- The original Marine on the DOOM game's box art was based on the game's co-creator John Romero.
- Romero himself posed for the iconic cover art by taking off his shirt and grabbing a toy gun.
- The cover composition was created in a unique and spontaneous manner, with Romero acting as the model for the Marine.
Many of us were enamoured by the kick-ass marine on the front of the original DOOM game’s box art (the helmeted, devil-blasting “Doomguy”). It has finally been revealed (after nearly 25 years) who the legendary DOOM Guy on the cover is based on.
RELATED: Fight Night Round 5: We Want A New Fight Night Game
The Marine on the original classic first-person shooter’s box art (illustrated by artist Don Ivan Punchatz) was based on none other than the game’s co-creator John Romero. Who would have guessed that one of the most iconic box-art images out there would be inspired by the designer, programmer, and developer?
Apparently, while trying to get the original model for the box art to perform the correct pose in the Id Software studio, Mr Romero decided to take the matter into his own hands and took off his shirt, grabbed the toy gun and struck the now iconic pose.
Romero recounts the events in his own personal blog.
RELATED: Doom Eternal Merges The Past With The Future – But Damn, It’s Tough
“Don Punchatz, the illustrator who created the DOOM logo and the famous front box cover art came over to id in mid-1993 with a male body model. Don brought a nice camera to take pictures. The model’s job was to strike various poses for the marine who would be on the cover of the box.
This scene took place in the art room where Adrian and Kevin spent their days creating the STARTAN tech base texture set, clay modeling characters, digitizing them with the NeXTCube workstation, scanning hospital slides for bloody walls, and listening to the screams from the dentist’s office next door.
The body model took his shirt off and started posing with our plasma gun toy. Don asked us for suggestions so I started telling him that the Marine was going to be attacked by an infinite amount of demons. It would be cool if he was on a hill and firing down into them. The model was holding the gun in various positions and none of them were interesting to me.
He did this for about 10 minutes and we just didn’t see anything that we thought would look cool on the cover. I kept telling the model what to do but he couldn’t see the scene in his mind.
Frustrated, I threw my shirt off and told him to give me the gun and get on the floor – grab my arm as one of the demons! Defeated, he deferred. I aimed the gun in a slightly different direction and told Don, “This is what I’m talking about!” Don took several pictures. I moved the gun some, the demon grabbed my leg, other arm, etc. At the end of it we all decided the arm-grabbing pose was going to be the best.
And that’s the story of how the cover composition was created.
I AM THE DOOMGUY.”
The most amazing thing about the story is that, aside from being the DOOM Guy, Romero is also the final boss in DOOM 2. Does this mean that Romero is, in fact, killing himself?
RELATED: Hogwarts Legacy Review – It’s Magical
Who knew that one of the most iconic video game covers of all time was created in such a cool way? We’ll never look at the DOOM cover Guy the same way again.