Id Software reveals Doom Resurrection for iPhone, iPod touch

Id Software co-founder John Carmack has revealed Doom Resurrection, the company’s first original game for the iPhone and iPod touch. In an interview with VentureBeat, Carmack said the plot of the game is similar to that of Doom 3, but takes place in a different place than the main Doom 3 storyline. In addition, Carmack was pleasantly surprised that the development team from Escalation Studios—which Carmack led—didn’t have to didn’t have to completely redo the PC game art for the iPhone, but instead downsampled it to fit the iPhone’s screen. The game has eight full levels, good for around five hours of gameplay, and Carmack said the game may use various iPhone software 3.0 features once they are released, including peer-to-peer cooperative multiplayer. “I love the iPhone,” Carmack said. “It’s a real game platform, not a tiny little toy.” He added, “If you look at it in raw hardware horsepower, the iPhone should be better in performance than the Nintendo DS and the PlayStation Portable[.] But the truth is, you can’t exploit it all because of software inefficiencies.” He went on to say that he is meeting with Apple to discuss how to improve the iPhone as a gaming platform, and while he is excited about the faster iPhone 3G S, he remains focused on making sure his games run on the widest number of iPhone OS devices. Doom Resurrection is expected to hit the App Store next week; pricing has yet to be announced.