Doom Now Playable on Nintendo’s $99 Alarm Clock: The Shores of Bell Expanded

Earlier this week, Twitter user GaryOderNichts showcased an impressive tech hack: managing to run the shareware version of Doom on a Nintendo Alarmo alarm clock. He shared a video of this unusual feat in a Twitter thread, catching the eyes of both gaming fans and tech enthusiasts alike.

In his post, Gary explains that achieving this required some clever maneuvering, particularly around the lack of audio support. To squeeze Doom’s shareware onto the device, he had to compress and decompress its files at startup to bypass the memory limits imposed by the USB loader. Thankfully, if you’re curious to try it out yourself, Gary assures that no major modifications to your Alarmo are needed. All the necessary project files are neatly organized and available on GitHub.

So, how did he pull this off? Gary laid out his journey in an in-depth blog post, where he describes cracking open the Alarmo to inspect its inner workings. What he found was a promising setup: the Nintendo Alarmo is powered by an STM32H730ZBI6 Arm Cortex-M7 processor. Its open documentation provided Gary with the perfect foundation to hack into the device and even connect it to his Raspberry Pi.

While the early stages of his project involved some soldering and experimentation, Gary says the final version of his work is user-friendly. No sophisticated modifications are necessary to get Doom running via USB.

For controls, Gary adapted the Alarmo’s minimalist interface. Doom can be controlled using the device’s limited buttons and touch-sensitive dial. Players swipe to turn their view left or right, and fire their weapon with the notification button. Other commands remain either undisclosed or unused, as seen in the shared video, which captures part of the game’s early level.

Despite the odd choice of the $99 alarm clock as a gaming platform, this isn’t the first unexpected device to host Doom. The iconic game has found its way onto things as varied as an advanced smart lawnmower, a Raspberry Pi Pico RP2350 microcontroller, and even an air hockey table. There’s even been an instance of a vintage Commodore 64 given enough horsepower through an expansion card to handle Doom.

The blend of curiosity and technical skill in projects like these proves that when it comes to running Doom, the only limit is the imagination.