Most of us who played the original Doom are aware of the cheat codoes.
IDKFA for a full arsenal, IDDT for a full map.
IDDQD for invulnerability and of course IDSPISPOPD to clip through walls.
In later iterations of the Doom engine this would change to IDCLIP, but this video isn't
about these cheat codes specifically, it's about the origin of SPISPOPD.
Yes, that's right, that seemingly random bunch of characters has an origin, and it wasn't
from inside the walls of id software.
To find it's place of birth, we have to go back to the warmth and comfort of 1993 Usenet
Newsgroups.
Ahhhhh, the early internet..
so comforting and soul warming.
September 1993 is a period known as Eternal September and marks the point where America
Online began offering Usenet access to many of it's customers, increasing the user base
of this groups significantly.
As 1993 rolled on, anticipation was high for id's latest game, Doom.
Beta copies were being shared about and conversations were popping up in various corners of Usenet.
From one side there was excitement about in game elements, such as talk of potential rocket
launchers in the final game!
From another side people were discussing hardware and whether Doom will have 8 or 16 bit sound
samples, keen to push their 16 bit ISA soundblasters to their limits.
There was even discussion about how evil the game was, with it's satanic imagery and inappropriate
scenes for children...
whatever that means.
But then, on the 30th November 1993, just 10 days before Doom would be officially released,
a 15 year old lad by the name of Eli S Bingham posted a message which said:
"Listen up, ID Software!
Next time you have an impending release of a much anticipated game, make sure it's name
is not so cool-sounding as DOOM and much longer to eliminate all of the casual...
"Where can I get xxx" posts.
How about "Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles of Putrid Debris" for the next game?"
Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles of Putrid Debris itself forming the initialism, SPISPOPD.
(ahhhhhhh)
Now this was a reference to Usenet literally filling up with Doom posts.
Anticipation was high, and this is why the early internet was just so damn cool, almost
as cool as the Doom name itself.
Further posters such as John W. Cummings would point out that this abbreviation was still
too short and suggested using the first 128 ASCII characters, like Prince's new name.
But really, any attempt to cull the influx of Doom related material was ultimately, errr,
Doomed.
In fact, USENet then started filling with posts saying...
"When is SPISPOPD coming out" as well as "When is DOOM coming out".
The problem was doubled.
This of course didn't appease people who had put the "Doom" word into their killfile, to
automatically delete any of these posts from downloading.
The fact there were so many often caused Usenet reading programs to crash themselves, off-setting
any gain by removing them from the reader.
Jokes then circulated about a release of the game known as SPISPOPD, with February 29th
1994 and March 35th noted as official release dates.
(by the way, they're not real dates... you get the joke, right?).
People began using this alternative moniker to describe the game they hoped Doom would
be, including incredible AI, rocket launchers, several hundred levels and boss monsters like
Linus Van Pelt and The Great Pumpkin - so not that far off reality really.
This led to "The Official SPISPOPD" FAQ posted by Seth Cohn on the 4th December 1993.
A tongue in cheek play on the Doom FAQs which were being circulated around the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
newsgroup.
The FAQ relates to the ficticious SPISPOPD game by Ego Software, which in no way should
promote killing yourself, eating pumpkin pie or squashing squash in any other fashion.
The game itself sounded very promising, with 16.7 million colours on a 256k VGA card.
Full Turing AI logic and God Mode, including a digitised Jean Claud Van Damme who suffered
a pumpkin incident, blinding his right eye, therefore delaying the game release.
Some actually bought into this as a real game, whilst others clearly got the joke.
It's worth reading the FAQ if you haven't, a link of which I've included in the description.
So here's the twist, a day before Doom was actually released, a few guys at California
Polytechnic State University who went under the banner of "Jamul Software" managed to
write and release a Beta game actually called SPISPOPD, where your objective was to navigate
levels and indeed, smash the crap out of Pumpkins.
And here it is.
This is actually a slighter later version, after the guys decided to make it a real shareware
release.
You can see from this load up screen alone, it's Doom roots.
Once you get into the game however, it's very non-Doom.
I mean, come on, this was made in a couple of days, and given that, it's actually rather
playable.
