Tom Hall, man Behind Rise of the Triad, Suffers Stroke

Tom Hall, known as the man and mind behind games like Commander Keen, and Rise of the Triad, along with others, suffered a stroke recently.  He’s currently in hospital undergoing rehabilitation.

I was surprised to see, while checking through the feeds of twitter accounts that I follow that contained a tweet where Tom admitted to having a stroke yesterday.

“Um, had a stroke. Yeah, I know right! The hospital food is decent though. (Excuse if I don't respond quickly though--lotsa tests.)”

“Thx for all the good thoughts. Start rehab tomorrow to fix strength/coordination in right hand/foot. Woo hoo! Rockin' the rehab! Oh yeeeah!”

“Thx for the love but don't send flowers! Hay fever! Send a card if you must. But facebook love is enough!”

“They took 20 vials of blood this morning. My arml went flat like apiece of paper. Lucky I had that inflation tube installed.”

George Broussard of 3DR Realms tweeted the following:

“Tom Hall, @tommune, had a stroke and is in hospital. Designed Keen, ROTT, Anachronox, more. id, 3dr, ion and king's isle. Wish him well.”

John Romero tweeted the following as well:

“@tommune had a stroke yesterday. He's in the hospital. Send him well wishes, please.”

George and Tom know each other quite well seeing Tom worked at Apogee Software back in the 90’s after leaving id Software supposedly after a disagreement with John Carmack over the creative direction Doom was taking.

Tom and John are friends who co-founded id Software along with John Carmack and Adrian Carmack.
Tom, in addition to being credited to working on ROTT and the Keen series, also worked at id Software on Wolf 3D, Spear of Destiny. After leaving Apogee after working on Duke Nukem II, ROTT, Terminal Velocity and Duke Nukem 3D, later on he worked on a little game called Deus Ex as well as Anachronox at Ion Storm with his friend John Romero.

He’s now at KingsIsle Entertainment.

Tom is also credited with naming the popular file format WAD, or "Where's All the Data?".
On a personal note, I wish Tom all the best. I’ve enjoyed playing his games over the years.
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Source: Twitter

Tom Hall, man Behind Rise of the Triad, Suffers Stroke

John Romero Reminisces, Drops Some Doom Trivia

John Romero was the designer on Doom while he was still at id Software, the company he co-founded, back in the nineties.

John often tweets some interesting little titbits, and recently on John’s twitter account he left a few tweets related to Doom, seeing as it was Doom’s 16th birthday recently:

“instead of making Doom, we almost ended up making Aliens instead, after the movie. An hour later we decided not to.”

“It's DOOM's 16 birthday today - Happy Birthday DOOM!
Happy Birthday DOOM!”

“DOOM only cost id Software about $700k to produce in 1993”

There you are, some Doom trivia. I like video game trivia. Don’t you? Maybe John will leave some more Doom tweets this month.

I noticed how Tom Hall didn’t have anything to tweet about Doom. Perhaps he’s bitter, and understandably, seeing as he was fired from id by John Carmack during the development process of Doom. He was the one who made the infamous Doom Bible, the original design document for the game.

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John Romero on Twitter

Tom Hall on Twitter

John Romero Reminisces, Drops Some Doom Trivia

Tom Hall’s Birthday Today

Today, in 1964, Tom Hall psychotically screamed into the world. He turns 45 today.

To me Tom Hall was really just a name on a screen until Rise of the Triad, or more specifically, the ROTT Goodies pack, which came out in 2005 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Rise of the Triad: Dark War. It was only then I witnessed the truly evil genius behind the game.

Tom Hall is not just a name after all though, because he is one of the original four horsemen, along with John Carmack, John Romero, and Adrian Carmack, who worked at Softdisk, and went onto form id Software, which was bought by ZeniMax Media this year after 17 years of independence.

Tom Hall was the creative director at id and worked on games like Commander Keen, which he claims is quite similar to his childhood, Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and Doom. Tom left id after some design disputes over Doom with John Carmack. Tom wrote much if not all of the Doom bible, the original design document, which reveals a lot of features that didn’t make it into Doom. He did design several levels in Doom and Doom II however, referred to as the "Tom Hall levels", although they were modified by John Romero and Sandy Petersen.

He then went off to join Apogee (later 3D Realms). There he was able to release his creative genius on the world with Rise of the Triad. He also had things to do with other projects at 3D Realms, like Duke Nukem 3D. While working on Prey, which was later cancelled and released ten years later, in 2006, he left 3D Realms.

Tom Hall joined up again with John Romero and co-founded Ion Storm. Since then he’s gone on to Monkeystone Games, Midway, and nowadays he is at KingIsle Entertainment.

Facts about Tom Hall:

• He is the creator of the Dopefish, which has appeared in games like the Commander Keen series, Quake, and many others.
• Tom Hall may be psychotic.
• Tom Hall has a hell of an imagination, and this is evidenced by his usual roles in the creative department at the various companies he's worked at.
• Unlike John Romero, Tom Hall has never been known for having great hair.

Happy Birthday Tom!

Sources & Resources:

TOMTOMTOM.com
Tom Hall on Twitter
Tom Hall wiki
Tom Hall wikia
Tom Hall on MobyGames
Dopefish.com

Tom Hall’s Birthday Today