KEY POINTS

  • A programmer has just run "Doom" on an electronic pregnancy test
  • Foone took to Twitter and shared his journey in making the 1993 game work on a pregnancy test
  • He had to replace the tester's LCD and CPU to make the game run

A programmer has just answered one of the gaming community’s immortal questions and he did it using a pregnancy test.

“Will it run DOOM?” is a subreddit that focuses on the community using “odd hardware” to run the 1993 cult classic. The group prides on their tweaking abilities and over the years, saw “Doom” run on calculators, ATM machines. Suffice to say, they are confident that “if it has a computer in it, it can possibly run Doom.”

Twitter user Foone is, according to Mashable, a programmer who likes “reverse-engineering things” and likes to take his time with “ancient hardware and software.” While “Doom” is not entirely that prehistoric, it’s the fact that it gained popularity during the 90s that made it popular alongside its pixelated visuals and outdated features.

doom
In an interview with GameSpot, id Software designer Kevin Cloud, who’s responsible for making many of the creative decisions for the game, said Doom 4 was canceled because it did not feel like a Doom game. id Software

Foone took to Twitter and shared his progress to run the classic game on an electronic pregnancy test. During his initial efforts, Foone admitted that what he’s doing is going to be “way tricky” and would even take a “modern desktop” to accomplish.

“But I can playback a doom video on it, which is kinda close?” Foone said in a post.

After a series of Tweets, Foone finally did the seemingly impossible mission to run “Doom” on a 128x23ppi screen of a pregnancy test. Prior to his achievement, Foone said that it wasn’t “playing” “Doom” at first; instead, it was “video being played back” and not an “interactive game.”

“Well, now it is. It’s Pregnancy Test Doom!” Foone said.

He even went to zoom in on the screen but despite being monochrome on such a tiny display, “Doom” is clearly visible.

Foone later explained that he replaced the tester’s LCD display and microcontroller. The later, he added, only shows four things, while the CPU cannot be programmed.

“I’m not using any of the original tester other than the shell,” tweeted Foone.

In a nutshell, the pregnancy test’s LCD acted as a screen while a keyboard was still required to input the actions to control the character, Game Rant reported. It might not be that groundbreaking for some, but it still proved that with ingenuity and a bit of tinkering, Foone’s Pregnancy Test Doom is a “unique success.”

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