Have a Blast ⭐

I’ve been playing multiplayer first person shooters since the initial release of DOOM in 1993. This was such a long time ago that I had to download the shareware freebie episode, consisting of 8 or 9 levels, over multiple days using my dial-up connection. And then I had to send a check to Mesquite, Texas via snail mail so I could receive the full game in return several weeks later. On floppy disks.

This was also such a long time ago that I had to create a special stripped-down MS-DOS boot disk so I could play DOOM on my first PC, an AMD 386SX-based system I cobbled together by hand. I had a friend with an expensive Intel 80486-based PC, and I was jealous that he didn’t have to do that. (If memory serves, the most significant difference in this case was RAM: I believe my PC started out with 2 MB of RAM while his had 4 MB. I think.)

In those pre-Internet days, DOOM provided two multiplayer experiences, a two-player cooperative mode and a four-player deathmatch in which four human players would run around whatever level and shoot each other. This would eventually be transformative, but the DOOM networking code was written to work over Novell Netware (IPX/SPX), limiting its reach. Online services like DWANGO quickly appeared to deliver this experience over dial-up, and future games would simply embrace the TCP/IP-based networking protocol used by the Internet.

Fortunately for me, I worked in the computer labs at Scottsdale Community College (SCC) and was friends with some of the more technical people there. People who pointed out that we had a Novell Netware network at the school, had access to the labs and classrooms at all times, and could play DOOM together. And so we did, usually in one of the labs where we could hoot and holler as we chased each other around. But a few times, we used the projectors in individual classrooms to play DOOM against each other, with the game displayed on an entire wall. Glorious.

I’ve always loved videogames, and I am part of the first generation of people to have videogame machines at home. But multiplayer, the ability to compete against other people in real-time, was a literal game changer. It would be many years before I would mostly give up on single player games, but DOOM set the stage for that transition. It was so important to me that I bought Novell-compatible networking cards for my PCs later in the 1990s just so I could play certain games with others.

Things evolved in time and mostly got better. MS-DOS games persisted through the end of the 1990s, but we transitioned to Windows in time. PCs got faster and better. The Internet happened, and I was lucky enough to be in the first major city in the U.S., Phoenix, to be wired for broadband cable Internet access thanks to its flat geography.

But there were a few side-steps in those heady days, especially at Id Software, where the coding genius that made all this possible, John Carmack, would turn experiments into shipping products at a rapid pace. DOOM begat DOOM II, of course, a fairly obvious sequel that was sold at retail—meaning physical stores you could drive to—and natively supported dial-up modems and local area networks (LANs). But Carmack was onto something bigger and better, and though the resulting game, Quake, in no way resembled the original concepts, it was a technological tour de force released in 1996 with a 3D engine and native TCP/IP support.

The problem was that the networking support in the original Quake, which enabled multiplayer, was terrible. Carmack quickly conceded the point in his publicly posted .plan file, and he set out to fix it. He did so via a complete rewrite, what he called “a biiiig architectural change,” that appeared first in Quakeworld that included a dramatically different and improved networking capabilities that worked well over dial-up and broadband. Quakeworld was a free update for owners of Quake, and multiplayer was so much better that I switched to it immediately, along with everyone I knew.

Quakeworld arrived with other improvements in late 1996, including custom player skins that we had a lot of fun with. And like Quake, Quakeworld supported mods in addition to custom levels, and these mods could be used to change the game in subtle or dramatic ways. The community quickly developed Capture the Flag (CTF) Quake mods, and they became so popular that Carmack created one himself for Quake 2.

My friend Brian and I were fond of using clown skins and then running around multiplayer levels, saying, “Everyone loves a clown” when we got a kill, annoying everyone else. But we also loved a particular mod that I cannot remember the name of, sorry, that added little power-ups through the multiplayer levels you could pick up and use. My favorite was called a Death Spot. And it is the reason you’re reading this.

