National Videogame Museum Goes Virtual in Doom 2

A new WAD now Available for Download

The National Videogame Museum has gone virtual in one of the most gamer ways possible, with a little help from Doom 2.

A few days ago it was announced that the National Videogame Museum, located in Frisco, Texas, would get a free download of the museum's entire layout, recreated in Doom 2 using a the GZDoomBuilder modding tools. Players can find the mod here.

The designer of this virtual layout is a tour guide for the museum and co-owner of video game studio DevHour Games, Chris Baracani. DevHour Games is best known for their colorful picross release, Depixtion, in 2019.

The virtual tour allows players to download the WAD file for Doom 2, and load up the map with relative ease. Since the map is a 1:1 recreation of the museum, Baracani included a "Tourist" mode in the map where you can wander and view the museum without any enemies popping up.

He also noted that the mod was done not due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but for a project tasked by the owners of the Museum for an upcoming exhibit.

The National Videogame Museum was opened in 2016. Founded by John Hardie, Sean Kelly and Joe Santulli. All three men were previously involved in hosting the Classic Gaming Expo Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. Their major project within the convention was the Videogame Museum, a set up booth along the convention floors that would track some of the history of Videogames through collected pieces of work from their own collections, as well as donations from other vendors.

In 2011, the men launched a Kickstarter to secure funding for a permanent location for the Videogame History Museum, which secured over $50,000 in funding.

Today, the Museum is one of the United States premiere spaces for the preservation of Video Game History, in the same vein as the Strong Museum of Play, with archival work that rivals the work of the Videogame History Foundation.

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