A Review of ``DOOM GUY: LIFE IN FIRST PERSON'' by John Romero

The book under review has the following ISBN: 978-1-4197-5811-9

I recommended reading ``Masters of Doom'' by David Kushner (ISBN 0-8129-7215-5) before reading this.
I at first wondered which order would be most appropriate, but Romero mentions this book many times.

Unlike Kushner's biography, John Romero's autobiography mostly concerns himself, appropriately; this
book has a quite different tone by elaborating on Romero's life long before video games, long before
he met the other John.  It begins with someone asking him to give a talk people didn't already know,
about his life.  He begins with his family, and his upbringing as a pauper; I've long associated him
with violence and extreme behaviour, due to his video games, and so found the warning about domestic
abuse on page six to be a little silly, especially considering I'd long had this book before reading
it; by page eight, his father nearly killed him and his brother by leaving them alone in the desert,
purposefully.  Over the course of the book, I'd realize John Romero to be a surprisingly gentle man.

The second chapter begins with his mention of the term ``hyperthymesia'', perfect memory recall, and
it pleased me to learn this term which describes my memory also.  Despite everything his father did,
quite a lot more had been written by now, Romero explicitly mentions that he never hated his father.

By the conclusion of the third chapter, his father had left him, his brother, and his mother, to not
return.  By the early start of the fourth chapter, John had a stepfather, amusingly also named John.
John gained one of his first jobs at this point, a paper route, and had money therefrom stolen, by a
friend.  The end of the chapter has him and another friend visiting a local college in order to play
text games on the computers, since it was free, and from there John learned about BASIC programming.

The fifth chapter concludes the first of four ``episodes'' into which the book is divided, and tells
of how John's family bought an Apple II+ computer, how John learned to program by assembler language
with it, when his family moved to England, and of his experiences there.  This chapter also mentions
the comic strip ``Melvin'' John made, for the very first time, something often mentioned about John.

The second episode of the book discusses John's entry into the video games business; his first wife,
Kelly; and his meeting with Al Vekovious.  He joined Softdisk, and soon thereafter brought the other
John on board; this episode gives a differently-detailed view of events also in ``Masters of Doom''.

The third episode is similar, describing the founding of id Software, and the creation of its games,
from ``Captain Keen'' to ``Wolfenstein-3D'' to ``Doom'' to stop at ``Quake'', after which point John
left to found Dream Design, later Ion Storm, which are also the focusses of those first two chapters
in the fourth episode, respectively.  I get the impression John's writing is much more detailed than
that in ``Masters of Doom'' but figure, after a quick check, it's still merely differently-detailed.

I liked reading the longest footnote in the book, in the sixteenth chapter, which ends on this note:
``If you've made it this far in a footnote, you unlocked Achievement: Read the Longest Footnote.''

The fourth and final episode details John's time after id Software to the present.  This episode may
be that best in the book, perhaps behind the first, and is certainly more detailed than ``Masters of
Doom'' when on the same subjects.  The twenty-first chapter, ``Columbine'', is three pages long, and
stuck out to me with how tastefully it was written, omitting names of the people involved and simply
addressing matters point-by-point before finishing.  The twenty-third chapter is titled ``Open-World
Exploration'' and concerns John's activities in video games after the failure of ``Daikatana'' along
with Ion Storm; I particularly enjoyed reading about what he'd done in the ``mobile'' and Massively-
Multiplayer Online game genres.  The final few chapters shine light on unreleased games, give detail
on his current life, and explain his recent ``Doom'' maps; I pay nil attention, so it was new to me.

The book ends thanking the readers for reading the book and for playing his games, which was amusing
to me, since I don't believe I've played his games; regardless, I can very much recommend this book.
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