DOOM It is one of the most legendary video games that exist in the digital entertainment scene. And although the franchise has released many highly successful titles, it is also true that the first of the titles remains a timeless classic that many fans of retro games go crazy about ...
What not too many people know is that this video game has lately become a goal of many hackers and makers to use it for your projects, being able to run it on a multitude of different devices, some of the weirdest you can imagine.
What is DOOM?
ID Software, the developer of DOOM, knew how to make a great video game at the time. A first-person shooter title, an FPS, that the public tends to like so much. This one came out for the first time in 1993, when this American company under the direction of John Carmack and under the design of John Romero, they got this project.
It was initially created to run under DOS, and then ported to other platforms like NeXTSTEP. The launch requirements were really low compared to current titles, although they weren't at the time. It worked with an Intel 486 microprocessor at 66Mhz or similar. In addition, it needed 8MB of RAM, 40MB of free hard drive storage, and 16-bit sound.
Regardless of those technical details, the game consisted of the story of a marine, the protagonist you had to command, who is on a routine mission on a space station on one of the moons of Mars, that of Phobos. But that mission will turn into a nightmare when one of the experiments fails and opens a door to hell, releasing a series of demons and spirits that you will have to face ...
Furthermore, those evil spirits take over the bodies of the fallen to transform into zombies. The protagonist is the only human alive in the station and will have to make his way before this very hostile panorama ...
Simple but effective, being one of the most recognized video games of 1993. In fact, DOOM was so played that year that few PCs did not have it installed. Furthermore, it was easily modifiable, hackable, so that users could create their own maps, and other modifications.
More information - DOOM Official Website
List of the strangest devices where DOOM has managed to run
Over the years, far from being lost in oblivion, DOOM has continued to have a legion of fans like other vintage titles. But now, it is not only fashionable among fans of retro gaming, but also among some makers and hackers who want to demonstrate their expertise by running the video game in the strangest devices and absurd that you see.
Homemade RISC-V CPU
Colin Riley is one of the AMD developers working at Radeon that you had the pleasure of chatting with recently. He in his spare time is a fan of FPGAs. So he decided to create a CPU he designed from scratch using the instruction set RISC-V and on which DOOM managed to run as you can see in the video.
A calculator powered by 770 potatoes
Yes, absurd. truth? But that's right, just as you hear it. A programmable calculator Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus and 770 Potatoes it is the only thing that this person has needed to be able to run DOOM on this device. Potatoes have served as a source of energy, like a battery from which to draw energy to power the calculator.
This user's original idea was to run DOOM on a Raspberry Pi Zero, but the consumption of this SBC plate was not low enough to be fed by the potatoes, which generate between 80 and 110 mA and 5V. That is why the solution was to find a device with a lower consumption, the calculator ...
DOOM in a Porsche 911
A user known as Vexal has modified a porsche 911 to be able to install and modify this video game. So you can play a few games using the controls of your vehicle, being able to use the steering wheel to move, the gear lever also has functions, or the accelerator to kill.
It only needed a USB flash drive with a single file that has the VIN of the car. So the onboard computer boots into debugging mode, then insert the DOOM CD and select it and voila ...
By the way, Vexal also has other awesome videos, like this one using a toaster to control video games:
Inside Minecraft
Minecraft It is a very versatile video game as you know, to such an extent that Windows 95 can be installed inside it. Using the VM Computers MOD, the mods that allow you to modify Minecraft and add extra functions, you can install a virtualized computer inside the video game thanks to VirtualBox.
Only these mods are needed and the Windows 95 ISO. From there, installing any program compatible with Windows 95 is also a piece of cake. For example, managing to install DOOM to be able to play it within Minecraft itself… A video game matrioshka !!!
Bitcoins wallet unhackable?
If something has a screen and a processor it is enough to run DOOM. This chameleon video game can be adapted to almost anything. And what looked like an unhackable item (or should), like a Bitfi physical wallet for cryptocurrencies, it has been possible to hack into running DOOM.
McAfee, the company behind this portfolio should not be happy at all. In fact, they were so sure that it couldn't be hacked that they offered $ 250.000 to whoever managed to break the security, and they have succeeded, in addition, the 15-year-old who did it did not take a week ...
DOOM in ... a kitchen robot from Lidl
El Lidl food processor, Monsieur Cuisine Connect, has been presented as a cheap alternative to the Thermomix, giving a lot to talk about and having a resounding success. But what if I told you that they could also hack it to run DOOM? You are right…
The manufacturer of this robot includes a speaker and a microphone, although the latter is not active (I wonder what the purpose of this would be…?). In addition, it includes the touch screen to control the functions of the robot and a Android 6.0 operating system. Therefore, all the ingredients for a group of French hackers to modify it to be able to play DOOM in it.
DOOM over a predictor
Yes, the pregnancy test They also don't escape DOOM, since they have managed to use this little device to run it. And it is that current tests, such as the ClearBlue model, have a microcontroller as powerful as those that were in the original IBM PCs or in the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, etc.
A little chip of 8-bits at 4-8Mhz and with 64 bytes from memory. These are almost laughable figures nowadays, but now they are bought in a pharmacy for a few euros while those capacities were paid for thousands of dollars at that time ...
ATM ATM
The ATMs They work with a version of Windows XP, so if DOOM has been able to run on devices as rare as the previous ones, it is not surprising that it has also been achieved on them. They also have a screen and a keyboard, what more could you ask for?
On a printer
Security expert Michael Jordon has managed to run DOOM on a printer inkjet. It is a Canon Prism and its creator has detailed the process to get it.
On an expensive keyboard ...
El Optimus Maximus It was a $ 1500 keyboard that had the ability to program a screen on each of its keys. A whim within the reach of few, but that has given rise to this project in which they have managed to execute DOOM in a single key !!! All with a resolution of 48 × 48 pixels ...
Kodak DC260 Photo Camera
Another of the surprising and crazy projects was running DOOM on an old digital camera from 1998. Specifically on a Kodak DC260.
Apple iPod
An old Apple iPod it was also "ousted" in order to install DOOM. Specifically, a Nano version with a color screen of the music player from the Cupertino company.
Apple MacBook Pro Touch Bar
The famous touchbar that Macbooks have Modern Apple is handy for certain controls, inserting emojis, etc. A small touch screen on the keyboard that has caused a good acceptance among its users. But of course ... what would a touchbar be if you can't run DOOM? That's what those who did this must have thought ...
The Apple Watch has also fallen into the clutches of DOOM
Another of the devices on which DOOM has been run is on a wearable, specifically on the Apple Watch. The device is powerful enough to do it, it just takes skill to get DOOM to run on it, and they've done it ...
More
Other devices that DOOM has been able to run on are the old Sony phones Ericsson K-800i, screens of the billboards of some public spaces, in an arcade machine, etc. What will be the next nonsense? The truth is that many of these works are pretty absurd, but that is why they are so amazing. So welcome to ...