John Romero | Code Like It's 198x

In 1990 John Romero sat down at a PC at Softdisk, pressed the right arrow key on a demonstration two colleagues had put together overnight, and watched the screen scroll smoothly, as it did on a Nintendo console and PCs were not supposed to. “Time stopped,” he wrote later. “I was speechless.” Within months he and three colleagues had left to found id Software, and over the next six years he programmed and designed some of the most influential games of the decade.

Romero was the half of id that players could see. John Carmack wrote the engines; Romero wrote the tools the team built its worlds with, designed levels, named Doom’s DeathMatch and helped sell id’s technology to other studios. His departure after Quake and the long, public failure of Daikatana made him as well known for the fall as for the rise. In 2005 Computer Gaming World’s Robert Coffey suggested why people had turned on him: Romero had been “a regular guy you could identify with, gleefully enjoying his success”.

Fast facts

Born: 1967, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Before id: Apple II games published in magazines from 1984; Origin Systems; Softdisk from 1989.
id Software: co-founder, 1 February 1991; left in August 1996.
Major games at id: Commander Keen (1990–91), Wolfenstein 3D (1992), Doom (1993), Doom II (1994), Quake (1996).
Later companies: Ion Storm (1996–2001), Monkeystone Games (2001), Romero Games (2015), among others.
Return to Doom: Sigil (2019) and Sigil II (2023).

From magazine listings to Softdisk

Romero started on the Apple II. His first published game, Scout Search, appeared in the magazine inCider in June 1984, and more followed in A+, Nibble and the disk magazine Uptime. He worked on conversions at Origin Systems in 1987 and joined Softdisk in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1989. Wireframe credits him with the idea for Gamer’s Edge, Softdisk’s subscription disk of PC games, and it was there that he met Carmack, Adrian Carmack and Tom Hall.

Carmack and Hall’s overnight demonstration was the first level of Super Mario Bros. 3, with Mario replaced by Dangerous Dave, a character from an earlier Softdisk game. The team then spent a weekend building a fuller version and sent it to Nintendo. Romero recalled the answer: the executives in Kyoto “were really impressed. However, they didn’t want their intellectual property on anything but their own hardware”. The team used the technique for Commander Keen instead, published by Apogee in December 1990, and on 1 February 1991 the four founded id.

Wolfenstein 3D and Doom

Romero suggested the theme for id’s first big 3D game: the Apple II classic Castle Wolfenstein, which most of the team had loved. He and Carmack were, he wrote, “the only two coders on the game”, and Wolfenstein 3D took four developers four months. Its levels were drawn in a tile editor Romero had written for the Keen games.

For Doom id moved to NeXT workstations, and Romero wrote the map editor, DoomEd, in Objective-C. “I was finally using a real operating system with an incredible programming language,” he recalled. He and Carmack could edit one map at the same time from different offices: “I could see John moving entities around on my screen as I drew new walls.” He designed many of the game’s levels, alongside Tom Hall and then Sandy Petersen, who joined after Hall left in August 1993, and his ambitions sometimes outran the engine. A set of circular stairs he built for the second level in April 1993 made Carmack’s renderer slow to a crawl, because the same areas of floor kept being added to its drawing list.

He also named the game’s multiplayer mode. “For the first time we were putting multiplayer into our game with a mode I called Deathmatch because that name just made sense.” When Doom II followed in 1994, it hid a joke behind its final boss: Romero’s own head, impaled on a spike.

Romero looked after id’s business with other studios, too. When Raven Software agreed to make Heretic for id, he had them buy NeXT computers and flew to Madison, Wisconsin, to set them up with id’s tools and engine. Sanglard credits him with building up id’s licensing business.

Leaving id

Quake was Romero’s last game at id; he designed its military-base levels. He left in August 1996. In his own words to Edge a year later: “I thought about the decision for a year before leaving and started talking to Tom Hall about starting a new company about eight months before I left. Leaving after finishing Quake was the right choice — leaving after finishing a hit game.” He said he had stayed on good terms with the id team, but had not wanted id’s way of working any longer: “you can get a lot accomplished if you live at work. It’s not for me.”

Edge reported in February 1997 that he had left “following a shift of emphasis at id from game design to proprietary 3D technology”, and in 1999 it summed up his view on leaving: id was “no longer creating visionary game designs, but rather minimalist vehicles for its engines”. Other accounts put it less gently. APC wrote in 2004 that “constant conflict” with Carmack had seen Romero fired, and in 2022 Carmack spoke of firing him and said he regretted the way he had handled it.

Ion Storm and Daikatana

Romero founded Ion Storm in Dallas with Tom Hall, and in February 1997 Edge reported a ten-year publishing deal with Eidos Interactive. “Judging by the line-up of talent,” the magazine wrote, “Ion Storm is all set to become the next id.” Romero told Computer Gaming World he wanted to “take action games to the next level” by mixing in role-playing and fighting games, with a strong story and two computer-controlled companions: “There will be no more ‘single play’ by yourself.”

That game was Daikatana, a time-travelling shooter with four episodes set in futuristic Japan, ancient Greece, Dark Age Norway and San Francisco. It was planned for late 1997 on the Quake engine. It moved to the Quake II engine and came out in mid-2000. Along the way an Ion Storm advertisement with a crude slogan boasting what Romero was about to do to the player became notorious; when the demo appeared, Computer Gaming World reported, disappointed players were “referring back to the infamous ‘Bitch’ ads”. Romero later apologised for it.

