The go-to test for how successfully a locked down device has been hacked to allow custom code to run is whether or not it can play Doom, but do we ever really need to hack anything ever again now that Doom itself has been hacked to play Doom?
It’s now routine for companies to lock down their hardware in order to force users to only access content through their own proprietary online stores or streaming portals. But as clever as the hardware and software engineers behind these secured devices may be, there are hackers who thrive on the glory of circumventing these locks and restrictions. More often than not, they’ll use id Software’s classic first-person shooter, Doom, to demonstrate that a device has been successfully hacked.
To date, everything from rotting potato-powered graphic calculators to even digital pregnancy tests have been hacked to run Doom, because the challenge really has nothing to do with finding a better way to play the FPS, but is instead all about whether it’s even possible. This time, YouTuber kgsws, who we previously featured as a creator of a super-sized, multi-screen Game Boy Pocket, demonstrates what could very well be the end all of Doom hacks, with the game running inside itself.
Technically, this hack leverages an exploit in the DOS version of Doom II, a bigger and better sequel that arrived a year after the original, and manages to get Chocolate Doom (a modern port of the game that’s compatible with the original DOS version of the game, occasionally referred to as Vanilla Doom) working within Doom as an animated texture. The modder’s 15-minute video goes into extreme detail about how this hack works, and how kgsws created a custom movie theatre Doom level so others can try it out, too. You can grab their custom code from GitHub, and find a copy of the DOS version of Doom II on Steam.