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Looking back ... (just my opinions...)...

  Doom killed the coin ops.

    A gaming revolution & a take-over.

 1993, RIP-Coin-op's. 

   An end to the golden Arcade era, the golden PC game era begins . . .

Some things revolutionised technology, revolutionised the time & Doom is one. 

Things in the gaming world in the main up to Doom's release moved fairly slowly & consistently. 

Doom did not abide to this & became a radically massive jump. 

It would not just be 'better' than the current console games, but it is important to understand that until Doom was released in 1993, that the dedicated hardware of Coin-op systems in the arcades enjoyed a clear dominance in sophistication & performance over any home system of the time. The outstanding work of the Doom creators & incredible coding by John Carmack changed this over night. 

Doom Episode-1 was free (shareware).

 Some random points...

- Doom finally killed the coin-ops, at least in the UK. 

  To note that in 1993 the latest coin op's could be as expensive as £1 per play.

- Doom gave players a free & far greater intensive experience than before.

- Doom better performance than coin operated or console games of the time. 

- Lan Network Co op & death match. & via serial connection / cable.

- The building of dedicated custom gaming systems had begun.

- Doom made the PC famous, build a system / own, if only to play doom.

- Doom adopted a remarkable control system, the mouse and keyboard. (see below).

- Doom was designed from the ground up to be modifiable.

- Doom creators greatly contributed to the early successes of Microsoft.

- Doom is responsible for the way technology evolved.

Inside a typical mechanical mouse from the 90's.  

A control system never specifically designed for gaming, but far more flexible & natural than controllers for consoles. The perfect controller for 1st person shooters, beautifully natural & analog.

A keyboard and mouse would be inexpensive & durable, however a mechanical mouse from the 90's could quickly get frustratingly unusable due to dirt build up inside around the moving parts. It would then need cleaning.

When using a mechanical mouse as a controller for Doom, the ball & even worse the 2 axis wheels would commonly get dirt & grime on them over a period of time, making the mouse movement behave erratically, rendering the mouse unusable. The ball & wheels would all need cleaning frequently to ensure the mouse would function correctly. The ball would be fairly easy to clean because the ball compartment could open allowing the ball to fall out, however, the wheels could be very auk-ward to clean without opening the mouse shell. The ball & wheels could also get damaged through long use. At this stage replacing the mouse was the only viable option. With all this said, a mouse was so cheap to buy, that the only real issue would be that you may not have a spare nearby. Wasteful & not very green ! & so later, along came the optical mouse, which resolved this.

Mechanical mouse from the 90's.  

Typical optical mouse of present day.

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