The reviews were harsh. PC Zone opened with “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear” and judged the game “not going to set the world alight”, with a save system that made players find “save gems” and level design it found poor, “which is ironic considering Romero’s reputation”. One of its reviewers predicted it would be remembered as “the Heaven’s Gate and Waterworld of computer games”. Romero left Ion Storm in 2001, when its Dallas studio closed.

After Ion Storm

Romero and Hall set up Monkeystone Games in 2001 to make games for handheld computers and phones; it made several Pocket PC games and converted Red Faction to Nokia’s N-Gage. By 2005 Romero was creative director at Midway’s San Diego studio, building a new Gauntlet, Seven Sorrows. He told Edge it was “the best team-building experience in my life”, and that he was happy to be designing levels and programming again. Later came Gazillion Entertainment and Loot Drop, the second with the designer Brenda Brathwaite, whom he married in 2012. In 2015 they founded Romero Games, based in Ireland, where Romero had settled. Its games include Empire of Sin (2020).

Back to Doom

In 2019 Romero released Sigil, an unofficial fifth episode for the original Doom that picks up where the fourth episode, Thy Flesh Consumed, ends. It has nine single-player levels and nine multiplayer maps, and it was free, with a paid edition that added a soundtrack by the guitarist Buckethead. Wireframe found it “an absolutely unforgiving” episode, full of trap rooms where walls dropped away one after another, but “extremely cool”: “a new Doom episode in 2019, from one of the main bods behind it”. Sigil II followed in 2023. The Game Developers Conference gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award the same year.

Sources

Fabien Sanglard, Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D (2017): Romero’s foreword (“the only two coders on the game”, four developers and four months, the Castle Wolfenstein idea); Tom Hall’s foreword; chapter 3 (Softdisk, the Super Mario Bros. 3 demonstration and Romero’s quotation, the founding of id and its founders’ ages, the Keen release date); chapter 7, “Epilogue” (Romero leaving after Quake, id’s licensing business, Heretic and Hexen, Monkeystone, his move to Ireland); appendix G (Carmack’s commentary: the tile editor Romero wrote for Keen).
Fabien Sanglard, Game Engine Black Book: DOOM (2018): Romero’s foreword (DoomEd in Objective-C, naming Deathmatch, Tom Hall leaving in August 1993, Sandy Petersen); chapter 4 (editing a map together on NeXTSTEP; Romero setting Raven up for Heretic); chapter 5 (the circular stairs on the second level, April 1993).
“Developer Profile: id Software”, Wireframe issue 16, June 2019, pp. 50–53: Gamer’s Edge as “the brainchild of one John Romero”; Romero’s head in Doom II; Romero leaving in 1996.
Vic Long, “Get Ready To Rumble”, Computer Gaming World issue 144, July 1996: the Quake designers’ level styles.
Edge issue 42, February 1997: Ion Storm’s ten-year deal with Eidos; Romero leaving id “last August”; the quotations.
Computer Gaming World issue 150, January 1997: Ion Storm with Tom Hall and Todd Porter; Romero’s plans and quotations.
Edge issue 48, August 1997, pp. 70–72: “The Escape” (Romero on leaving id, the quotations).
Edge issue 73, July 1999: visit to id Software (Romero’s view of id on his departure).
Australian Personal Computer, September 2004: feature on delayed games (Daikatana, Romero fired after “constant conflict” with Carmack, the advertisement, the promised Christmas 1997 release and the mid-2000 release).
Computer Gaming World issue 192, July 2000: “Daikatana: The Soap Opera Continues” (the demo’s reception and the “infamous ‘Bitch’ ads”).
PC Zone issue 91, July 2000: Daikatana review (£34.99, Eidos; the four episodes, save gems, the Quake II engine, the timeline from a late-1997 target, the quotations).
Edge issue 149, May 2005, pp. 44–47: Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows (Romero as creative director at Midway San Diego; Monkeystone’s Pocket PC games and the N-Gage Red Faction; the quotation).
Robert Coffey, column, Computer Gaming World issue 255, October 2005: the quotation.
Wireframe issue 17, June 2019, p. 65: Sigil review (free, the quotations). Wireframe issue 42, August 2020, p. 29: Sigil as a successor to Doom’s fourth episode, its nine single-player levels and nine multiplayer maps, the Buckethead edition.
“John Romero”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): his birth; his Apple II games in inCider (June 1984), A+, Nibble and Uptime; Origin Systems in 1987; Softdisk from 1989; leaving Ion Storm in 2001 when the Dallas office closed; Monkeystone from 2001; Gazillion Entertainment and Loot Drop; his marriage to Brenda Brathwaite in 2012; Romero Games from 2015; Empire of Sin, Sigil II; his apology for the Daikatana advertisement; the GDC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023; and Carmack’s 2022 statement on Lex Fridman’s podcast (episode 309, 4 August 2022) about firing Romero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero
Bas Smits, Game Engine White Papers: Commander Keen (2026), appendix C (web, secondary): Carmack and Hall’s overnight demonstration with Dangerous Dave, and Romero’s “Time stopped” recollection, quoted from his own website. https://github.com/bsmits74/Keen_White_Papers