A short history of John Romero wishing Sandy Petersen well before nuking his Doom tweets from orbit with ruthless precision

FPS legend John Romero is on record as regretting, and apologizing for, the famous Daikatana magazine ad that stated he was about to make you his bitch. But in recent years, a Photoshop of the ad has taken on a second life as the perfect memey encapsulation of Romero's social media interactions with former id designer Sandy Petersen.

For more than four years, Romero has been politely but pointedly correcting every inaccurate memory and anecdote Petersen's shared on Twitter (now X) from his time working at id Software. Nearly each tweet begins with some variation of "Hi Sandy, hope you're doing well" before nuking the original statement from orbit.

Petersen joined id during the development of Doom in 1993, working on several of the game's levels and designing more for Doom 2. He also worked on Quake before leaving the studio in mid-1997, about a year after Romero's exit. That makes for a good bit of overlap, though of course Romero was with id from the beginning, having co-founded the studio in 1991.

Romero, notably, has talked about having hyperthymesia, which he credits for giving him a vivid memory. I don't know if his recall is perfect, but each time Petersen trots out an id anecdote, Romero seems to have a confident correction locked and loaded in the chamber. It turns out that "John Romero's about to hope you're doing well" is more intimidating than Daikatana ever could be.

Only once in the four-and-a-half year history of these exchanges have I seen Petersen fight back to insist he had part of his memory right. And, y'know, I think with that sort of hit rate I would personally just stop posting forever—though given some of Petersen's other takes, maybe being wrong about the minutia of Doom is a better use of his time.

And now, a short but satisfying history of John Romero Hoping Sandy Petersen Is Doing Well.

2021

Given what a phenomenon Doom was, selling 100,000 copies sure sounded low.

The specificity of distinguishing "skies" from "a skybox" particularly tickles me in this one.

Give Tom Hall credit for the rocket jump!

"I appreciate your interest in Doom" may low key the most savage burn of them all.

(Petersen responded to his original tweet guessing that it was Grenadier models, and that the cacodemon wasn't made. Both seemingly incorrect.)

2022

Damn Sandy, I didn't work at id and even I know that Commander Keen had two different trilogies clearly built on different engines because I played 'em.

The rare follow-up correction.

2024

It is really hard to believe that Sandy Petersen would've had to convince the rest of id Software to keep the shotgun.

2025

Tom gets his flowers again.

"Hello again" is when I'd start frantically trying to turn off my phone.

Petersen fired back on this one, insisting Steed "did the animations for Quake, including the fish." He's not credited in the original CD manual for Quake, which only lists Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud as artists. However, he does show up in the credits in later manuals like this one, so perhaps Paul contributed to some of Quake's post-release updates, like its mission packs. Steed unfortunately passed away in 2012.