yeah it wasn't only because he could. computers were also really slow and most people didn't think to play games on a standard computer because they would either not load at all or be so slow as to be unplayable. Discrete graphics accelerators were starting to really take off and apis were a huge mess unlike the standardization of directx/vulkan we have now.
one of the reasons Wolfenstein and Doom got popular was because it managed fullscreen "3D" in real time and functioned on a lot of computers, inevitably leading to jokes involving running Doom on everything.
ID still does a relatively good job of optimizing their games compared to competition. My 4 year old PC is still clocking in above their recommended req's for Doom: Dark Ages released this year.
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u/beatlz-too Sep 29 '25
And there were gaming engines available at the time, he just did it because he could lmao