Doom co-creator John Romero adores Ghost Recon and has over 3,000 hours in World of Warcraft: 'God, I lived in that game every day for five years'

Doom co-creator John Romero adores Ghost Recon and has over 3,000 hours in World of Warcraft: ‘God, I lived in that game every day for five years’ | PC Gamer Skip to main content Open menu Close main menu PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES US Edition UK US Canada Australia Subscribe Sign in View Profile Sign out Search Search PC Gamer Games Hardware News Reviews Guides Video Forum More PC Gaming Show Software Movies & TV Codes Coupons Magazine Newsletter Affiliate links Meet the team Community guidelines About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine SubscriptionWhy subscribe?Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming magTry a single issue or save on a subscriptionIssues delivered straight to your door or device From$1Subscribe now Don’t miss these Fallout Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii has played 10,000 hours of Fallout 4 while refusing to do the main quest, build settlements, or travel with anyone but Dogmeat: ‘I’d much rather be beaten to death by Deathclaws’ RPG ‘We lost things such as physics in games:’ The dev behind my most anticipated RPG thinks players are craving more interactive games, not just ‘moving around in a static 3D environment’ RPG The dev behind my top upcoming RPG is a Hungarian chef who thought ‘if not now, then when?’ and learned coding from scratch to make his dream ‘eurojank’ masterpiece Hardware ‘We had 16 megahertz CPUs, 640k of RAM, floppy disks’: John Carmack reflects on the hardware that made Wolfenstein 3D Games The best PC games to play right now Fallout I am once again tapping my ‘Todd Howard genuinely loves Fallout’ sign: He’s an OG Fallout 1 fan and still hasn’t given back the disc he nicked from his brother FPS Thanks to one mad modder, we can now play Doom on an in-game terminal in Ultrakill FPS Hellscreen, the FPS with a rear-view mirror, has left Steam early access two episodes short of its original plan: ‘This is a bittersweet experience for me’ Games The best free PC games Gaming Industry 219 hours of XCOM 2 and 20 minutes of Fallout: Size Five Games’ director Dan Marshall takes us through the games on his PC RPG The best RPGs on PC Games PC Gamer’s Game of the Year Awards 2025 Games The best laptop games Games The best open world games Action Inside PC gaming’s wildly creative Tomb Raider mapping scene: ‘Being able to create my own adventures for other people to play is such an addicting concept’ PopularArc RaidersBest PC gearFalloutHelldivers 2PC Gamer Quizzes! Gaming Industry Doom co-creator John Romero adores Ghost Recon and has over 3,000 hours in World of Warcraft: ‘God, I lived in that game every day for five years’ Features By Rick Lane published 15 February 2026 The co-founder of id Software and Romero Games takes us on a tour of his games library. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: John Romero/Blizzard) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter PC Gamer Get the PC Gamer Newsletter Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. 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Come back every Saturday to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like “how tidy is your desktop?” and “what game will you never uninstall?”John Romero is the co-creator of legendary first-person shooters Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, but both his gaming tastes and development history stretch much more broadly than the genre he helped create. Over his career, Romero has worked on platformers, mobile games, MMOs, even strategy games, and he’s always on the lookout for something new to try: “I keep my eye on the indie scene a lot,” he says as we chat over a video call. “That’s where a lot of really great ideas come from.”Recent years have brought Romero back to the FPS, however, working on projects centred around both the genre’s past and future. To celebrate Wolfenstein 3D’s 35th anniversary, Romero recently released a short documentary about the Nazi blaster’s predecessor Catacomb 3-D, bringing together id Software’s four founders to talk about its creation.Romero is also currently working on Hellion, a new Doom 2 WAD that will follow on from Sigil and Sigil 2. Then there’s his unrevealed FPS project with Romero Games, which was salvaged from the spectre of cancellation after the studio lost its funding last year. “That was a time,” he says, though he doesn’t go into detail. “We’re still alive. We’re still working.” Related articles 219 hours of XCOM 2 and 20 minutes of Fallout: Size Five Games’ director Dan Marshall takes us through the games on his PC ‘I consider it a millennial shooter’: The FPS dev making hit shooters by leaning into ‘2007-core’ ‘A good idea, infinite drive, and lots of Diet Pepsi’: How YouTube essayist Majuular’s life changed course telling the story of Ultima across 2 years and more than 20 hours of documentaries Romero took a beat from his various projects to guide me through the monster-strewn labyrinth of his gaming library, which