“Can you play Doom on that?” is the modding version of “Will it blend?” Facing down the hell demons of Doom was work in the 90s, almost literally. When the title was released, it was massively popular, so much so that it was frequently played in offices. Players whiled away the day or stayed after hours and brought down office networks in the process. So much so that companies had to ban the game.
Back then it was pretty hard to conceal what you were doing since you had to be quick at switching out of a window on a massive machine. Now, though, you can run Doom on practically anything. And we do mean anything. This past week a software engineer announced that he repurposed a $15 Ikea smart lamp chip into a processor that let him play at 35 frames per second on a 160-by-128-pixel display.
So what else have people tried to play Doom (and its many versions) on?
Doom on a Zune
Maybe the only MP3 player you could get in brown, the Microsoft Zune was not long for this world. But modder Glenn Anderson (Aka Netrix) got it going on a Zune HD after the release of the OpenZDK.
Ebook Reader
If your latest read isn’t a page-turner, you can open up Doom on your ebook reader. The PocketBook 360 Plus might have been a device that never took off, but tech vlogger Charbax managed to put Doom on it in 2011.
Samsung Fridge
Does anyone who buys a Samsung refrigerator with a touch screen really find themselves using its computer capabilities? One man did. Streamer Richard Mallard used his Xbox Game Pass to port Doom Eternal over to his Samsung Family Hub Smart Refrigerator.
Pregnancy Test
Red lines, blue lines, one line, two lines—pregnancy tests are hard to read. But there’s no need to use them solely to determine if your life is about to inalterably change. You can also use them to play Doom, as programmer Foone Turing did. Well, sort of.
Potato Pi
Getting Doom to run on a Raspberry Pi doesn’t sound too impressive. But what if that Pi was powered by potatoes like that potato battery project you did as a kid? YouTuber Equalo cooked 100 pounds of potatoes to power his Pi, but he soon realized that didn’t produce enough power. So he switched devices, hooking his trusty Ti-84 to the spuds. It worked, though he doesn’t recommend anyone follow in his footsteps. But think of the lists you could land on if you did.
Minecraft
Maybe you’re playing Minecraft and want to take a Doom break. No need to leave one game for another since you can use VirtualBox and a Minecraft mod that lets you order and configure a computer.
