Yes, the Nintendo Alarmo can run Doom

Just in case you were curious

News By Rhys Wood published 4 November 2024

The Nintendo Sound Clock: Alarmo - Nintendo's quirky (and arguably overpriced) way to help you leap out of bed in the morning - is the latest bit of hardware to pass the 'can it run Doom' test.

A post on X / Twitter by user GaryOderNichts - who is typically known for their Wii U reverse engineering efforts - appears to show that the classic 1993 first-person shooter can indeed run on Nintendo Alarmo.

It doesn't have the smoothest frame rate ever, but we can clearly see the original Doom being played on the Alarmo's central display. GaryOderNichts presses in the large alarm button to move forward, and rotates it left and right to turn Doom Guy in-game. Meanwhile, the back button on the left looks like it's used to open doors and interact with objects. The notification button on the right fires the weapon.

While an extremely impressive feat, there are a few caveats that GaryOderNichts makes note of. There's no support for audio, for one, which Gary attributes to "USB loader memory size restrictions." He notes that it is also possible to load in Doom's shareware version via USB without even needing to mod the Alarmo in any way.

Obviously, the Alarmo isn't the ideal or optimal way to play Doom (we've got an exceptional recently released Nightdive Studios-led remaster for that), but that isn't the point. Getting Doom to run on things it has no business running on has been a decades-long endeavor. 

The r/itrunsdoom subreddit is an excellent place to  browse for this reason, with recent examples showing Doom running on an electronic pharmacy sign, a cash register and even in other games entirely such as Rimworld. This is the key reason why Doom will probably outlast us all; it can quite literally run on anything.

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