The video game industry is full of titles that have become true works of worship, however none arouses as much veneration as DOOM. The shooter in the first person of ID Software It is not only valued for incorporating various technical elements that were ahead of its time, but also because over the last 29 years it has pushed a legion of enthusiasts to hack as much device as possible to run it.
DOOM it was released in 1993 for MS-DOS and was quickly ported to a myriad of platforms and operating systems. This is because the game’s source code has been in circulation since 1997, which has allowed it to be brought to a large number of devices; including all those that have not been designed for purposes gamerbut they can still run it.
It is true that DOOM became the seed of a prolific franchise that has included successful sequels and a very well received reboot (plus a couple of unattractive film adaptations). However, it is likely that no other title in the series has achieved the same level of fidelity as the original.
And a clear example of this is the impressive community that keep porting the game to the most unusual devices. Thus, what was born as a meme has become a very striking hobby and has been proposed to break down the barriers that prevent executing DOOM on any gadget, no matter how ridiculous it may seem.
In fact, throughout the web we can find endless demonstrations of the “versatility” of DOOM. and the subreddit r/itrunsdoom It is possibly the highlight when it comes to bringing together the efforts of the community.
DOOMthe game that can be played on virtually any device
If it is not yet clear that DOOM can be run on virtually any device with a chip and displayWe’ll try a little harder.
Televisions, remote controls for drones, ATMs, printers, oscilloscopes, digital thermometers, spectrum analyzers, cameras, smartwatches, ultrasound or ultrasound equipment, and even pregnancy tests, among many other devices, have been successfully subjected to the task to execute shooter from id Software.
If for some reason you still don’t believe it, below we will mention some of the most outstanding cases.
DOOM on a graphing calculator
One of the benefits of porting the same game over and over again to bring it to countless devices is that it has been possible compress it to run on even the most limited hardware. This video dates from 2011 and shows how it has been possible to install DOOM on a graphing calculator with a black and white screen, and with an executable that weighed a few KB. Of course, the gameplay is not the most fluid (or defined), but that hardly matters.
On a landline phone
For many years, having a landline phone in your home was considered a privilege in many countries. Not only because it was expensive, but also because there was a lack of communications infrastructure. Gone are those times, where surely no one imagined that it would be possible to play on a device of this type. However, the modernization of telephone sets has also allowed DOOM carve out a place for themselves, as this user-shared video demonstrates @NeilBostian On twitter.
on a digital camera
The digital photography sector has not been spared from the efforts of the legion of hackers of DOOM. There are tons of videos on the web showing how id Software’s game runs on a wide variety of modern cameras. However, what is really remarkable is that it has also been installed on a model almost as old as the game itself. Below you can see it in action in a Kodak DC260 from 1998with 2-inch screen.
In a price scanner
Another peculiar case of DOOM being executed on any device with a screen and a chip. On Twitter, the user discate shared a very interesting thread in which he shows step by step how I manage to run the id Software game on a price reader from the early 2000s.
The monochrome panel and the microcontroller provided by AMD have been sufficient to install the game. As in many other cases, the definition is far from being the best, but the hardware fulfills its mission.
at an ATM
This is not something that can be seen in a bank or on public roads, but it is still striking. DOOM it has also been run on an ATM, as seen in the video below. And while it may not seem too complex — after all, the machine is running Windows XP deep down — the experiment has proven to be especially challenging when it comes to configure the controls.
Special mention: DOOM on a pregnancy test
We close our review of some of the most striking cases with a special mention of this “invention”: a pregnancy test capable of executing DOOM. in a way its developer has cheated, since it did not use the original hardware, but changed some of the components (the screen and the chip), adapted them, and connected the test to a keyboard to use it as a controller. However, it deserves recognition for its originality. If you want to know a little more about the process, we recommend reading this article who published Popular Mechanics in 2020.
It is clear that this has been an absolutely arbitrary selection of the rarest gadgets in which it has been installed DOOM. If you want to explore a little more, you can go to the subreddit r/itrunsdoom; there you will find a wide variety of hacks related to this video game, mostly hilarious.