It must be noted immediately that unless you own a GBA SP or sprung for one of those nifty Afterburner kits, you're better off not trying to play this one. The first rendition of the GBA's screen is far too dark (even with the contrast option) to see even half the game clear enough to actually be successful.

Otherwise, the game has been ported faithfully... well, mostly. There's no blood, most notably. It's been changed to a green-goo type substance. Oh, and those pentagrams... they're gone. They've been replaced by pics of the demons you'll be blasting throughout the game. These do not really affect gameplay directly, but the deletion of two key enemies is pretty much unforgivable. Remember that really cool robotic spider boss? Gone. How about the rocket launcher-for-an-arm guy? Gone too.

The resolution has taken a hit for this port which is disappointing. Other FPS's have done a fine job running in a higher resolution on the GBA, so why not Doom? The compensation here is the frame rate which is pretty much solid throughout the entire game with only minor issues in some of the larger areas. Most of the sound effects have been retained faithfully, but the music is a mere background accessory.

If you have to take Doom on the road then this is it. This is a great translation that only suffers from some odd deletions and censorship (which gives it a "Teen" rating from the ESRB). It's not a perfect port thanks to the reduction in resolution. The frame rate trade off is more than worth compensation. It could be just a direct port of the Super NES version, and that would lend itself to far more criticism.