It is a tradition well-regarded that PC gaming’s long-standing FPS Doom be ported to every new piece of hardware that could, even vaguely conceivably, run it.
Last year, id Software surprise-dropped an updated Doom and Doom 2 as a collection, one that runs on modern hardware and has been pretty well-received. To wit, Limited Run Games is going to make a physical release of Doom + Doom 2. When it goes on pre-order on April 18 it’ll come in a standard case, a retro-style big box, or as one of 666 limited copies of a completely absurd $666.66 Will It Run Edition.
Naturally, the box of the Will It Run edition is itself a device that runs Doom. Is that completely insane? Yeah, that’s completely insane. Oh, and it also includes a little handheld Cacodemon toy… that also runs Doom. And some trading cards and the soundtrack on cassette tape and whatever: the box plays Doom. What the hell.
Doom is perhaps one of the only games that can justify this level of absurd, celebratory excess. After all, in the words of PC Gamer’s staff: Doom is Eternal. It’s one of the foundational FPS games, and its technology and design became foundational to a wide variety of games.
Anyway, now seems as good a time as ever to revisit some things people have run Doom on. Like, for example, inside Doom itself.
You can also run Doom in a motherboard BIOs, in your Notepad app, on the teletext TV information service, on gut bacteria, on your dystopian wifi-enabled toothbrush, on a very expensive international satellite, right on your Nintendo Alarmo, and most recently directly inside a PDF file.
And, soon, you can run it on the box for Doom.
