Benjamin Franklin once said that “nothing is certain except death and taxes.” Had he been alive today, he almost certainly would have said, “oh, and the other certainty is people will keep modding Doom until the end of time.” Quite the forward thinker. Anyway, here’s id Software’s iconic FPS running on a toothbrush.
Just a few days ago, Twitter user atc1441 (thanks, Rock Paper Shotgun) uploaded a brief clip showing Doom running on a smart toothbrush. On the tiny screen of the Planck Mini, you can just about make the game out. The modder even goes as far as showing it being controlled by a mouse.
In a second tweet, we see they eventually managed to get it to run full-screen rather than in a small window. Now we can see the thing much clearer.
Fight demons…and tooth decay
According to atc1441 – who says their biggest passion is to “custom firmware on as many devices as possible” (no way) – the toothbrush itself, “contains an ESP32-C3 with 4MB Flash.”
Using some additional downloads and a “miniwad” of Doom, they were able to compress the game down to the 4MB required for the flash. Hey presto: Doom on a toothbrush!
I don’t think I’ll ever get bored of the ways people can modify id’s influential shooter, either tinkering with the original or getting it to run on all manner of devices. Just have a look: Doom on a robotic lawnmower, in an audio spectrogram, on a pair of earrings!
One day we’re going to reach the singularity and someone will boast how they got Doom to run inside Doom. Oh, wait.