Well, in accordance with the sacred ancient traditions, there has to be a “Doom II”/”Final Doom” WAD review here this month. But, not having that much time, I just ended up clicking the “random file” button on the /idgames Archive until I stumbled across an interesting WAD from 2004 called “Zpong 2.0” by Isle.
This WAD was originally designed for the ZDoom source port. And, whilst I could get it to run in GZDoom 4.8.2, I couldn’t find an option to rebind the WAD-specific keys – as such – it wasn’t playable. In the end, I had to use an old copy of Zandronum – which has been gathering dust on my hard drive since March 2019 – which actually allowed me to set “Pong” key bindings in the options menu.
So, let’s take a quick look at “Zpong 2.0”:
Yes, it’s “Pong” (1972) in Doom.
This WAD is a port of the classic 1972 game “Pong” for “Doom II”/”Final Doom”. To my teenage self in 2004, “Pong” seemed like an absolutely ancient game. But it was as old back then as the original “Doom” is today in 2025. Seriously, just let that sink in for a moment!
Still, the basic simplicity of “Pong” (1972) makes it timeless. If you somehow haven’t heard of it, it’s a basic table tennis game. In this port of it, you play against the computer and everything gets faster the higher the score gets. The first one to get to nine points wins the game.
And the tiny “Sucks at Pong” death text when you lose is a neat feature too.
Alas, you don’t get a green screen when you win though.
The game itself is, well, it’s “Pong” (1972). It’s a simple, fun and easy-to-learn classic.
The interesting thing here is how it has been implemented. Whilst I’m not a programmer, it seems like “Doom II” or “Final Doom” just starts up normally but there’s some sort of overlay over the screen. You can still see the health and ammo counters, and you can hear shots if you click “fire”. You can also bring up the auto-map if you want to change the background as well.
Though you probably wouldn’t want to, because this is ridiculously confusing on a visual level. Still, as an added difficulty option…]
And, apart from that, there really isn’t much more to say about this WAD. It’s really neat 🙂
“Pong” (1972), like “Space Invaders” (1978) and “Tetris” (1985), is one of those timeless classics that never really stops being fun. And it’s cool to see that, more than twenty years ago, people had already worked out how to play other games within the classic “Doom” games as well 🙂
If I had to give it a rating out of five, it would get a five. It’s a classic…
