id Software co-founder John Carmack recalls Doom at QuakeCon: "After all these years, it's still a great game!"

This year's QuakeCon in Gaylord, Texas drew together a heap of id Software veterans and founders for a look back — part reunion, part retrospective. John Carmack, apparently, even paused to reacquaint himself with what the gathering still means to people who lived through it. The timing? It doubled as id Software’s 35th-anniversary celebration, which added a layer of nostalgia (and a few long stories) to the weekend.

"I sat down to try the Doom port on Evercade, and before I knew it I was already on the fourth level and realized I had forgotten where all the key cards were," Carmack wrote. "In the end, it took me 15 minutes each to complete the fourth and fifth levels. Still a great game after all these years!"

Carmack was the architect of the Doom Engine (e.g., id Tech 1), the codebase that changed what was possible on consumer machines back in 1993. John Romero handled the design side and the game's feel, while Carmack wrote the low-level engine work that let the game run fast and render smoothly on the hardware of the day — a technical feat that, for many of us, still feels a bit miraculous.