The Atari Jaguar conversion of id Software‘s classic Doom is actually pretty good. It’s a lot better than the Super Nintendo port, which should be expected. It was first released in November 1994 by Atari Corporation. id‘s John Carmack programmed the bulk of the engine, with Dave Taylor handling multiplayer code, and with Atari‘s help on the production and testing side of things.

The first trick to learn when playing the Jaguar port is how to strafe, which is done by holding down the ‘C’ button and moving left and right. This is important, otherwise you’ll be headbutting walls all the time. The ‘A’ button increases your run speed; the ‘B’ button fires your weapon; and the ‘C’ button is both use (open doors; press buttons or pull levers), and strafe. The 1-7 number keys select weapons and the ‘9’ key shows the automap.

The game features the full single-player Doom campaign as one continuous episode, with 22 of the 27 maps from the PC original featured, although some have been significantly modified. There are two multiplayer modes – a two-player cooperative mode through the campaign, and a head-to-head deathmatch mode with no monsters – but only if you have access to the “JagLink” connection hardware to link two consoles together. Did anyone ever have a JagLink and play Doom multiplayer?

Jaguar Doom has five skill levels (with “I’m Too Young To Die” renamed as “I’m A Wimp“) and is missing some monsters (the Cyberdemon and Spiderdemon monsters have been removed). The Jaguar version is also the only console port that doesn’t have any music during gameplay.

The frame rate is decent enough, although the resolution is pretty low compared to the original (and other console ports), mainly because – for performance reasons – the Jaguar uses double-width pixels, effectively halving the horizontal resolution. Atari Jaguar Doom doesn’t look bad at all, though, and it plays well enough, although there is some slowdown when the screen gets busy. It’s not quite as good as the PlayStation port, though, which was actually based on the source code of the Jaguar conversion.

See also: Doom II, Doom 3, Doom 4 and Brutal Doom.

More: Doom on Wikipedia
More: Jaguar Doom on doomwiki.org
Steam: Ultimate Doom on Steam
GOG: Ultimate Doom on GOG.com