Researcher proves Doom can run on anything by making it playable on gut bacteria

A researcher has proven Doom can run on anything by making it playable on gut bacteria, but it’ll take you 600 years for a single playthrough. 

Doom is infamous amongst modders as one of the easiest games to run. So easy to run that despite being a meme, Doom really can quite literally run on just about anything, as long as it has a processor and screen. 

From thermostats, pregnancy tests, Legos, smartwatches, and ATM machines, it’s all thanks the game’s purposely dead simple code that it’s so easy to port and mod. 

And to truly prove the theory, an MIT Bioengineering PHD student, Lauren Ramlan, has made Doom playable on gut bacteria. No, really.

To be specific, Ramlan isn’t literally processing Doom with the gut bacteria itself, rather, Ramlan created a display using E. coli bacteria to play Doom. 

The display is a 32×48 1-bit monochromatic display that uses bacteria infused with a fluorescent protein, with each one effectively acting as a single pixel. And it’s with this very low resolute display that you can render Doom gameplay with the cells. 

However, as Ramlan pointed out, it takes a really long time for the cells to illuminate properly.

It took the cells 70 minutes to illuminate an image, and then another eight hours and 20 minutes to go dark so it could be reset for the next frame. That means, the bacteria display takes around eight and a half hours to load each frame. 

According to her calculations, it would take you a glacial 600 years to complete an entire playthrough of Doom on the gut bacteria cells. But technically, it is possible.

Despite the hilarious time to completion, Ramlan still concluded the project as “enjoyable”, as she truly did prove that Doom can run on anything. 

To the point John Romero, the legendary lead designer and programmer responsible for Doom, Quake, and a plethora of classic FPS’, responded with a simple, “Finally”.