Over the years, the original Doom has been modded to work on a variety of bizarre platforms, including a potato-powered calculator, a pregnancy test, and even a flock of Minecraft sheep. As a result, it has since become something of a meme within the gaming community, with modders going to extreme lengths to get the game to run on the most unexpected of hardware.
The most recent addition to Doom's infamous list of unofficial ports come in the form of Nintendo's recently released Game and Watch: Super Mario Bros handheld. Created and showcased by YouTuber stacksmashing with the help of hacker Kondrad Beckmann, the pair managed to get the full game running on the nostalgic system.
The game is fully playable, although stacksmashing does emphasize that it does have some noticeable issues. The audio had to be disabled for Doom to work, while its resolution is downgraded, textures are removed, and its frame rate is still pretty sluggish. The YouTuber claims there's a lot to do before it's a fully-enjoyable rendition of the classic title, but that being said, the fact stacksmashing and Beckmann got the game to run at all is incredible. Following his showcase of the game in action, the YouTuber then gets into the details behind the modded port of the iconic game.
The first step was allegedly to "dump the full firmware of the main processor" before getting the hardware for the device up and running. The video goes into significant depth about how both of these goals were achieved, with stacksmashing claiming that custom code was created to dump the device's firmware and revealing the pair reverse-engineered all of its pin connections. the YouTuber even reveals that Beckmann managed to get the Rickroll video working on the device, using it troll fans on Twitter.
The video then runs through the troubles with finding a version of Doom adaptable for the device, citing that the Game and Watch's low amount of RAM and Flash made it difficult to port the game. The YouTuber spent a long time stripping back aspects of the classic title and developing a custom source code to get it to run on the device.
However, with some help from Beckmann, he managed to get it up and running. According to stacksmash, he and Beckmann are currently developing a project that allows others to mod on the device, so it seems likely viewers will get to see more fun Game and Watch mods as the duo continue to experiment with its capabilities.