There’s been a series of two videos detailing the development and composition behind DOOM’s terrifying soundtrack. But some sound designers, programmers and enthusiasts have found an Easter Egg the average gamer may not have come across had it not been for a spectrometer.
A spectrometer turns sounds and music into images and sometimes you’ll find game developers throwing in an Easter Egg or two this way, hoping that some other dedicated soul out there decides to run the game’s sound through a spectrometer to find the Easter Egg. And this Easter Egg is so very DOOM-like.
You can see where the music is showing the wavelengths and the spectrometer is below the waves where you can see the images. And stuck right there in the DOOM soundtrack is images of the number 666 and a pentagram, typically the symbol for mystical things or magic. In other peoples’ opinions, they relate the pentagram to being evil.
This is probably one of my favorite Easter Eggs from DOOM mainly because it’s so well hidden. You really have to not only understand what a spectrometer is, but understand what you’re looking at when the images appear. If I was a sound designer, I would hide images in all of the sounds and music that I could.
We all know DOOM has a ton of Easter Eggs as it is, pretty much one in every level. So it’s no surprise that there’s one hidden within the depths of the soundtrack. It almost makes you wonder what Easter Eggs haven’t we found yet? What else is still hidden within the game?
If you are curious about other games’ soundtracks, you can run it through an app on your phone called SpectrumView. You might be surprised in what you happen to find.
