A homebrew developer has shared a video of a work-in-progress Sega Dreamcast port of 1997’s DOOM 64 for the Nintendo 64. The port comes courtesy of jnmartin84, the same developer who was working on porting OpenLara to the Nintendo 64 (thanks to thesegaguru on YouTube).
Jnmartin84’s DOOM 64 port is currently in ongoing development, with the gameplay video shared online demonstrating an unfinished build of the project, created using KallistiOS and captured on an original Sega Dreamcast.
While the video is clearly of DOOM 64, severe graphical issues of the Dreamcast port are everywhere, with textures popping in and out constantly and a partially finished HUD on screen, although the pause menu does appear intact.
The video also reveals that, in its current state, DOOM 64 for the Dreamcast has no enemies, no guns and no audio whatsoever.
Despite the current presentation issues, the port does appear to run at a decent framerate, with jnmartin84 able to quickly manoeuvre through the levels that first appeared in Midway’s seminal title.
DOOM 64 Devs Talk
Several other homebrew Dreamcast developers have added comments to jnmartin84’s recent video offering support, encouragement, and even chipping in with their own advice and suggestions to assist with the project development.
In amongst the comments, jnmartin84 revealed that they “took a 20 year break from Dreamcast stuff but started with librdream and KOS around 2003. The developer continued by saying the “API is pretty much the same [and I] didn’t have much trouble bringing up my old projects”.
Another developer, Falco Girgis, shared a post on Twitter, celebrating jnmartin84’s achievement, saying they are “super stoked to see this very early footage of Doom 64 running on the Sega Dreamcast using KallistiOS!” It’s truly heartwarming to see the camaraderie of developers and their desire to bring these retro classics to new systems, and we’re looking forward to seeing how this port progresses over the coming months!
