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.com ---- Doom for the Game Boy Advance retains the immersive 3-D experience and onslaught of horrific demons that made the PC version a classic. It pits you against cyber creatures and nightmarish fiends as you blast your way through 24 levels. Armed with eight weapons, you must navigate treacherous architecture, avoid traps, and use power-ups in a battle of skill and firepower. The game features multiplayer support through the Game Boy Advance Game Link cable. Two to four players can test their mettle through all of the single-player levels and an additional eight dedicated multiplayer levels. Or two players can team up to blast their way through single-player levels in cooperative mode. Review ------ If you don't know what Doom is, you must be one of those weirdoes who had something better to do with their time in the summer of 1993 than play PC games. Doom is one of the most influential games of all time, popularizing the whole first-person shoot-'em-up genre, and is thus the spiritual granddaddy of classics like Quake ( /exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=videogames&field-%20keywords=Quake&field-title=-pelican/${0} ), Half-Life ( /exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=videogames&field-%20keywords=half%20life/${0} ), GoldenEye 007 ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000DMAT/${0} ), and even the more recent Halo ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NZ1G/${0} ). Indeed, the major draw for this portable version of Doom is the cloying wave of nostalgia it brings to hard-core gamers as they set about fighting the hordes of hell with a and a chainsaw. This is an almost perfect conversion of the original (or at least the original running on an average-speed PC of the time) that even manages to include a four-player deathmatch and a cooperative two-player mode. The music is the same, the level design is the same, and, best of all, the gameplay is the same (strafing works surprisingly well on the GBA's shoulder buttons). The only problem with the game, other than the inexplicable use of green blood even though it has a 15 rating, is that the graphics are a bit jerky in places. This is presumably why the developers had to ditch the two huge end-of-level bosses from the second and third episodes. In general, though, this is a technical tour de force that will have any remaining GBA doubters reaching for their wallets. --David Jenkins -- .co.uk