I could argue that Doom is a unique kind of "free"ware as it was built with openness in mind, giving players access to the game assets to do what they want with it. I literally played a new Doom WAD yesterday, and you could say the amount of free extra content I've extracted from Doom is unmatched. But of course user made WADs don't work with the shareware version of the game. Cave Story actually was released for free and on top of being an excellent game, it helped make the concept of playing games developed by hobbyists as opposed to made by big companies more popular and forecasts the high quality of indie games we've seen for the last decade.
Doom is (the prequel to) the most timeless FPS game of all time and when paired with a mouse trounces the crap out of any singleplayer shooter people are languishing in these days, but I can't completely call it freeware. It was a demo. It even tells you in game how to mail order the other two episodes. I'll hold on to my vote until I can figure out if I can vote for what I want despite the technicality.
Doom didn't make Bethesda money until 2009 when id Software was purchased by Bethesda's parent company. Interestingly, one of the few games to give Doom a run for its re-release money is Cave Story which seems to get a new version every few years.Slurmee wrote: ↑07 May 2019 14:27 Doom does feel like one of those games that has blew up and doesn't really deserve to be called freeware since it's made Bethesda tons of money and basically put them on the gaming map.
Cavestory really feels like a freeware game love and heart put into the game just for the fun of it.
That being said both games are consider freeware as they are free so they both deserve to be here.
Too late now.