A Death Spot worked like a World War II-era Bouncing Betty (S-Mine) or a more modern Claymore in that you could place it on the ground and hope that any enemy ran into it, setting off an explosion that would kill them. I would always place Death Spots on the teleportation pads that were common in Quake and Quakeworld, so that an enemy player would try to teleport to another part of the map, only to blow up instantly. That and the delightful gurgling sound that accompanied this death made Death Spots special. I would hear that gurgling and laugh every time.

Id Software wasn’t the only company innovating in this space in the mid-to-late 1990s. In very late 1996, 3D Realms released Duke Nukem 3D, an idiotically fun shooter with a sense of humor, and it quickly became a favorite for multiplayer matches as well. Duke Nukem 3D is probably most notable for its pseudo-3D graphics and fast action. But many will remember it for its ridiculous use of 1980s action movie quotes, things like “It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and I’m all out of gum,” spoken by Duke in his signature voice.

Like any child of the 1980s, I enjoyed that for what it was. But I quickly adopted the Duke Nukem 3D quote “Have a blast,” which was inspired by the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man, which was also ridiculous and in no way resembled the Stephen King book that inspired it. So in addition to laying Death Spots all over Quakeworld and laughing whenever someone transported into one, I would say “Have a blast” into my microphone as well to rub it in.

The 1990s turned into the 2000s and gaming evolved along with it. I played just about every first-person shooter ever made for PC or console in this era. And I started playing Halo and Halo 2 with friends up the street, now in Dedham outside of Boston, during monthly “Halo Havoc” LAN parties. Halo eventually got tired, and we tried a few other games by the time the late 2000s were underway, finally settling on Call of Duty. Which we embraced fully.

The Call of Duty series went through various phases, of course, but one thing that was common to most of them is that the multiplayer experiences had some form of Death Spot-like power-up, what’s now called a field upgrade, that you could employ throughout the matches. The World War II titles of course had a Bouncy Betty, for example. And the Modern Warfare and Black Ops titles had claymores, spring mines, and other similar traps. I have always used this type of thing, and I still get the same little spark of joy when I hear the modern take on that gurgling sound when an enemy player trips one and blows up.

Online games of whatever kind obviously come saddled with some element of toxicity, a byproduct of the safety that idiots feel in their anonymity. But this is a particular problem in multiplayer shooters, whether they’re DOOM in the early 1990s or Call of Duty or whatever else today, thanks I’m sure to the types of people who think gun culture isn’t an oxymoron. So it’s a tough mix, and I’ve experienced the terribleness again and again over the past 30 years, with various losers spouting racist, misogynist, or whatever other nonsense.

My Death Spots thing is no antidote to that toxicity, though I do mute everyone in online matches to help with that. But it’s fun, something I can enjoy privately now that I play exclusively by myself. And that brings me, finally, to the entire point of this article.

The other day, I was playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 multiplayer because there is something about the new game that isn’t doing it for me. I have a few loadouts, which are saved and named collections of weapons, field upgrades, perks, and whatever else, but I usually just stick to one I really like. And in this game, I of course use a spring mine as the field upgrade, as it’s essentially a Death Spot, sans the teleportation bit. And I’m running around, fighting those on the other team, doing what I do.

At some point in the game, I could hear footsteps because an enemy player was trying to sneak up behind me and so I ran around the corner, dropped my spring mine, and then doubled back around another corner. As I dropped the spring mine, I literally said “Have a blast” out loud, as I’ve done for almost 30 years in innumerable games. And in the same second, the enemy player, who I’d never even seen, tripped the mine and blew up. It’s like the passive income of Call of Duty.

And I just started laughing. Alone in this room, playing a game in which no one else can hear me speak, I heard the sound of my voice, really the sound of Duke Nukem’s voice, saying this ridiculous phrase as if by habit, without thinking. And I just laughed. And kept laughing to the point where I started crying a bit. My wife walked downstairs at this point and said something like, “What’s your problem?”, which is perfect. But I didn’t really hear it. I was still laughing.

Have a blast. Classic.