The Master Levels | *.WAD
id Software
D!Zone. Demon Gate. H!Zone. Magic & Mayhem. Duke!Zone. DukeXtreme. Q!Zone — and heaven knows what else! The golden years of the first person shooter were marked by two things: one, the beginning of mainstream, popular internet usage, and two, the cottage industry of shovelware compilations. The internet was not in widespread usage in the mid-90s and most people who did have internet were on dial-up; as such, if you owned a copy of Doom or its brethren, and you wanted get more out of your game, but you didn’t have decent internet or even internet at all, these compilations, frequently boasting thousands of maps and often coming with editing tools packed in, were often your only recourse. Often downloaded in bulk from online FTP servers and places like cdrom.com, these were maps from the wild and woolly days of map design, with limited tools and extreme variance in quality. (I myself had a copy of Q!Zone, which rather than a disparate series of maps scraped from FTPs instead claimed to be four complete episodes for Quake. Whether these maps were actually designed by WizardWorks rather than just farmed off an /idgames mirror somewhere and jammed together into a campaign, I couldn’t tell you.)
As a product, Master Levels has a complex history. id Software didn’t seem to have a clear vision of what they wanted; the initial impetus seemed to be to release a competing product to the likes of D!Zone, but conflicting reports suggest that id always intended to release a showcase of what was deemed the best mappers at the time. In the end they did both; Master Levels is twenty levels (well, plus a secret) not released anywhere else by mappers handpicked to contribute to the product, and included with it is Maximum Doom, an id Software-sanctioned shovelware disc that possesses many of the same dubious qualities as anything that WizardWorks or the like could have put out: about 1800 maps, many of them duplicates, some of them not even for Doom but Heretic instead, a few containing copyrighted material, and of course many of the maps are missing text files. Community archivist FunDuke did his best to catalogue it all years ago, and Herculine has tackled the works of the Masters that for one reason or another didn’t make the cut.
Which brings us back to Master Levels. Something to remember is that “Master” in this context doesn’t mean high difficulty (TEETH.WAD not withstanding,) but rather the perceived skill of the authors. Ultimately the project came to be coordinated by id Software’s Shawn Green, who had been doing scrapes of wad archives and had downloaded about 500 maps from the internet and early services like America OnLine and Compuserve. From this perusal of the community offerings, he selected six (well, seven if you count Teresa Chasar) authors, each of them a one-time big name in their own right. In alphabetical order:
The late, great John “Dr. Sleep” Anderson, a game designer and writer whose Doom work helped him break into the industry with early development on Blood (back in the Q Studios days — it’s unclear how much of his early work made it into the final product) and level design on Kingpin. The maps presented here make up the bulk of his incomplete episode, Inferno, modeled after the work of Dante Alighieri but with a humorous twist. Two levels were released for free; they were enough to get Anderson noticed and recruited for Ultimate Doom and the Master Levels project. (Side note: “Crossing Acheron” was considered good enough to get put on Doomworld’s 100 Best Wads list back in 2003.) One level was converted from Doom II to Doom 1 and placed as E4M7 of Ultimate Doom’s retail episode, Thy Flesh Consumed. The final level, “Lethe,” was never released; the most we’ve ever seen of it are some screenshots on Anderson’s website, but he seemingly retired from Doom in 2004 and eventually passed away in 2018 of pneumonia. (As a sweet side note, in 2022 someone found out that John Anderson, who he had never known, was his biological father, and upon discovering Anderson’s legacy in the Doom community, chose to get acquainted with the game to better understand his father. Thus we have “OCTATE,” the freshman release from Blake “Mr. Hypnos” Brown-Anderson, crafted specifically as a tribute to the good doctor. I’m not crying you’re crying.)
Jim Flynn only has two maps in the set, culled from his Titan series, and it’s difficult to really pigeonhole him just based on his contributions, with “Titan Manor” being a besieged haunted house with a vague gesture towards creating realistic spaces and “Trapped on Titan” being a rollicking Sandy Petersen-esque rampage with more focus on combat than aesthetic. But he’s mostly important for another reason, that is his being a member of Team TNT and one of the developers of Boom, one of the earliest big source ports for Doom. While Doom modding was possible with DEHACKED, it was Boom that laid some of the earliest foundations for what can be done with idTech 1 in the likes of GZDoom and its contemporaries — its new editing features are subtle, but add a lot, like animated switches, deep water effects, silent teleporters (which go a long way towards making more realistic levels) and proper elevators.
