My Time as a Video Game Character: Doomguy

There were likely a few times in my life as a young boy were I tried to dress up and imitate a character in a video game – something which the initiated called Cosplay – which seems to be big not only in America, but Japan as well. It’s huge there, from what I’ve seen.

There was a time years ago when I was in school and they class project was to dress up as either a spaceman or an alien of sorts. I decided I wanted not only to be a space man – but a space marine.

I’d just gotten my new computer that year: a Pentium 100 MHz, and on it I had the shareware version of Doom with the famous episode named “Knee Deep in the Dead”.

This inspired me to dig in the cupboards and see what I could get to make myself look the part. So I managed to get a fishbowl. You’ve seen pictures of people or adverts on TV [I have], where people put a fishbowl on their head and pretend they’re in space. I did that. What did I do for a gun? I could have had a bb gun, or a water pistol; something even mildly realistic. But what did I do? I used a snorkel.

So there I was running up and down the driveway with my getup on, getting a headache because of a mix of the sun beating down on my head, the hyperactivity of a child, and the fact that I probably wasn’t getting enough oxygen with that bloody bowl on my head.

I went to school the next day and the teacher just laughed at my “costume”, which probably looked nothing like Doomguy at all. But kids have something called an imagination, and so we think we look the part.

We had to line up outside the classroom – which was a bungalow, seeing as the school was still expanding at the time – to get ready to head in to the neighbouring class to show off our outfits. All I remember before going in was that some idiot clubbed me over the head with something, intentionally or by accident I’m not sure, which not only gave me another headache, but cracked my helmet as well.

There I was – a space marine with a hole in my head gear. At least I could finally get some oxygen. On Phobos, Deimos, or Mars I’d be dead though.

My Time as a Video Game Character: Doomguy