A speedrunner managed to complete the first level of Doom 2 in 4 seconds. The previous record, 5 seconds, dated from 1998.
Records are made to be broken, but some still seem to be set in stone. In 1998, when a man named Thomas Pilger completed the first level of Doom 2 in five seconds, no one believed he would be surpassed. Finally, 26 years later, someone managed to go down to 4 seconds, at the end of a resounding feat, spotted Kotaku in an article published on April 17.
4shockblast shared his feat in a YouTube video on April 6. He took exactly 4.97 seconds to complete the introductory level of Doom 2 (which is short, even for the average person). 4.97 is very close to five seconds, but it’s the first number that counts and, in reality, Thomas Pilger’s time was 5.97 seconds. 4shockblast has therefore gained a full second in 26 years, which is unheard of.
4 seconds to complete level 1 of Doom 2
Level 1 of Doom 2 is ultra-short. Anyone can finish it in less than a minute. It just consists of a corridor with a few turns, populated with enemies. Naturally, speedrunners looking to go as fast as possible don’t take the time to kill monsters that get in their way.
This tiny duration is already a good basis for obtaining implausibly short times. But, it also implies that there is very, very little room for optimization. How to save a few milliseconds on an attempt that takes just a handful of seconds? That was 4shockblast’s challenge and why no one had achieved it in almost 30 years.
“ I don’t know what madness led me to look at this record last year… », Confides 4shockblast in a text attached to his video, in which he explains that the time of speedrunner Dastan (5.14) motivated him. Above all, he details the sum of the precise techniques he used to gain time throughout the journey. For example, you have to attract enemies to use the “thingrun”, which allows you to gain speed if you brush against them while going along the wall. To do this, it is necessary to shoot at the right time, neither too early nor too late. It’s one trick among many others, and you have to combine them and use them wisely, with extremely precise timing, to reach the famous 4 seconds.
4shockblast’s record, which needed thousands and thousands of attempts to succeed, comes at the right time: May 5, 2024, Doom 2 will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. And, now we wonder if anyone will be motivated enough to go down to 3 seconds. A priori, this will be impossible. But that was also what we told ourselves for the 4 seconds.
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