Christen David Klie is no stranger to the commercial Doom sphere, having previously taken the lead on The Lost Episodes of Doom, a quasi-shovelware Doom 1 expansion developed largely for the purposes of selling a strategy guide. His Master levels are big steps forward over his earlier work, but they still reflect the technical realities of his workflow, as his machine simply wasn’t good enough for sprawling, expansive levels, and so he focused on smaller, faster, largely straightforward adventures. At six maps he has the most representation in Master Levels, but he didn’t stop there, with six more rejected from the project only to wind up in Maximum Doom. He also was a contract designer alongside Anderson (and Richard “Levelord” Gray) on Blood, and eventually would serve to do level design on LucasArts’ Outlaws and Rogue Squadron.
Tom Mustaine is another well-known name from this era of Doom, with contributions to Final Doom and Icarus: Alien Vanguard as part of Team TNT, and Perdition’s Gate, a mapset co-designed with his father that which missed the window for inclusion with Final Doom, and so was later released alongside Hell To Pay, a megawad designed by Wraith Corporation, a mapper collective that intended to sell Hell to Pay under license by id Software — it was a weird time, okay? He would later go on to co-found Hipnotic Interactive (better known as Ritual Entertainment), creators of Quake Mission Pack I: Scourge of Armagon, the SiN series, Blair Witch Volume III: The Elly Kedward Tale, and, of all things, the underrated “Deleted Scenes” single-player campaign from Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. With a resume like all that, you’d expect a bigger showing in Master Levels, but oddly enough, he only has one, a frantic fortress fight in “Paradox,” which he created after id rejected his first submission, a rather shameless remake of Doom II’s MAP14, “The Inmost Dens.” It’s not a bad map in all honesty, but I think Tom’s real strength was in his music.
And last but not least, we have Tim Willits, an actual honest-to-Palutena id Software employee. Say what you will about the guy — and people have opinions — but his levels, co-designed with his sister, the perpetually undercredited Teresa Chasar, are great fun, not the most challenging but solidly designed with some nice aesthetics that would fit snugly in Doom or Doom II’s level set. Which is probably why one of their levels is in Ultimate Doom.
Despite this stunning array of talent, Master Levels remains something of the odd one out in the Doom canon. First there’s the fact that for a long time it was difficult to find, though nowadays it’s included in most digital distributions of Doom II. There’s also unusual structure — instead of a single episode or megawad (like some of the contributors believed their maps would become part of) the levels are all disparate, loose .WAD files, able to be played separately. There’s no new music at all — and, in fact, most of the maps are assigned to MAP01, so expect to hear “Running from Evil” a lot, unless you use the MIDI pack, which has its own quirks. And finally, I’m just going to have to say it — there are some great maps here, but overall it’s a mixed bag. There’s nothing in here that’s outright bad, but “Trapped on Titan” for example just can’t measure up to, say, “Black Tower.”
Despite the loose nature of the maps’ actual release, they have had some episodic arrangements in re-releases. The first console release of Master Levels was on PlayStation, as part of the PlayStation version of Final Doom (which itself was a weird mishmash of thirty levels selected from Master Levels, TNT: Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment, heavily favoring Evilution.) In practice, it’s basically the same deal as the original PlayStation Doom, with colored lighting and new music and sound effects for a scarier atmosphere. Later re-releases of Master Levels would include most or all the levels, with the PlayStation Network version being probably the definitive version with all the levels arranged in a roughly alphabetical order.
Of course, if you’re interested in playing the PC originals for yourself, you have a couple of options. You could, of course, just load each wad individually into your source port of choice (or even just DOOM2.EXE on DOSbox, if you’re kinky like that.) Or if you’re a GZDoom user, there’s the Master Levels Menu Interface, which functionally replaces the old DOOM-IT launcher that was bundled with Master Levels. (You could also just use any one of the existing launchers — I use Doom Launcher but ZDL seems to be the more popular option.) Or maybe you want to combine them into an episode? The easiest way to go about that would certainly be either Blzut3’s tool (which lets you select from a variety of level orders, the one I use is curated by community superstar Xaser,) or JPL’s WadSmoosh — a tool that combines all the commercial maps into a single massive IWAD with each entry selectable as its own “episode.”
