4 of the coolest things to run Doom

If you’ve been on the internet long enough, you’ll know that people love getting Doom onto things. There’s a mantra of “if it has a screen, it can run Doom” which has helped drive people to get in on everyone, from calculators to lawnmowers.

But then something weird happened – people got bored of putting Doom on a screen. Instead, they found other ways to play Doom, including changing how the game looks and plays entirely. So, here are some of my top picks of the coolest things to run Doom that aren’t just putting the executable on a different screen.

It’s like a futuristic hologram

Do you know about volumetric displays? This one is a 2D panel that can display pixels as dots. The panel then spins around very, very quickly – so quickly that the dots look like they’re hovering in mid-air like a sci-fi hologram. Then you program the panel to change its dots at specific points in its spin and you can create 3D scenes using each light as a pixel.

So, what do you do with this power? Run Doom, of course. The above video shows what the classic shooter looks like on this special technology, and it looks like a ton of fun to play. Just don’t feel tempted to touch the 3D models, or else you may lose a finger.

Playing Doom in an AI’s imagination

If you watched the above video without its preceding context, you’d be forgiven that you’re just watching someone play Doom. But there are little oddities here and there, such as Doom Guy’s head moving oddly or the ammo count fluctuating. That’s because this isn’t regular Doom, but a version that’s being dreamt up by an AI.

Researchers designed a system called GameNGen where they trained an AI to play Doom. Then, they had an AI image generator watch the AI play Doom thousands of times, until it had a good idea about how the level looks, what happens when a key is pressed, and how combat works. Then, the researchers hooked up a keyboard to the AI image model and started playing Doom on it.

According to the researchers, the AI image generator was pretty good at simulating the map and remembering where everything was. It also studied behaviors like fighting demons and blowing up environmental elements, replicating them accurately when the human player performed them in-game. It raised the question; is it possible to design a game where the world is wholly constructed by an AI’s imagination on the fly?

3 Playing Doom using Windows icons

No executable needed

For these next two entries, we have to dive into the /r/ItRunsDoom subreddit. This subreddit is dedicated to people finding novel ways to play the retro shooter, and a brief browse will show you all the devices and screens that show the gory game in all its beautiful glory.

If you really dig deep, you start finding some gold. For instance, wojtek-graj on Reddit made a version that renders Doom using desktop icons. And yes, you can play it; just check out the little boxes underneath the game and double-click them to control Doom Guy. Maybe skip out on the Ultra-Violence difficulty playthrough for this one.

If you don’t like desktop litter, you can instead pack everything into your taskbar, as demonstrated by Trider12. This uses a similar idea as above, except now everything’s tucked away nice and tidy within the expandable icon window on your taskbar.

4 Playing Doom in other games that aren’t Doom

Take a game break in your game break

If you get tired of a game, why not boot up Doom in it? Due to Doom’s proliferation onto as many screens as possible, some people have taken the chance to see if they can add Doom into games that really should not be running Doom. Whether it’s via code execution in the game or by adding a mod, Doom can be played in-world in a ton of games. Some of my favorite examples include finding Doom in Rimworld, in Team Fortress 2, in Outer Wilds, in Minecraft, and even in The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind.

No shortage of ways to play Doom

While getting Doom to run on a calculator or a camera is impressive in its own way, I tend to gravitate toward people finding new and inventive ways to render Doom. Whether that’s on a spinning board that moves really fast or in a computer built in Minecraft, I’m always down to learning about more ways to render the classic shooter.