What Are Some Games That Use WADs?

The Obvious Answers

The WAD file format was created for Doom, and reused for Doom II: Hell on Earth. As such, WADs are very heavily identified with Doom in the gaming community, and most of the WAD files you'll find online are meant for one of these two games.

Other Doom Engine Games

Although it's known as the Doom engine, the base program was reused for several other games. Some of these simply provided the end user with a new IWAD, but others made changes to the basic engine in order to add new features or mechanics.

Here's a brief overview of some other games that use the Doom engine along with its WAD file system.

Chex Quest (series)

Back in the day, boxes cereals offered free prizes to encourage kids to buy them. One brand, Chex, decided to go the extra mile and create a trilogy of games using a Doom source port and original IWADs. In these child-friendly games, you take on the role of a Chex Warrior fighting to save the Intergalactic Federation of Cereals from an invasion by the evil Flemoids.

FreeDoom

FreeDoom is an attempt to provide free and open source replacements for the official IWADs. Combined with the source port of your choice, this is a wonderful free Doom-like experience. The hero of this adventure is trying to escape and stop a corrupt corporation that's creating cybernetic monsters for an unknown military organization.

HacX

HacX was an attempt to market a game as an add-on for Doom II. It was a commercial failure, but this had more to do with the release of Quake and the rise of games that could produce real 3D graphics than it did with HacX's quality.

In this game, players take on the role of a skilled hacker named Danny Evanger who is fighting to stop the world from imploding as a global wave of infrastructure failures and cannibal zombies seek to destroy it.

Heretic

Heretic is a fantasy-themed first person shooter where the player takes on the role of a nameless Elf who stands alone against the evil of D'Sparil and the other Serpent Riders. This game largely kept the WAD format intact despite modifications to the base engine.

Hexen

Hexen is the sequel of Heretic, though it changed several mechanics in such a way that makes it more a spin off than a direct sequel. Of relevance to this page, Hexen altered the WAD format in such a way that the WADs it uses are not compatible with Doom's engine or source ports that strictly follow its rules.

Strife

Strife mixes dialog and roleplaying elements with the Doom engine, which is probably a first in its own right. However, like HacX, it was unlucky enough to be released around the same time as Quake, which prevented it from gaining traction.

Unrelated Games

The simplicity of the WAD format led to some other developers using it for their projects, though most of these games have not survived the test of time. Listed below is the one exception.

Rise of the Triad

After some disputes over direction id Software should take with Doom, Tom Hall left id Software in 1993 and joined Apogee, another prominent game company during the DOS era, where he helped create Rise of the Triad. This connection to the Doom games is likely why Rise of the Triad makes use of the WAD format for some of its resources.