John Romero gets the "Icon of Sin" for Christmas

YouTube

I have two things to say about John Romero's Christmas present. First, it is glorious, and perfectly appropriate. And second, I am intensely jealous.

Brenda Romero revealed the gift, a detailed sculpture based on the Doom 2 level Icon of Sin, with a couple of photos on Twitter earlier this week. A closer look at the work and the process of making it can be had at creator Jason Hite's website, where he explains that some of the individual components were built from existing pieces—the Doom Guy is a "slightly augmented' HorrorClix figure—while others, including the central demon skull, are entirely hand-made.

Upon completion, the sculpture was sent to the Copro Nason Gallery in Santa Monica, California, where it went on sale for $6000. Hite told Polygon he also sent photos of the work to John Romero, who seemed duly impressed. "A few days later, out of the blue, John messaged me asking if the sculpture was still for sale," he said. "There was one other person who also expressed interest to me but had not confirmed yet, so I told John the sculpture was his!"

It isn't completely faithful to the game's famous final level—Hite replaced the numeric indicators with hearts and "possibly live" .30 caliber bullets—but he did make a point of including the most important detail: Romero's decapitated head, stuck on a stick, and hidden out of sight.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.