Back in the 90s, development companies thought it would be cool if you could make your own levels for games and do (more or less) whatever you wanted with them. This meant that you could go to your local computer store/computer section of a game/electronics store (back when those were a thing) and buy disks full of levels for your favorite game(s). (The internet was uncommon/slow/unreliable back then). The quality was generally iffy, and companies gave them various levels of support. If you were good enough, you might get an official publishing deal (like Counterstrike or Team Fortress for Half Life), most were mediocre and largely ignored, and a few were so bad that they got sued (Starcraft: Stellar Forces).
One of those middling sets was the D!ZONE series, which contained Doom levels. iD decided they might as well get a cut of that sweet random level cash, and released The Master Levels in 1995.
It consists of two products. The eponymous Master Levels, a set of 21 levels from well known level makers (most of which would go on to work at iD or other companies professionally) and MAXIMUM DOOM a set of 4000ish semi-random levels that iD grabbed from online.
I'm going to charge through all the Master Levels (mostly from pistol-start) and clump them by designer. A few are actually made from larger collections, so I might go and play those as a chunk.
Off the cuff, I think there's something cool about just grabbing a bunch of independent levels and blasting through them. It's one of the coolest things about Doom, and takes me back to playing whatever the latest level my dad grabbed (probably what someone from work recommended) on the weekends as a kid.
The "official" order is just alphabetical, which means that Tim Willits's two levels are actually 1 and 2.
Attack: 4/5 This is a simple, but fun, "Episode 1 w/ Doom 2" style level. Not a lot going on here, but it's all well enough executred.
Canyon: 2/5 It works, but it felt like a slog. No real theming or anything interesting. Just a bunch of monsters w/ approximately appropriate amounts of power ups to fight them. One or two "gotcha" rooms make it harder than Attack, but not terribly interesting.
Both of these levels use a night skybox that's new, which is fun, always nice to see a little new theming.
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