There is a particular cruelty in muscle memory. John Carmack — co-founder of id Software, architect of the engines that made first-person shooters possible, and one of the sharpest programmers in the history of the medium — sat down with a portable version of Doom at QuakeCon 2026 and immediately got lost.
He knew what the game was. He had written significant portions of its architecture in 1993. He was not, it turned out, prepared for how thoroughly he had forgotten where the keycards were.
Fifteen Minutes on Level Four
QuakeCon 2026 is taking place this weekend at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Centre in Grapevine, Texas — a sprawling four-day event marking QuakeCon’s 30th anniversary and id Software’s 35th year. Among the many things on offer is the Evercade handheld, which features a port of the original Doom, and Carmack found himself drawn to it.
“I sat down to try the Evercade Doom port, and before I knew it, I was on level four, realising that I had forgotten where all the keycards were,” he wrote on X.
Carmack on Doom at QuakeCon: “It wound up taking me 15 minutes each on level four and five. Still a great game after all these years!”
For context: E1M4 and E1M5 — the levels in question — have par completion times of 1 minute 30 seconds and 2 minutes 45 seconds respectively. Carmack spent about ten times that on each. His candour about the rustiness is part of what makes the moment so good. This was not a polished demonstration. It was someone rediscovering something they had made three decades ago and finding it still holds you in its grip.
The Evercade port itself is a faithful rendering of the original game — the kind of lo-fi handheld format that lets you appreciate just how tightly the original level design was constructed. Even when you have forgotten the specific keycard placements, the flow of the maps still pulls you through.
The Founders Together for the First Time Since 1993
Carmack’s Evercade moment is a footnote in a much larger story. QuakeCon 2026 has reunited all four of id Software’s original co-founders — John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack — in the same room for the first time since 1993. That year is significant: it was the year before the original Doom launched, and it was when Tom Hall departed the studio mid-development following creative disagreements.
John Romero described the reunion simply: “First time since 1993 our whole group is together — and the first time we’re all at QuakeCon.”
The occasion is historic, but it carries weight beyond nostalgia. In July 2026, Microsoft’s Xbox division eliminated approximately 136 id Software employees — roughly half the studio’s workforce — as part of a wider restructuring across the Xbox organisation. The founders’ reunion panel, originally a straightforward anniversary celebration, now takes place against that backdrop. Carmack himself acknowledged it would “dampen the mood.”
Why Doom Still Refuses to Age
There is something instructive about a creator returning to their most famous work and finding it harder than expected. It suggests the work is still working — that it has an internal logic demanding engagement rather than coasting on recognition.
Doom’s design is built around resource management, spatial awareness, and enemy routing — none of which operate on autopilot. The keycard placement Carmack forgot is not arbitrary; it is part of a deliberate flow that rewards players who map the space rather than sprint through it. Even someone who co-built the engine can forget that logic after thirty years.
The convention has also seen the release of Quake: Dawn of the Machine — a free 19-map expansion from MachineGames, available to all existing Quake owners and celebrating the game’s own 30th anniversary. That MachineGames, a Swedish studio acquired by Microsoft, continues to steward the Quake legacy while id Software faces significant internal upheaval says something about where the franchise now lives.
Carmack’s Doom moment at QuakeCon is easy to frame as a charming anecdote — the genius humbled by his own creation. But in the context of a reunion carrying decades of history, a recent wave of studio layoffs, and a community gathered to celebrate what these four people built together, it lands as something a bit more than that. Some games are just built to outlast everything.