At the end of the day, it’s my professional opinion that Master Levels stands better as a piece of Doom history, a sort of snapshot of what the community was like in those early days, than it does as an actual game. While with the right ordering it’s certainly fun as an episode — I wouldn’t play it any other way, and indeed that’s what I did when replaying for this review — it’s functionally a museum piece. But it’s a museum piece that still packs some punch, if you’re willing to give it a chance. How about it? You want to prove yourself a Master of Doom?
Attack (ATTACK.WAD)
Tim Willits & Theresa Chasar
If you're playing continous this one always goes first, whatever order you choose. If E4M5 from Thy Flesh Consumed is any indication, Theresa likely did the level geometry and Tim did the thing placement. It's an interesting remix of Doom II-esque styles, like the Entryway-style front stairs. Overall it plays a little like Thy Flesh Consumed's E4M9 (also by Willits) -- a fortress divided into sections, though this one is a little more sprawling. Pretty light on danger, though I like the light-beam trap that opens a monster closet.
Black Tower (BLACKTWR.WAD)
Sverre André Kvernmo
One of four contributions to the Master Levels by Norwegian mapper Sverre André Kvernmo (who is actually still active on Doomworld,) "Black Tower" is a magnum opus, one of the most notable and memorable levels of his unfinished Cabal series. The premise is simple: there's an evil black tower and you get to assault it, with five floors of mayhem to get through. He makes use of some fun mapping tricks to make this work, with each floor accessible by teleport (which way you're going is marked by whether the water texture is on the floor or ceiling) and otherwise kept in a separate part of the map. Cacodemons will fly in through open windows, monsters will teleport around the big chamber on the fifth floor, and a cyberdemon rules from the rooftop. The most important thing if you're playing continuous is to grab the red key, which will make the exit pit a lot less painful.
Bloodsea Keep (BLOODSEA.WAD)
Sverre André Kvernmo
This is probably Kvernmo's most straightforward and easy map out of the four contributions he made to Master Levels. It's basically a big castle in the middle of a sea of blood, so the name makes sense at least. It's fairly well designed with distinct areas including a library, a throne room (with an arch-vile reigning over the corpses you've stepped over to get to him) and even a secret dungeon! There's an air of the gothic to the whole proceedings and the vibe seems to anticipate Quake or even Doom 64. Fun map.
Canyon (CANYON.WAD)
Tim Willits & Theresa Chasar
A thematically incoherent mix of techbase and marble, Canyon only nominally features a canyon. Each area feels like they were designed separately then glued together, which likely explains the lack of cohesive aesthetic. Nevertheless, it's a little tougher outing than Attack, especially since towards the end if you decide to do an item sweep you might get caught out by the small collection of baddies who pop out of monster closets to replace their brethren. It's otherwise still not a difficult map.
The Catwalk (CATWALK.WAD)
Christen David Klie
Chris Klie's "Catwalk" is something of an oddball, even by Klie standards. Its most defining feature is the large empty space that bisects the map -- you won't be able to access it until the very end. Instead you'll have to clamber over rising and lowering floors to reach the east and west wings, which in my opinion is kind of pointless. Progression revolves around visiting each wing to open up more of the map. Combat is pretty sedate, though if you're playing on pistol start you'll want to grab the armory to the west first. The finale involves a daring run across the titular catwalk as it collapses behind you.
The Combine (COMBINE.WAD)
Christen David Klie
Aesthetically, "The Combine" is superficially similar to his other level "The Fistula" but goes off in a different direction with a night-time vibe and a mostly grey and brown scheme. It looks fantastic, each room having its own identity. Combat is pretty straightforward, save for a big fight in the multi-tiered outdoor area. It's a solid map.
The Fistula (FISTULA.WAD)
Christen David Klie
"The Fistula" exemplifies Klie's mapping style of compact, action-packed levels. It's fairly open-ended, with its striking Entryway-style opening room and two ways to go. The right-hand door leads, ultimately, to the exit, locked with a red key (and guarded by an Arch-Vile behind the gate.) The left-hand door leads to what I assume the level's name (a medical condition) is supposed to refer to, an odd intersection between four rooms. Combined with the music from the MIDI pack, the level overall gives me a bit of a Marathon vibe, with its slightly-overgrown-techbase vibe and dim corridors. Plenty of hitscanners, mostly shotgun guys, but combat is straightforward and not too taxing.
The Garrison (GARRISON.WAD)
Christen David Klie
While the fortress theme might remind you of Tom Mustaine's "Paradox," "The Garrison" is one of Chris Klie's bigger maps. Increased size, however, doesn't bring enhanced detail -- though it's still nice looking with its use of grey stone and wood walkways. It's also got a heftier monster count than Klie is normally known for, making for a somewhat frantic opening. It's not any calmer once you find your way into the basement, but there are some cool features like crusher traps. I do appreciate Klie marking the locked door at the end of a series of long narrow walkways *before* you commit.
