A large distinction that separated the PC from the consoles was a bigbrother-free market. This allowed what would be called an AO rated game such as the Shareware version of Doom to be freely downloaded from any BBS and enjoyed without anyone's approval. Doom employed blood, gore, violence and satanic symbols with wild abandon and the PC market was in love with the sheer brutality of it all. Cute characters on the consoles only inflamed the scorn PC users felt towards being treated like a child watching Saturday morning cartoons and helped sowed the seeds of the PC vs Console debate that has raged ever since.
Blizzard surely noticed the attention that Doom had attained and while smart platformers such as Prince of Persia existed on PC, it lacked a certain bloodlust that had grabbed the PC market. Enter a marriage of the two: Blackthorne.
Now Blackthorne is not the wanton carnagefest that Doom happily propagates, but having a shotgun that visually inflicted bloody damage was new to platformers. Killing things such as your own people, who are chained to a wall, backhanded blind fire ala Evil-Dead style was taboo and a guilty pleasure for the time.