It’s hard to imagine that when the first game was released nearly 30 years ago, theDoomfranchise would not only be thriving, but would still have a dedicated modding community tinkering with the classic title. Asone of the most innovative first-person shooters of all time, id Software’s influential series laid the groundwork for the genre when it was first finding its feet. Now, all these years later, it’s still beloved by millions of gamers, and not only are there people still modding the game in numerous ways, there are those who are looking to see what unusual devices will run it.
Posting to Reddit recently, user wojtek-graj has managed to get the originalDoomto run on a text-based terminal, with the visuals being constructed entirely from ASCII characters. A short clip shows one of the levels of the game running smooth as butter, and while the graphics are made up entirely of symbols rather than pixels, it’s immediacy recognizable what’s being shown. The user also includes a link in the thread for anyone who wishes to port the game themselves.
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It goes without saying that players will need a copy ofDoomitself. However, the instructions do say that ashareware version ofDoomwill also work. For those who are perhaps a little younger, shareware worked in a similar way to a demo, in that it allowed fans to play a small chunk of the game before the full release, or it would be a trial version of the finished product which the user would then pay for at the end if they wished. The only downside to this text-based terminal port of the game is that it doesn’t come with sound.
Naturally, given how old it is, this is not the first time people have attempted to make the game compatible in ways that were not originally intended. There have been manyweird and wonderful things thatDoomhas been run on, which includes a GoPro Drone Controller, a kitchen appliance, a pregnancy test, and even on a calculator.
On top of that, one of the original shooter’s developers is still seeped in their creation after nearly three decades. Ex-id developerJohn Romero recently launched a charityDoom 2map, with all proceeds going to humanitarian efforts for people in Ukraine. At the last update, Romero said that the map had raised around $27,000 with every penny going to charity.
The originalDoomwas released in December 1993 for multiple platforms, and has been ported to many systems over the years.
