In Doom [II], does John Romer's head count towards the end-level kills statistic?
I finished a level and I'm one kill short, but I checked everywhere and there aren't any monsters left. I even tried setting the map to show entities and used noclip to fly around, trying to find an entity moving, even shooting as I moved to prompt any monsters to start moving, but still found nothing. I can only assume that John Romero's head counts as a monster, but it's not registering it as a kill. 🤔
Bizarrely, I can't find any information on this; I'd have thought that it had been asked before, but a web search comes up completely empty (the wiki page for "the final boss" says it doesn't count, but that's because it's not a thing; the page for John Romer's head doesn't mention it at all). 🤨
Best Answer
Well like they say, If you want something done right…
I went ahead and made a map with just John Romer's head, and again with the head and an imp. Then I looked at the number of monsters in the map screen and the number of kills in the end-of-level screen if just the head is killed or both the head and the imp are killed.
With just the head, it shows zero monsters and 100% kills. With the head and an imp, it shows one monster. If only the head is killed, it shows 0% kills. If both are killed, it shows 100% kills (i.e., the imp).
Therefore, John Romero's head is not counted as a monster nor a kill.
Thus, in map 24 (“Dying on Cue”) of the Sunlust megawad where I have 1508 out of 1509 kills, it means that the John Romero's head inside the machine is not counted as a kill, but it's also not counted as a monster either, therefore there must be a live monster left somewhere in the map.
Now I'm off to see if I can find it… 😕
Here's a screenshot of the results of the test: