Doom has become a sort of Hello World for the most unusual systems. From thermostats to printers, ATMs, the Touch Bar of the Apple Pro and even an ultrasound machine, if the platform is open enough, someone will run Doom on it. But why Doom? What makes it so popular? Beyond its history, Doom meets two or three very attractive conditions for the community.
Doom. A masterpiece of the FPS genre if there ever was one. Few games managed to present such a brutal challenge in 1993, marking an entire generation and earning almost absolute loyalty. This coming December 10, Doom will turn 25 years old (which, on a personal level, makes me feel like a fossil), but fans have ensured it ages very well. Today, Doom is the quintessential tool for testing the flexibility of almost any platform. Oscilloscopes, calculators, wandering billboards… if it has a (more or less) well-documented processor and a bit of memory, chances are someone can adapt Doom to run on it. Now, there are certainly much simpler pieces of software that could do a similar job, but still, enthusiasts prefer Doom. Why?
Open Source and a Tireless Community
First and foremost, the most obvious: Doom is open source. The code was originally published on December 23, 1997 under a non-profit license, but it was in October 1999 that it came under the wing of the GPL. An interesting technical detail is that the available resources belong to the Linux port of Doom, because the code of the MS-DOS version has a sound module that is under copyright. That brings us to the second point: Doom is written in C (which translates into a wide range of compatible tools for its editing and compilation), and the community keeps it up to date. The number of ports on the web is impressive, with notable ones like Chocolate Doom (which even preserves the bugs) and GZDoom. In both cases, you need the WAD files from the original games, but a quick Google search will lead you to them (as an alternative, you can buy Doom Ultimate and Doom 2 for less than 3 euros, or get Doom 3 BFG Edition, which includes both games).
Negligible Hardware Requirements
Finally, its requirements are what we could call negligible today. The official text of the Doom shareware version specifies a minimum of a 386 processor with 4 megabytes of RAM, a VGA card and enough disk space, while the recommended hardware is a 486 chip and a Sound Blaster or compatible card. In other words, a fraction of the Raspberry Pi Zero would be more than enough to run it. With such a light footprint, the adaptation process becomes much simpler. As a closing thought, don't miss the opportunity to play Doom today. Everything you need is online, and it works even at a fuel pump.
