DOOM II for Game Boy Advance | PIXEL PERFECT
10Check out my full playlist here, covering a wide range of consoles and games. • REAL HARDWARE
Recorded in 4K, using the real internal resolution of the Game Boy Advance, to historically preserve this game online in the highest quality possible. Consider liking the video and subscribing as it really helps my channel!
Doom II for the Game Boy Advance was developed by Torus Games of Australia and published by Activision. It was released on October 23, 2002. This version of the game does not run on a port of the original Doom engine, but instead runs on a custom engine shared with several other Game Boy Advance first-person shooter games called the Southpaw Engine.
In terms of content, the game is nearly identical to the DOS version, with only a few minor changes. However, conversion of the gameplay and rendering functions to a different engine resulted in a number of visual and mechanical inconsistencies from the original game; some are purely cosmetic, but others can have a significant—and sometimes detrimental—effect on gameplay.
Since the original Doom engine was not used for this game, all content and mechanics had to be converted to the Southpaw Engine. Despite this, some of the mechanics and assets used are closer to the original DOS version than they were in Doom for GBA.
While its predecessor carries over double-width pixel rendering from the Jaguar (equivalent to low detail mode in the DOS version), Doom II for GBA only uses double-width pixels on geometry edges, ceilings and floor textures. As a result, player weapon sprites and map screen rendering in particular appear significantly more detailed. When selecting Nightmare! skill level the game does render wall textures with double-width pixels as well, likely in order to lessen performance drops due to larger enemy numbers. To conserve performance, the engine always employs an aggressive mip-mapping technique on textures. Compared to Doom for GBA, this solution results in less faraway aliasing at the cost of a strong loss in texture detail. The option to toggle between dynamic and static lighting is not included.
All maps and monsters are present, including the Wolfenstein 3D secret maps and Wolfenstein SS enemy. All items are also present, including the previously absent light amplification visor and the blur artifact. The demon has its original death sound, health potions and armor bonuses give only 1% versus 2%, and the original DOS status bar is used, albeit rescaled for the 240x160 resolution. The fonts used in the game are generally much more faithful to the original DOS version than the ones used in Doom for GBA. Screen effects such as getting or picking up invulnerability or radiation suit powerups function much closer to the DOS original than they do in the predecessor; furthermore, the game uses equivalent screen effects to the DOS version when taking damage from damaging floors, whereas the predecessor lacked them altogether in this case. Weapon sway is also implemented in a different fashion. Monster corpses also disappear differently in that they will "flash" out of existence instead of simply vanishing. Interestingly, while the actual sprites for monster corpses disappear, the actual locations of said corpses seem to remain intact as an arch-vile still remains capable of resurrecting dead monsters by traveling to the exact spot where a monster has died and resurrecting it (complete with the resurrection itself playing out just like in the DOS version).
Control in Doom II for GBA feels somewhat different from its predecessor; strafing and moving back are slower in particular. Unlike Doom, the game offers user-controllable turn sensitivity.
The most significant improvement over the first game lies perhaps in the audio department; while Doom for GBA appears to play hardcoded samples straight from the two Direct Sound channels, Doom II for GBA features a software audio mixer that allows for more than two sound effects to play at once, along with sound effect and music volume controls. Music quality and faithfulness to the original General MIDI soundtrack benefit greatly from the use of sample playback in place of the legacy Game Boy PSG channels, and unlike the first game, calling the pause menu does not cause the music to restart from the beginning. Player weapon sounds may still cut off when the mixing limit is reached from playing too many sound effects at once, but this only happens on very rare occasions. Unlike Doom for GBA, Doom II implements sound propagation, meaning that monsters can react to gun sounds.
Other Videos By KUPOkinz
Other Statistics
Doom II: Hell on Earth Statistics For KUPOkinz
There are 448 views in 2 videos for Doom II: Hell on Earth. Less than an hour worth of Doom II: Hell on Earth videos were uploaded to his channel, making up less than 0.00% of the total overall content on KUPOkinz's YouTube channel.