Doom II for the Game Boy Advance is a complete port of the original. It has every enemy, every weapon, and every single level - even the secret ones.

If you've never played a video game ever and accidentally got to this site while trying to use a computer machine, Doom II is a classic first person-shooter where the player fights the legions of hell with an assortment of weapons such as the plasma rifle, chainshaw, or shotgun.

Doom II introduces the double-barreled shotgun - slow to reload and weak sauce at long range, but one of the most powerful weapons when put in skilled hands.

Also new are the Arch-Vile, Revenant, and Mancubus enemies. Each of these are very powerful - the Arch-Vile can raise dead enemies, the Revenant will fire heat-seeking rockets, and the Mancubus fires a barrage of fireballs. All of the original enemies show up, too, including the Spider-Mastermind and Cyberdemon.

The Doom engine is almost as famous as the game itself, and has been used on about ten different game systems. It looks fantastic on the GameBoy Advance, especially with the wide-screen ratio. It keeps a very good speed at all times. There are no cut corners here - the enemies have all of their animation and every surface is textured. The game retains features like flicking/varying lighting. Artistically, things might look a little plain, with lots of browns, greys, and greens, but a ruined Earth isn't supposed to look like one of Cliffy B's disco trippy color Nali fruit zones.

There are 34 maps, up from the original 32 since two of them were separated into two parts. There are four handy save slots where the player can save at the beginning of each level. There doesn't seem to be a level warp code (yet), which would have been handy for just playing certain favorite levels when there's a spare minute.

There's deathmatch (up to 4 players) and co-op (2 players) included, but a cartridge is needed for each player. These work in a simple enough fashion, and hey, more people are more fun than one. Be careful about discussing attack plans and shotguns if you're playing co-op during a long flight.

All of the original music seems to be there - it's not bad, either, and may stir up some fond memories from old-school Doom II players. Or, alternatively, the music can be turned down or off separately from the sound volume.

The sound effects - the screams of critters, the gunfire, and the explosions - are all in stereo and spatialized, so you can hear where and how far away enemies are. One would do well to use headphones. All the effects are original and exact, and hey, they even included the lines in German in the secret Wolfenstein levels.

Controlling the game with four buttons and a pad is cleverly done, while still allowing a player to turn, sidestep, and fire at the same time. There are multiple configurations, too. Weapon cycling may be a bit slow though, especially in a heated deathmatch. Aiming may be a bit tough. After all, it's a control pad, not a mouse. The sensitivity (turning speed) can be adjusted in the options. Still, it seems a bit hard to aim, maybe because of the wide-screen perspective.

Here are the differences I noticed from the original version, most of them pretty trivial:

• The enemy corpses blink and disappear after a few seconds, as if they had been driven into the concrete by Mayor Mike Haggar. However, they can still be resurrected by an Arch-Vile, and anything they drop will still be there.

• While all of the levels are still there, there might be some slight edits. Some areas had different or brighter lighting. The 'Industrial Zone' level is separated into two different areas, probably because it's the size of a whale.

• Enemies bleed green blood instead of red, and the swastikas and portraits of Hitler have been removed from the secret levels, presumably because kids shoot each other when they see them to get it down to a 'Teen' rating.

• There's an 'Always Run' option, which is the best thing ever when there's only a limited amount of buttons.

• Enemies don't have second death animations where they goo-ify after being nailed by a rocket, nor do they go flying or sliding. They just fall over and die.

• Enemies in Nightmare mode don't seem to continually respawn. It's still extremely difficult, though.

• Enemies don't seem to notice the player from really long distances.

Overall, this is possibly one of the very best games available on the Game Boy Advance, although it might be somewhat uninteresting to someone who knows the original version inside-out. This is solid gaming and a great addition to a GBA game collection.