It's even got music and sound effects for crying out Pumpkins.
Your task is simply to go from level to level, collecting candles, and smashing pumpkins
along the way.
The Dateline in the associated readme file prepares you.
30th October 1993 - All the pumpkins of the world cower in fear again, as another Halloween
approaches.
As always they are destined to be culinarily transformed into grotesque icons of a pagan
tradition.
Their only hope was to steal all of Earth's candles and take them away to the distant
pumpkin planet, Pumpkinia.
4th November 1993 - Despite tremendous security measures, the pumpkins succeeded and now Earth
has no candles.
If the power goes out, everybody is SCREWED.
The only hope is Boupaha, the Gourdslayer.
He hops in the specially designed TX-34Z Rocket Ship and blasts off for the Zeta Toejam Star
System.
And that's where we find ourselves.
The first version only had "intro land" whilst later versions have additional levels such
as "Earth Realm", and although Jamul Software may have started out as only a couple of people.
Various others were involved by the time the official SPIS.FAQ came out in 1994.
Mike was kind enough to unearth a copy from his hard drive of this, which I've linked
in the description below.
Hello?
OCTO: That's click bait...
How do you know what I'm ty...
OCTO: It's click bait...
I don't think it is.
I only have a few words to grab people's atten....
OCTO: It's definitely click bait...
I don't even know what click bait is anymore.
OCTO: It's click bait.
*Hangs Up*
Anyway, back to the newsgroups....
Doom would be released the next day causing all kinds of excitement.
People were worried about being able to get the download, and they were right to, because
shortly after it's upload at 11:53 on 10th December 1993, the University of Wisconsin's
server was so overloaded with requests, that many people just couldn't log onto it.
However, for the people who did get a copy.
Their excitement was truly justified, and to acknowledge the newsgroup banter.
IDSPISPOPD had been snuck in by id at the last minute as a cheat to turn on no clipping
mode
Back in the Newsgroups, some people seemed to still be confused about SPISPOPD, with
one one chap actually thinking it was supposed to be a fantastic 3D game, but on downloading
the actual top down release, was a little disappointed to not find the Ruby lasers and
like.
Clearly he either didn't get the joke, or had never heard of Doom.
Maybe he was just trolling himself, who can honestly tell, or care?
By April 1994, Jamul Software would release a level editor for SPISPOPD... whilst at the
same time sparking outrage from members who didn't realise the connection between SPISPOPD
and Doom.
Clearly he thought this was some guy spamming his latest PD release in Doom forum.
Various updates followed culminating in version 3 released in 1994.
But that's not the end of our Pumpkin tale....
Jamul Software would go on to be called Hamumu Software, run by the main programmer of SPISPOPD,
Mike Hommel, and two follow ups would be made.
The first was Amazin' SPISPOPD, which shared the same gameplay as the first release, just
in a nicer fashion.
This was followed by SPISPOPD II: Dr. Lunatic in May 2000.
Both of these are still available for purchase on the Hamumu Games Inc. website for just
$2.95 and $4.95 respectively!
Other references to this tale include the 1995 Doom novel where a character mentions
"Smashing pumpkins into small pieces of putrid debris" in response to killing a Cacodemon,
which they dubbed Pumpkin
Simtex's 1994 game Master of Magic included a magical item called Idspispopd.
An early Quake MOD allowed you to tend a Pumpkin patch.
and of course there were DOOM Mods, such as this WAD by Richard Ward featuring an SPISPOPD
arcade machine.
Wonderful.
Of course, let us also not forget that, The song "Where Boys Fear to Tread" by The Smashing
Pumpkins included Doom samples and specifically credited id Software in the liner notes to
their album, "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness."
In the run up to Doom 3 there was even a campaign to try and bring back IDSPISPOPD in the next
game iteration, with people enraged by it's removal in Doom 2.
I don't blame them...
I mean IDCLIP...
WHAT WHERE THEY THINKING??
My first encounter with the term, was the no clipping cheat in the shareware release
of Doom, but I love little stories like this where an excited fan base was able to influence
some changes in a game release essentially just though joking about in forums.
Man, I love the early internet.
I also love Doom and I love Pumpkins.
What a day.