most players really favored the Cleric class as it was the easiest to learn and had a homing-type weapon that seemed more powerful than anything else in the game.
Since everyone expected the finals to be played Cleric vs. Cleric, I decided to go against the grain and learn the Mage class. Anyway, to make a long story short, I found a way to counter the Cleric super-weapon and ended up shutting out my opponent in the finals, beating him 8-0.
After winning the largest LAN of the time, Thresh went on to become the first star in an age where internet play was the norm. He was highly successful at the Quake series as well, gaining a lot of mainstream attention and fame for winning Carmack's Ferrari in 1997 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3iS3k-e-Pc］Red Annihilation[/url]. Eventually he retired, and moved on to entrepreneurial ventures, becoming most well known for creating Xfire and FiringSquad.
The entire story of this event is eerily similar to the foundations of our current scene. A few guys with a passion for games create a fun, addictive product. A second group of people find ways to nurture and develop that love, developing tools along the way to help support a small community. A corporation comes along, sees potential and gives their support with money and promoting tools. The end result is a product that is both strange and amazing, the kind of thing that happens only as a result of a lot of people working on the hobby they have grown to love.
A lot of information for this was taken from the books Masters of Doom and Dungeons and Dreamers, which are worth checking out if you're into general video game history. Special thanks to SirJolt for help with editing, and alteredclone for graphics.
This was a great article. It's great to read about how the growth of ESPORTS really started. I've only played DOOM 3 and that was pretty badass. I can only assume what a doom LAN must be like.
Wow great read heyoka 5/5 : ) The ddos interface is so baller lolol. You have to ask your self what is Bill Gates doing in that video haha no wonder he didn't want anyone to see it.
And before Doom, John Romero, John Carmack, and Tom Hall made Commander Keen, the most amazing game series ever. In fact, I don't even want to touch those old FPS games with a 10ft pole, while CK has aged so well and is still really playable.
Thanks for the read didn't know about a lot of it. I think i've seen some gameplay videos of Tresh just destroying people in Quake. Also I played both Doom and Hexen and man did i suck at Hexen :s
I remember playing against John Romero, Charlie Brooker and David Mccandles in some PCZone Quakeworld event thing - 16 player on DM4! (still the best quake map ever made...!)
We played quake multiplayer so much - I remember being interrupted by a friend during a deathmatch on DM2 and unconsciously spinning my mouse and trying to shoot him with my rocket launcher! Ahh, and they say videogames don't have any bearing on real life actions!
This article is a part of me, as much as I want to burst out into trivialities, I know how much these games mean to me. Thanks for posting this m8, there really is nothing else liek it.
WOW! Bill Gates is awesome! Backing the gaming community from a young age. You can see he really believed in the PC being a dominate force in the entertainment world.
Thresh went to my high school! Way before me of course but I later heard about him and checked out his exploits. Also Thresh is just such a bad ass name.
Lesson Learned: Do NOT interrupt Bill Gates. Awesome little article Heyoka. I can't believe something as simple as playing online used to be so complicated.
Nice blog heyoka, I'd second the Masters of Doom recommendation, Carmack and Romero are fascinating. That's not the only weird Microsoft PR video Gates did though:
Wow, I didn't know anything of what your wrote. My first experience with esport dates back to about 1999, 2000. Thanks for that insane write-up and the effort you put into research. 5/5
Good article, well articulated. I'm not quite sure what prompted such a post. I'm not very fond of the "Golden Age of Video Games," and I'm actually quite sick of hearing about it. I'm not sure if people worry endlessly that the players that are just arriving to TL don't "understand" the development that has happened over time, or if it's all in selfish vain, very hard to tell.
Very good and informative article, I was just musing over the abundance of lesser posts with similar topics.
Good article... I remember playing warcraft 2 with my friends over my 14400k modem and getting so angry if someone called our house because it would kick us off.
Great article. I wasn't involved in the Doom scene but I started playing Quake as soon as qtest and shareware were released and the scene quickly became quite competitive. There, it was always rumoured that the EU scene was far ahead of NA but since internet connections were so crappy back then and the distance was (and is) too far, no one really knew until the 9 vs DR event.
Thresh once came to the UK to play the winner of an open tournament; he won 50 to -1 on Q2DM1. He was also originally a keyboard FPS player and didn't want to switch.
First of all, sorry for necroing a seven year old thread, but since it deals with a subject that was 16 years old at the time of posting and my reply sheds a little light on some of the points the author was unsure about, I guess it might be warranted.
As one of two players not from North America I partook in the Deathmatch '95 tournament. To get there, I had won one of eight regional tournaments in The United Kingdom, then the grand finals (held in London), where the eight regional winners met to duke it out. The main tournament organiser was undisputedly a top 3 player from the UK scene at the time, and was also allowed to enter into Deathmatch '95 as a player. On to the event itself:
There were about twenty (possibly a bracket-ideal 16, but I'm not sure on the exact figure) of us that were entered into the tourney. We had all been given bright white stylised jumpers that marked us out as contestants before meeting up in a large lounge for a briefing, early in the morning that day. To further describe the surroundings beyond the tall roof, tables of refreshments, hangers-on and organisers that milled about, the demographic was largely caucasian males in their late teens & early twenties, sat around in an open eccliptic circle of chairs with a semi-shambles of rows behind these for whoever decided to pull up a chair to engage in the conversations. One guy was representing Canada I believe, 3-4 were of Asian complexion and a single representative was African American - the tallest figure in the room. Other than myself (Sverre Kvernmo, aka Cranium at the time), I could only name Paradox (Tom Mustaine), Macca (David McCandless), Thresh, Doomdude and Merlock, after all these years. One of the topics of discussion in the player group was the fact that already legendary and supposed true #1 Noskill didn't enter into the (US-side DWANGO based) tournament, as well as the rumour that John Romero would after the final match rise out of a pillar in the scene floor to challenge the winner. He was a pretty mythical figure at this point in time, needless to say. Everyone kinda knew it was the start of something bigger, multiplayer wise. Everyone had brought their own mouse and mousemats for the event, some had a quarter in their pocket to wedge the keyboard's run-button to always be activated, freeing a finger.
