Doom Engines

This is not meant to be a complete list of Doom ports, see Doomworld's excellent list for that.

Some levels require a Doom port, and this page is here simply to provide information about those ports and other compatible versions.

The vast majority of levels on this site were played with PrBoom, and I recommend this to people looking for a simple port compatible with original Doom levels. A few of the levels reviewed require specific mods, these will be listed here, and mentioned in the review.

standard Doom engine
Original Doom. Many of the Doom ports remain fully compatible with the original, e.g. PrBoom.
Ultimate/Final Doom compatible engine
A few features were added in the later versions of Doom; there is no reason to run any version of Doom earlier than v1.9 for most levels, since some might depend on these features.
Doom v1.2
(link) v1.2 of Doom, as released by id. Some significant changes were made between v1.2 and later versions, with the result that a few early Doom levels only work fully with v1.2 (UAC_DEAD is the classic example).
limitless source port
(link) The original Doom engine contained many internal limits which restricted level designers. These days, most of the ports are "limitles", i.e. these limits have been removed. Many levels now require that source ports are used for this reason.
Boom compatible engine
(link) Boom is an overhauled and enhanced version of Doom that set a new standard for Doom engines. PrBoom is the Windows and Linux version of Boom. Many other ports are either based on Boom (e.g. MBF and PrBoom), or strive to be compatible with it (e.g. ZDoom and Legacy).
Marine's Best Friend
A port based on Boom, with some bugs fixed, and many new features like friendly monsters, better AI, new line types and code pointers. Backward compatible with Boom, v1.9 of Doom, and with limited support for the original Doom betas. There have been many ports derived from MBF, including PrBoom, SMMU, Fusion, and JDP.
ZDoom
(link) A port with a lot of features from Hexen like scripting and polyobjects; also supports Boom levels.
Doom Legacy
(link) A port with a lot of deathmatch features.