Summary
John Romeroisn’t just a name etched into gaming history—he’s the guy whose fingerprints are all over the DNA of modern shooters, modding culture, and the very concept of level design as art. Co-founding id Software and co-creatingDOOMwould’ve been enough to cement his legacy, but his portfolio is deeper, weirder, and way more influential than most people realize.
Across a mix ofgenre-defining shootersand cult classics, Romero’s games have shaped what it means to play fast, die faster, and mod everything in sight. Here arethe seven best titles that carry Romero’s design touch—ranked not just by their fame, but by their raw creative impact.
Genre
Platformer
Before the rocket launchers and lava-filled deathmatch arenas, there wasDangerous Dave—a scrappy little platformer built in 1988 while Romero was still working at Softdisk. The game looks simple, even by the standards of late-80s PC gaming, but it has something most early DOS platformers lacked: real personality. Dave, a red-hatted daredevil, traverses a house filled with spike traps, disappearing platforms, and killer wildlife—all while Romero slips in subtle touches that feel way ahead of their time.
The real charm ofDangerous Daveishow unforgiving it iswithout ever feeling unfair. There’s no coddling here, no tutorials—just trial, error, and a whole lot of quick reflexes. Considering it was written in Turbo Pascal with code borrowed and iterated on in future id Software tools,Dangerous Daveis practically the proto-Commander Keen, making it foundational to Romero’s evolution as a game dev. It’s a game that punishes recklessness and rewards experimentation, which, if players squint hard enough, kind of feels like the Romero design ethos in embryo form.
Romero didn’t directly design levels forHexen, but his fingerprints are all over its DNA. Developed by Raven Software using id’sDOOMengine and published by id Software,Hexenevolved fromHereticby cranking up the complexity and branching paths. What started as a dark fantasy shooter became something more intricate—almost a puzzle box of a game. And that complexity? A lot of it came from Romero encouraging Raven to stretch what the engine could do.
Players could now choose between three distinct classes—Fighter, Cleric, and Mage—each with different weapons, strengths, and puzzle-solving approaches. This meant one person’s run through a level might feel totally different from another’s, makingHexenfeel less like a linear shooter and more like a labyrinthine RPG-lite experiment. Hubs, teleporters, and puzzles that stretched across multiple levels were introduced, redefining howFPS mapscould be structured. Romero’s role as a producer might’ve been one step removed, but his push for ambitious, non-linear level design clearly shaped the final product.
Here’s where things start to get more magical—literally.Heretic, released in 1994 and developed by Raven Software under Romero’s supervision, brought fantasy into theDOOMmold. Players weren’t blasting demons on Mars anymore. They were an elven mage named Corvus, casting spells and dodging flaming skulls in a corrupted medieval realm.
Romero helped Raven adapt theDOOMengine for inventory management, flying enemies, and looking up and down—none of whichDOOMsupported natively. That’s whyHereticdoesn’t just feel like a reskin but an evolution. The world wasdripping with atmosphere, with levels built around flooded cathedrals, cursed dungeons, and cryptic runes that looked like they’d been scrawled in blood and spite.
The arsenal, from the dragon claw to the hellstaff and every weapon in between, was distinct, loud, and dripping in dark fantasy flavor.Hereticwas where Romero’s love for fast-paced action met Raven’s world-building, creating a strange but brilliant hybrid that players still mod and speedrun to this day.
WhenWolfenstein 3Ddropped in 1992, it didn’t just kick the doors open on a genre—it kicked them open with an MP40 and screamed in digitized German. It’s easy to forget how radical this game was at the time. First-person games had existed in small pockets before, but nothing played likeWolfenstein. It was fast, violent, unapologetically pulpy, and designed by Romero with a level of fluidity that left everything else in the dust.
From the maze-like layouts to the power-up placements to the cathartic “kill everything in the room” pacing, Romero’s level design made every floor of Castle Wolfenstein feel like a murder playground. And the enemies? Nazis, mutants, and a chaingun-wielding mech-Hitler. Subtle it was not, but it didn’t need to be.
Romero’s code contributions—like smooth movement, optimized raycasting, and cleverly hidden secrets—laid the groundwork for the FPS genre’s entire identity. WithoutWolfenstein 3D,DOOMwouldn’t have been made. That’s not just legacy—that’s architecture.
Doom 2didn’t reinvent the wheel—it just strapped a chaingun to it. Building directly on the bones ofDOOM, the 1994 sequel is bigger, meaner, and more crowded with demons than ever before. While the engine mainly stayed the same, Romero and the rest of the team focused on dialing everything up, especially the level design.
Romero’s contributions includedCircle of Death(MAP11) andNirvana(MAP21), both pushing players into brutal arena fights and ambushes that punished tunnel vision. The Super Shotgun debuted here, and it’s still considered one of the mostsatisfying weapons in FPS history—an absolute hand cannon that made even Hell Knights flinch.
The levels were more vertical, more interconnected, and more punishing. And unlike the Martian corridors of the first game,Doom2spilled its demons onto Earth, adding urban decay and twisted versions of human cities into the mix. It felt rawer, dirtier, and somehow even more metal. For many fans, this is whereDoom’s legacy truly hardened into legend.
WhenQuakearrived in 1996, it didn’t just bring id Software into the 3D era—it rewired the entire FPS genre. Full 3D models. Real-time lighting. LAN and internet multiplayer. And a grungy aesthetic that fused Lovecraftian horror with tech-heavy industrial design. Romero’s design philosophy was all overQuake, especially in its brutal difficulty spikes, wide-open spaces, and secrets that rewarded daring movement.
Despite tensions during development and Romero’s eventual departure shortly after launch, his influence on the original level design and multiplayer concepts helped solidifyQuakeas more than a tech demo. It was a culture shift. Deathmatch mode exploded in popularity, becoming a staple ofLAN partiesand a precursor to eSports. Modding also exploded—Team Fortressstarted life as aQuakemod.
Romero’s famously unfinished fifth episode,Sigil, was later released in 2019 as a spiritual continuation of his vision. This brought things full circle for fans who remembered rocket-jumping through dimly lit corridors and wondering if they’d just seen Cthulhu blink.
This is where everything snapped into place.DOOMwasn’t the first FPS, but it’s the reason FPS games became the blueprint for 90s gaming. The shotgun blast sound. The frantic pace. The demonic level design that looked like Dante met an industrial metal band. It all came together here, and Romero’s fingerprints are on every wall.
FromE1M7: Computer StationtoE2M4: Deimos Lab, Romero’s levels weren’t just violent—they were puzzle boxes, full of fake exits, collapsing floors, and secrets tucked behind misaligned walls. Everything taught the player something. Enemy placement wasn’t random. Rooms were designed to flow likecombat arenas, with rhythm, pressure, and escape valves.
Multiplayer deathmatch, texture-based storytelling, skyboxes that hinted at something worse waiting outside—all of this came fromDOOM. Romero’s insistence on speed, flow, and player expression turned a shareware experiment into a global phenomenon. And the WAD modding scene? That legacy of giving players the tools to remix the game came straight from Romero’s own passion for tinkering.
