The Game Boy Advance version of Doom was developed by David A. Palmer Productions and published by Activision in 2001. It is a playable and enjoyable version of id Software‘s shooter classic on Nintendo‘s capable handheld.

The graphics are a little pixelated, but the gameplay is fast, smooth and responsive, and the controls work well enough to give you a fighting chance. The only thing about the controls that is a little clumsy is having to hold down L and R, then pushing up and down, to change weapons. That said: there are a variety of control configurations available in the options, so you can change them.

Doom on the GBA uses the exact same set of maps as the Atari Jaguar version, including all the area removals and simplifications. As in the Jaguar version, neither Cyberdemons nor Spiderdemons are present, and Spectres have been removed or replaced with Demons. All blood in this version has been changed to green; some gory and Satanic imagery is missing, and Doomguy‘s face doesn’t get bloodied as he takes damage.

Other changes include: dead bodies disappear after a couple of seconds; there’s a toggle for dynamic or static lighting (choosing the latter speeds the game up slightly); there are four save slots; the status bar at the bottom of the screen is not removeable, and the “Ultra-Violence” difficulty setting has been changed to “Nightmare“.

Deathmatch and cooperative modes become available when more than one GBA is connected via a link cable. Up to four players can participate in deathmatches, and two players in cooperative. There are eight new and exclusive deathmatch levels in GBA Doom that have not been released anywhere else before. One downside to multiplayer is that the game often experiences slowdown – especially in cooperative mode – which might irk some players.

Otherwise, this is an excellent port of Doom that is generally highly-rated by Game Boy Advance owners. The infamous sequel, Doom II, was released for the GBA in 2002.

Note: check out the terrific homebrew ROM hack of GBA Doom that improves the game no end!

More: Doom on Wikipedia
Steam: Ultimate Doom on Steam
GOG: Ultimate Doom on GOG.com