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Sebastian Santabarbara profile image Sebastian Santabarbara

DOOM Now Runs On The Atari ST

DOOM Now Runs On The Atari ST

Instead of wondering 'what will they put DOOM on next,' I think it's probably better for me to just make a list of things that DOOM won't run on. Having said that, a cardboard box and a lawnmower would have been two of the things on the list, so maybe the answer is just 'it runs on everything.'

A developer by the name of Jonas Eschenburg has finally brought DOOM to the Atari ST, a console that came out 8 years before DOOM first crawled its way out of the underworld and onto MS-DOS. It's called STDOOM, and while sounding a little like something you might need to get cream for at the chemist, it's an exciting project for Atari and retro gaming fans alike to check out.

I've seen DOOM running on so many different things since we started Retro Dodo, some of them running better than and more successfully than others. The gameplay results are going to be much better on McDonald's order screen than they are in a PDF, for example. STDOOM ends up only having 16 colours and runs a little like a character that's stuck in limbo when climbing a roof that you shouldn't be able to get onto... but it still works!

Having said that, it's 100% playable, and there are some cool features like the screen turning red when you take damage that appear when you're hit by an enemy. According to Tom's Hardware, the code only compiles on a Linux system, and the official GitHub page confirms this. Remember, you'll need your own copy of DOOM to run this on your Atari ST, too.

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Sebastian Santabarbara profile image Sebastian Santabarbara
Sebastian is fuelled by a lifelong passion for Zelda, Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong, and all things retro. He uses his misspent youth with retro consoles to create content for readers around the world.