41 Facts About John Romero

1.

Alfonso John Romero was born on October 28,1967 and is an American director, designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry.

2.

John Romero is best known as a co-founder of id Software and designer for many of their games, including Wolfenstein 3D, Dangerous Dave, Hexen, Doom, Doom II and Quake.

3.

John Romero is credited with coining the FPS multiplayer term "deathmatch".

4.

John Romero started programming games on an Apple II he got in 1980.

5.

John Romero's first developed game was a Crazy Climber clone, but it was not published.

6.

John Romero's first published game, Scout Search, appeared in the June 1984 issue of inCider magazine, a popular Apple II magazine during the 1980s.

7.

John Romero captured the December cover of the Apple II magazine Nibble for three years in a row starting in 1987.

8.

John Romero entered a programming contest in A+ magazine during its first year of publishing with his game Cavern Crusader.

9.

The first game John Romero created that was eventually published was Jumpster in UpTime.

10.

John Romero worked on the Apple II to Commodore 64 port of 2400 AD, which was eventually scrapped due to slow sales of the Apple II version.

11.

John Romero then moved onto Space Rogue, a game by Paul Neurath.

12.

John Romero had almost finished the Commodore 64 to Apple II port of Tower Toppler, but Epyx unexpectedly cancelled all its ports industrywide due to their tremendous investment in the first round of games for the upcoming Atari Lynx.

13.

John Romero moved to Shreveport, Louisiana in March 1989 and joined Softdisk as a programmer in its Special Projects division.

14.

John Romero tapped his arrow key, moved Dave along the floor, and watched him scroll smoothly across the screen.

15.

John Romero worked at id Software from its inception in 1991 until 1996.

16.

John Romero was involved in the creation of several milestone games, including Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth and Quake.

17.

John Romero served as executive producer on Heretic and Hexen.

18.

John Romero designed most of the first episode of Doom, a quarter of the levels in Quake, and half the levels in Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D: Spear of Destiny.

19.

John Romero wrote many of the tools used at id Software to create their games, including DoomEd, QuakeEd, DM, DWANGO client, TED5, IGRAB, the installers for all the games up to and including Quake, the SETUP program used to configure the games, and several others.

20.

One can use the "noclip" cheat to enter the boss and see John Romero's severed head which is skewered on a post.

21.

John Romero wanted the game to follow his demanding vision without compromise, but Carmack insisted that the project had to make steady progress toward completion and accused John Romero of not working as much as the other developers.

22.

John Romero added that both he and Romero are on good terms now.

23.

John Romero later co-founded Ion Storm in Dallas, Texas with id co-worker Tom Hall, where he designed and produced Daikatana.

24.

John Romero departed with Tom Hall immediately after the release of Hall's Anachronox game and the subsequent closing of the Dallas Ion office.

25.

In mid-October 2003, John Romero joined Midway Games as project lead on Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows.

26.

John Romero moved from project lead to creative director of internal studio during this time.

27.

John Romero said that he would not reveal anything about the company or the game until 2007.

28.

John Romero departed Gazillion Entertainment in November 2010 to form a social game company called Loot Drop alongside Brenda Brathwaite.

29.

John Romero was the Chairman of the Board for the Cyberathlete Professional League for ten years.

30.

On December 20,2006, John Romero announced a new FPS project for the CPL titled Severity for both consoles and PC.

31.

In March 2010, John Romero collaborated with the gaming magazine Retro Gamer, taking on the role of a guest editor, taking charge of the magazine's editorial and contributing to a number of articles on different subjects throughout the magazine.

32.

In March 2022, in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, John Romero created a new level of Doom II which was listed for sale through his personal website.

33.

John Romero stated that all proceeds would be donated to the Ukrainian Red Cross and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.

34.

In January 2004, John Romero married Raluca Alexandra Plesca, originally from Bucharest, Romania.

35.

John Romero has three children from two previous marriages: Michael, born in 1988, Steven born in 1989, and Lillia Antoinette, born in 1998.

36.

John Romero guest-answered Planet Quakes "Dear Mynx" column, in which a female fan asked for hair care tips.

37.

John Romero cut his hair short in 2002 and donated it to Locks of Love.

38.

On January 11,2022, John Romero gave a statement via Twitter on the subject of his hair, to coincide with the 120th anniversary of William Arthur Jones' "Indian haircut order" of 1902.

39.

In 2000, during the development of Daikatana, John Romero listed Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny, Super Mario Bros.

40.

In 2017, John Romero listed World of Warcraft and Minecraft as his favorite games of all time.

41.

John Romero claimed that everyone involved at working on the original Doom was an atheist.