Today marks the 25th anniversary of Doom, and to celebrate this monumental occasion the games creator, John Romero, has announced that he will be releasing a “spiritual successor” to the game, which will be titled Sigil.
A post over on the Romero Games website details that Sigil will carry on from where the fourth episode of The Ultimate Doom—the 1995 upgraded version of the 1993 original—left off. Sigil will feature nine single-player levels and nine multiplayer deathmatch levels, and will be released as a free “megawad” in February 2019. You’ll need to have a registered version of the original Doom to be able to play it.
As well as the free megawad version of Sigil, players will also be able to pick up two limited edition fan boxes—a Standard box and a Beast box—that have been created by Limited Run Games. Both boxes will include a “beautiful demonic” (if that’s a thing) over-sized box, with the standard version featuring artwork by Christopher Lovell and the Beast box featuring the same artwork plus a signature from John Romero himself. Both editions will also come with a floppy disk-themed 16gb USB (to celebrate how the original was shipped) that includes the megawad data and a soundtrack from legendary multi-instrumentalist Buckethead. The Beast box version will also come with a whole heap of extra collectibles, most notably a pewter statue of John Romero’s head on a spike. How very Doom.
Romero was keen to note that Sigil is an unofficial mod for the original Doom and is not part of the current Doom franchise, which is of course now owned by id Software, which is a registered trademark of Zenimax Media. It’s important to make sure that you can’t get sued, isn’t it?
In further celebration of the grand-daddy of first-person shooters 25th birthday, check out the celebratory video that Bethesda posted to their YouTube channel earlier today. Turn your volume up for this one, it’s guaranteed to get you in the mood to raise some hell.
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