Seth Cohn's S.P.I.S.P.O.P.D.

S.P.I.P.O.P.D. stands for Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris. This whole thing got startted in late 1993 in the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action when anticipation for the as yet to be relased game DOOM had reached a fever pitch.

At 11:06 AM PST, on November 30, 1993, Eli Bingham posted a message stating that there wouldn't be this insesant "DOOM" mania if id Software had given their game an unwieldy name like Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris. Within hours this was contracted to SPISPOPD and all hell broke loose.

comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action was soon flooded with ever increasingly wild posts about this fictional game, much to the aggravation of those who had complained about all the DOOM posts.

Taking the bull by the nose Seth Cohn created the Official SPISPOPD FAQ and a small legend was born. When DOOM finally did come out SPISPOPD was almost forgotten, but that's another story.

Dave Taylor of id Software caught wind of the SPISPOPD madness (see "Dave Taylor" button to the left) and added the cheat code "idspispopd" to DOOM (renamed "idclip" in DOOM 2).

If you have any stories or anecdotes about the SPISPOPD insanity and you want them posted here, please email me at rrward-at-gci-dot-net.

There is a real game called SPISPOPD by Hamumu Software , but that is not the SPISPOPD I'm talking about.

I would like to thank Andrew Shurtzl for emailing me a copy of Seth Cohns' FAQ.

It looks like SPISPOPD lives on in more ways than I had imagined. There is a band out there called S*P*I*S*P*O*P*D that has a song called "Zero (Ping Bastard)" [dead link removed], a Quake-related parody of a Smashin Pumpkins song (seems fitting enough).

28 OCT 2002 Today I recieved an email from the grandfather of S.P.I.S.P.O.P.D. himself, Eli Bingham! He told me that when he made that fateful Usenet post he was but a 15-year old kid.

09 JAN 2002 Google has recently made a huge archive of old Usenet posts available. I don't know how far back the archive goes, but I did manage to find quite a few Usenet posts (thought lost forever) to comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, including (drumroll please) the very first SPISPOPD post evar!!!!1!. I really wonder if Eli Bingham knew what madness he was about to unleash upon the world of action gamers?

11 APR 2007 (Five years with no update?) I recieved an email asking me to remove an email address contained in one of the pages here. Being a nice guy I complied. Upon reflection I decided to remove all listed email addresses, save those contained in Seth Cohn's FAQ, as I just host the file and do not own the copyright to its contents. Back when I put this page together email harvesters were not scanning web pages looking for email address to send spam to. Now they are and it seems like a good idea to remove any potential targets from these pages.

Last Updated : , Richard Ward.