A rumour started swirling on Twitter this week that Doom was set in March 2022, meaning that we're now in the literal month of Doom. Fitting, eh? It was sparked by an old SNES manual, but Doom co-creator John Romero himself has set the record straight.
"Doom does not take place in March 2022," Romero wrote on Twitter. "Doom is timeless. Somehow, the manual for the Super Nintendo Doom had a date in it, but that date did not come from anyone at id [Software]."
You can view the manual online now and the front cover is written as an "emergency procedure" guide, supposedly "issued by authority of the chief of planetary operations." It lists March 15, 2022, as the date, so many were quick to point out that we've finally caught up to Doom's timeline in real life. However, this seems like something that happened outside of developer id Software's purview and was never the intention when designing the game.
But Romero did add that "it's always a good day to rip and tear," encouraging fans to celebrate Doom regardless of the date. However, finding a legal copy of the SNES version might not be so easy.
Doom was launched on a slew of different consoles and each version differed to ensure that it would run as smoothly as possible. We saw this with Doom 64, the fittingly named version of the N64 game, which recently saw a re-release to Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. The SNES version is more akin to the PC version though, pulling 22 levels directly while shrinking the HUD and gutting floor and ceiling textures.
It also has no back-ups so, if you die, you have to start the level over from the beginning. If anything, it's a harder build of Doom. And with the SNES' limited memory, enemies are always facing the player, so combat is much more difficult. If you want to try a version of Doom that's a little less forgiving, the SNES build will scratch that itch with a chainsaw.