I played my first match against Doomdude, one of the pronounced favorites from the US side, from what I was told by the parts of the player group I had interacted with up until that point. After each of us picking an individual map to play on (I think we both chose Doom II Map 01, at least I did) we at this stage played one (two?) matches of first to twenty frags, rather than the 10-minute limit mentioned by the article author. And yes, it was a single elimination tourney. From a player's perspective, the setup for the match was absolutely perfect. We were each sat alone in our own dimly top-lit, sound-proof room, facing each other seperated by a large glass window. My concentration was on top and I edged Doomdude out in a close, but not hairsbreadth match. Post-game, handshakes and style compliments were exchanged between the two of us, though Doomdude seemed quietly dissappointed to be eliminated so early.
After the first match the contestants were a lot more spread out over several rooms, and those still in it were confined from entering onto the main floor (where one might have experienced the haunted house built for the event & checked out the ongoing GWAR concert, etc). This to ensure we were on call when it was time to face off (remember – no one had cell phones). At this stage, the hours really started dragging on without much follow-up from the organisers on how the tourney was proceeding. I found out Macca got knocked out first round, though I’m today unsure of who he played. I believe Paradox also got knocked out early. It was eventually getting late in the day and it became apparent that the organisers were running low on time to have semi-finalists ready for the big stage and the climax of Judgement Day.
For my next match, we were ushered onto a section of the showroom floor surrounded by black draperies, where dozens if not hundreds of computers had been set up LAN-party style. Most of the people in the area weren't Deathmatch '95 contestants, rather Judgement Day guests checking out new games, etc. The conditions were the polar opposite of the initial match. Noise level was massive, headphones available rinkydink and people traffic close to the available machines, heavy. During some matches, crew members had to hold up large sheets of cardboard to avoid Deathmatch '95 contestants seated behind their adversary being able to peak over at their opponent's screen during the match. The DOS Doom that had brought the contestants this far was ditched in favor of Windows '95, for the remainder of the tournament, throwing out the level of configuration personal mice, mats & coins brought to the contemporary meta's competitive edge. Suddenly there was mouse acceleration to deal with, no true fullscreen and sluggish frames by comparison. It went from being a test of high level DOS Doom skill up to that point, over to who could best adapt to the new environment. Mutually agreeing on a map to play was also out the window, and OP might be right about there being a 10 minute limit per match imposed at this stage. I failed pretty hard at converting my fast «fencing» style over to brute «club bashing» anyway, and was quickly out of the tourney. The dissappointment was only topped by id Software’s Mike Wilson (for the occation in intelligence agent operative costume – complete with a shoulder holster sidearm, white T-shirt & streaked back hair) debunking the rumours of Romero’s eventual appearance.
Next up were the semi-finals, ramping up to conclude the entire Judgement Day event. Everyone were gathered in a massive dark hall with the two biggest projector screens I had seen in my life, kinda felt like being in a supersized cinema with two screens, though it may be more everyday fare these LED days – certainly it was less organised. The now huge spectator crowd was absoluetly bonkers over the matches, rooting cheering, ooh’ing and ahh’ing at every frag – even during the warm-ups when the two contestants were attempting to make 180 flips work reliantly in Win 95. The first semi was supposedly won by a player nicked Stoney, but the second was the defintive highlight of the event – all-round favorite Merlock vs the ultimately triumphant Thresh. Doom II Map 01 was again the setting. After Thresh taking an early sizeable lead, Merlock battled back to tie the score after a massive rocket launcher barrage. The momentum of his comeback was stopped in its tracks by an uncharacteristic own frag, succumbing to his own splash damage on a tight judgement call around one of the map corners (never would have happened in DOS Doom, in my opinion). He never recovered after that, and Thresh took back the incentive with a better armed marine than Merlock’s freshly spawned one, keeping the lead given by Merlock’s negative frag for the remainder of the match. Merlock’s post-game rage fit was indeed pretty epic, he shot out of his seat and drop kicked the aluminum frame chair some distance across the stage (though I’m not sure it quite left it) and I haven’t seen him since.
The Hexen finals was more of a Gimmick for the Windows 95 platform launch and Thresh never had any issues dealing with Stoney, so there wasn’t any true tension even within the reduced format. Hella cool event and a prequel to large scale competitive gaming for sure, but more standing on the shoulders of Microsfot’s Windows-as-a-gameplatform launch event Judgement Day, rather than a complete separate entity or fully worthy "Doom World Championship". A bit rough around the edges, but a day with moment I’ll never forget - even though many of the details around it are now becoming somewhat blurry. I came across this thread searching for TV footage from the event anyhow (there’s one YT clip available but it omits Deathmatch ‘95), and thought I’d add my 2 cents.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7UR5J.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VBctf.gif)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/b6pEL.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Qt3TR.gif)