Geryon (GERYON.WAD)
John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson
The sixth in what would have been John Anderson's (lamentedly unfinished) Inferno episode, "Geryon" is perhaps the most atmospheric entry, with a stronger sense of place than usual. As is usually the case, it's a big techbase type deal with lots of techbase brown and marble green, but the prominent use of white is striking. Anderson again shows his talent for fantastic lighting the likes of which would be highly sought after in the Duke 3D community, but the level proper is a bit weird, with something of a stringy layout in parts. The big centerpiece for the early part of the map is a large vat with stairs on either side and a soulsphere on a pillar within. It's a weird moment in a map that's otherwise surprisingly cohesive. The exit however is a bit of a thrill with a large room full of enemy to clear out. Fun map.
Titan Manor (MANOR.WAD)
Jim Flynn
Jim Flynn's two contributions to the Master Levels make up the beginning of what would be his Titan series, and the first, "Titan Manor," is both more and less straightforward than its cousin, "Trapped on Titan." Consisting of a large manor house surrounded by a boxy rampart, the level plays out a little like Resident Evil on steroids; until you clear the walls you'll be under siege by mancubi and arachnotrons, which will take any opportunity to snipe you through the windows. It's almost safer to stay outside and clear out the opposition -- including curious monsters from the back yard -- before finally venturing inside. It's an odd level to say the least, requiring at least a little bit of educated guessing at which wall will respond to a hump. The oddest aspect is the blue key, a multi-layered puzzle that can actually be bypassed with a careful jump in the right spot.
Mephisto's Mausoleum (MEPHISTO.WAD)
Sverre André Kvernmo
I sometimes use the term "puzzle box" to describe certain levels, but here's an actual one, a single big boxy type deal with a small exterior area surrounding it. You start out on the edge of this area with a bunch of skelly-bois for company. Getting inside requires some observational skills, and once you're in prepare for another skelly ambush. Making use of Tag 667 (hence this map's placement on MAP07) you'll need to take out the Mancubi snipers to proceed, but the rest is fairly straightforward, culminating in a somewhat anticlimactic finish against a boss spawner. I like the actual little mausoleum in the corner of the map.
Minos' Judgement (MINOS.WAD)
John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson
The fourth in what would have been John Anderson's (lamentedly unfinished) Inferno episode, "Minos' Judgement" is classically Dr. Sleep: a starkly-lit techbase outing divided into several different sections. There's almost a kind of "Shores of Hell" vibe to it -- the nighttime setting, the slightly subverted techbase (like "Virgil's Lead," Anderson makes use of marble areas in a limited fashion,) dark corridors, sprawling grid-like layout, and the slightly mysterious white nukage room all evoke Doom's second episode. It's a big map with a big enemy population, with the toughest part probably being the teleporter ring in the crowded northeast. The sewers to the southwest aren't too difficult to navigate, but Anderson throws in a few radsuits to make it easier. Fun map all in all.
Nessus (NESSUS.WAD)
John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson
The fifth in what would have been John Anderson's (lamentedly unfinished) Inferno episode, "Nessus" is the oddball of his Master Levels. Named for a centaur from mythology who serves as a minor character in Dante's Inferno, it's primarily a deathmatch map, a mostly-symmetric loop with a lot of intersecting paths for the sake of flow. What this translates to in single-player is a short, open-ended and absolutely hectic running battle with a carefully-selected horde of beasties that mostly consist of trash mobs and the occasional mid-level threat. It's a great looking map with some surprises to catch you off-guard (the invisible wall in the central area especially) but it won't hold you for long.
Paradox (PARADOX.WAD)
Tom Mustaine
Tom Mustaine is another legendary name from the early days of Doom mapping, but he has just a single map in Master Levels, a sprawling fightyard fortress by the name of "Paradox." If you've been playing continuous using Xaser's arrangement, this level will be a rude awakening after the relatively sedate combat of the previous levels. The main castle area is crawling with enemy with not a lot of safe zones. More interesting to me is the collonade hall off to the side that houses the yellow key at the end, with zombies hiding between the columns and some light resistance once you grab the key. Fun map.
