Published: December 10, 1998

Welcome to the...

  
       _   _ _____ _____ _____ _____________   __
      | | | |_   _/  ___|_   _|  _  | ___ \ \ / /
      | |_| | | | \ `--.  | | | | | | |_/ /\ V /      of
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      | | | |_| |_/\__/ / | | \ \_/ / |\ \  | |       the
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|  _  \  _  ||  _  |  \/  |    A        | |   |  _  |  __ \  _  |
| | | | | | || | | | .  . |     S       | |   | | | | |  \/ | | |
| | | | | | || | | | |\/| |      C      | |   | | | | | __| | | |
| |/ /\ \_/ /\ \_/ / |  | |       I     | |___\ \_/ / |_\ \ \_/ /
|___/  \___/  \___/\_|  |_/        I    \_____/\___/ \____/\___/
  

These pages aim to document one tiny corner in the DOOM legacy: the history of the official DOOM ASCII logo, and related works by Frans P. de Vries.

Note: the look of ASCII art in general, and ASCII logos in particular, can vary a bit depending on the fixed font you're using to view it. The logos in these pages were designed to look 'ok' in the standard Linux console font and on VT220/320 terminals, but they may exhibit unusual quirks and slightly weird effects on whatever display you're viewing them.


Back in the Summer and Fall of 1993, like many eager gamers, I was reading the newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action and anticipating the release of the next game by id Software, called DOOM. The frenzy was fueled in part by the pre-release DOOM FAQ's by Hank Leukart, and by spoofs like SPISPOPD.

On December 10, 1993, the first shareware version of DOOM was released on the Internet. Due to the incredible demand and my lack of a decent connection it took me a couple of days before I was finally able to retrieve a copy of the file via ftpmail (ouch ;) Since I hadn't seen the alpha versions of DOOM now collected in the idgames archive and the former ClassicGaming Doom page (sadly deleted this fifth anniversary), I had my first encounter with the powerful and impressive DOOM logo upon booting the shareware version that first time.

As the game itself was even more powerful and overwhelming, and since I had recently taken an interest in ASCII art, I decided DOOM really needed an ASCII logo equally impressive, and set out to create one as big as feasible on a single screen. At that time I was spending most of my computer time on VAX/VMS as a system manager, and my editor of choice on that system was EVE. It allows toggling between insert and overwrite mode, as well as freely moving the cursor around in the edit buffer even to places where no actual text existed yet, precisely what I needed to roam around on the screen juggling dashes and slashes, commas and bars, equals and periods :-)

So, after several extended lunch breaks ;-) of painstakingly typing and tweaking, the logo was finished in January 1994, and the result is probably familiar:

    

=================     ===============     ===============   ========  ========
\\ . . . . . . .\\   //. . . . . . .\\   //. . . . . . .\\  \\. . .\\// . . //
||. . ._____. . .|| ||. . ._____. . .|| ||. . ._____. . .|| || . . .\/ . . .||
|| . .||   ||. . || || . .||   ||. . || || . .||   ||. . || ||. . . . . . . ||
||. . ||   || . .|| ||. . ||   || . .|| ||. . ||   || . .|| || . | . . . . .||
|| . .||   ||. _-|| ||-_ .||   ||. . || || . .||   ||. _-|| ||-_.|\ . . . . ||
||. . ||   ||-'  || ||  `-||   || . .|| ||. . ||   ||-'  || ||  `|\_ . .|. .||
|| . _||   ||    || ||    ||   ||_ . || || . _||   ||    || ||   |\ `-_/| . ||
||_-' ||  .|/    || ||    \|.  || `-_|| ||_-' ||  .|/    || ||   | \  / |-_.||
||    ||_-'      || ||      `-_||    || ||    ||_-'      || ||   | \  / |  `||
||    `'         || ||         `'    || ||    `'         || ||   | \  / |   ||
||            .===' `===.         .==='.`===.         .===' /==. |  \/  |   ||
||         .=='   \_|-_ `===. .==='   _|_   `===. .===' _-|/   `==  \/  |   ||
||      .=='    _-'    `-_  `='    _-'   `-_    `='  _-'   `-_  /|  \/  |   ||
||   .=='    _-'          `-__\._-'         `-_./__-'         `' |. /|  |   ||
||.=='    _-'                                                     `' |  /==.||
=='    _-'                                                            \/   `==
\   _-'                                                                `-_   /
 `''                                                                      ``'
    

In the mean time, the first post-release DOOM FAQ v5.0 had been published on Dec 19, 1993, and to my relief I found that no-one had beaten me to a logo, so I submitted my version to Hank Leukart. v5.5 of the FAQ was released on Feb 24, 1994 with the big logo. A credit was missing, but Hank corrected that in v5.6 on Apr 17, and later expanded on it with a subsection 1-2-1 in v5.7 on Jun 30, 1994. The logo was also used in the Unofficial DOOM Specs by Matt Fell. Finally, in October that year, soon after the release of DOOM II in stores, I made the spin-off DOOM II logo which Hank published in v6.666 of the FAQ on Dec 10, 1994 (whole lotta dates, huh? told you this was about history :-)

Now, I was understandably proud of my creation, and the recognition it got by its publication atop the FAQ and Specs, the only documents at the time that I really considered worthy enough of bearing the logo ;-). So I made explicit note of its copyright and granted Hank the exclusive publishing right of the logo, which prompted the stern wording of subsection 1-2-1 in his FAQ.

As there have been no new DOOM FAQ's since v6.666, there's little point in maintaining exclusiveness anymore, and the past few years the logo has effectively been freely usable (although I still value a credit if you do use it). However, the first two years the restrictions prompted a number of interesting responses.

Read on about the DOOM banners that spawned from this...

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Don't miss the id logo on the last page :)


DOOM and Quake are registered trademarks of id Software, Inc. The DOOM, Quake and id logos are trademarks of id Software, Inc. The ASCII version of the DOOM logo is Copyright © 1994 by F.P. de Vries.