Doom running through the Notepad app looks surprisingly playable
pcgamer.comVery few months go by on PC Gamer without mention of 1993's most-loved FPS, Doom. That game somehow manages to find a new lease of life(opens in new tab) regularly, be it running ray tracing, on a motherboard BIOS(opens in new tab), or, as I've just seen today, in the Notepad app.
Game dev creator, Sam Chiet(opens in new tab), claims it's «the ideal way to play.» And while they're clearly joking, it's not actually that terrible of an experience. I mean, the game is running at 60fps for starters. I've certainly seen worse.
The fidelity of the final image perhaps isn't ideal, and yes, there is some flickering. But for a game displayed wholly through the use of characters in the Notepad app, it's not half bad. I can actually make out what's happening in the game, and the lack of colour isn't as distracting as you might expect.
This isn't some magically modded version of the text-based app, either. The Notepad app has not been modded in any way, says Chiet.
«Incredible,» John Romero, one of the creators of Doom, says in a tweet(opens in new tab) responding to Chiet.
Incredible. https://t.co/WIMNLfA0TBOctober 9, 2022
NotepadDOOM may soon arrive as a downloadable version for others to play if you're interested in trying it out for yourself. Cheit says it'll take some time to package it all together, but that should all be done in the next couple of days. There's also another version of Doom called DOOM-ASCII(opens in new tab) that will run in a text-based terminal if you need an immediate retro gaming hit.
It's all very impressive. You think you've seen it all with Doom and then someone comes along and runs the game on/with something they shouldn't. There's even a whole Reddit dedicated to old hardware running Doom(opens in
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