Subspace (SUBSPACE.WAD)
Christen David Klie
Breaking the trend of the last couple of Chris Klie maps, "Subspace" (not sure what the name means in this context) is a mostly flat techbase complex with some outdoor sections. The opening is a bit obtuse -- Klie likes his puzzles -- but once you've snagged the red key and are on your way the level opens up a bit. The south is a dead end until you get the blue key, but north leads you to the bulk of the map, with some large outdoors areas. It's not always clear how to move forward, so make sure you check behind everything.
Subterra (SUBTERRA.WAD)
Christen David Klie
Chris Klie brings us an atmospheric trip through a mining complex, with lots of browns in his texture choices. The map itself is pretty compact, a mostly-gentle puzzle box of rooms with a variety of low-tier trash mobs. There are some interesting sights to see here, such as the big cavernous area being used for storage and the walkway through a blood-flooded chamber. Just mind you don't trap yourself in the slime pit before you raise the bridge. One of Klie's better maps.
The Express Elevator to Hell (TEETH.WAD)
Sverre Andre Kvernmo
Probably the most infamous map in the Master Levels, "The Express Elevator to Hell" is also probably my favorite -- at least playing continuous. There's two reasons for this map's infamy; the first is its extreme difficulty, right off the bat dropping you onto an erratically moving lift that leaves you constantly exposed to withering enemy fire. If you can shoot your way to safety, the rest of the map is a survival horror show as you work your way through eight different floors that on the map look like they're radiating out from the central lift in a wheel-and-spoke fashion. Each floor poses its own challenges, and whether you're playing continuous or a particularly brave pistol start, you'll want to find those secrets to give you a much-needed edge.
Bad Dream
Sverre Andre Kvernmo
The other reason for TEETH.WAD's infamy is the secret level, accessed by tricking an arch-vile into launching you onto a nearby ledge (provided you found all three keys) and thus giving the Master Levels' 20-map count a secret 21st. "Bad Dream" is as straightforward a puzzle map as it gets, however: a single large room with a bunch of Cyberdemons and a couple hangers-on. The actual puzzle solution is simple; actually executing it probably requires getting the cybies away from the invulnsphere long enough for you to grab it.
Trapped on Titan (TTRAP.WAD)
Jim Flynn
The second of Jim Flynn's Master Levels contributions is as Sandy Petersen as they come. "Trapped on Titan" is a sprawling, thematically incoherent murderfest adventure. For the most part it's ugly as sin, though the outdoor area with the buildings is nice-looking enough I guess. As with Sandy, the focus is largely on combat with a few puzzles and hidden doors to find. There are a lot of different areas each with their own conceit, culminating in a large infested corridor that has none other than a Cyberdemon for you to fight -- or trick into teleporting onto a crusher platform. My least favorite map in the Master Levels, but the shooting is fun enough I suppose.
Vesperas (VESPERAS.WAD)
John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson
The seventh in what would have been John Anderson's (lamentedly unfinished) Inferno episode, "Vesperas" is a mean little machine, laid out somewhat like a deathmatch level though I would guess it'd need a few changes for maximimum flow. The moment you open one of the doors to the outer yard the party gets started, and there's really no safety unless you duck into one of the buildings east or west. Even then though you should stay on your toes, as nearly everything you do triggers an ambush. It's generally a fun map, but you may run into a roadblock with the mandatory secret that is the yellow key -- I admit it, I looked it up on Doomwiki. Bad, Doctor, bad. Of course, by the time you realize you actually haven't found the yellow key yet, you've probably cleared the majority of the map, so the rest of the trip is generally pretty easy, especially since he gives you an invuln sphere in the star room to deal with the caco ambush.
Virgil's Lead (VIRGIL.WAD)
John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson
The third in what would have been John Anderson's (lamentedly unfinished) Inferno episode, "Virgil's Lead" is a spectacularly-lit techbase with some marble areas. Constructed of a series of intersecting rooms, chambers and courtyards, it's nicely detailed with some great lighting effects. The caged arch-vile is pretty non-threatening -- you're more likely to have trouble with the mancubi/pain elemental combo in the final marble chamber. It's not a tough level even if you're playing from pistol start, but it's got some fun combat configurations.
-June <3
Come crawling faster
Obey your master
Part of a series on Classic Doom
| Doom |
The Ultimate Doom |
| Doom II: Hell on Earth | |
| The Master Levels | No Rest for the Living |
| Final Doom | |
| TNT: Evilution | The Plutonia Experiment |
| Doom 64 | The Lost Levels |
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