Doom was a breakthrough game for its time, and became so popular that now it’s essentially the “Banana For Scale” of hardware hacking. Doom has been ported to countless devices, most of which have enough processing ability to run the game natively. Recently, this lineup of Doom-compatible devices expanded to include the NES even though the system definitely doesn’t have enough capability to run it without special help. And if you want your own Doom NES cartridge, this video will show you how to build it.
We featured the original build from [TheRasteri] a while back which goes into details about how it’s possible to run such a resource-intensive game on a comparatively weak system. You just have to enter the cheat code “RASPI”. After all the heavy lifting is done, it’s time to put it into a realistic-looking cartridge.
To get everything to fit in the donor cartridge, first the ICs in the cartridge were removed (except the lockout IC) and replaced with custom ROM chips. Some modifications to the original board have to be soldered together as well, since the new chips’ pinouts don’t match perfectly. Then, most of the pin headers on the Raspberry Pi and the supporting hardware have to be removed and soldered together. Then, [TheRasteri] checks to make sure that all this extra hardware doesn’t draw too much power from the NES and overheat it.
The original project was impressive on its own, but with the Doom cartridge completed this really makes it the perfect NES hack, and also opens up the door for a lot of other custom games, including things like Mario64.
A NES. Damnit.
somebody writing articles should know these rules.. :/
It’s correct if you pronounce NES as individual letters and not as “Ness”.
It’s quite obvious it could be pronounced in more ways, causing both a and an to be correct. People should think before being pedantic.
If you say NES as individual letters then “an NES” is correct.
It’s the only way, anyhow
So basically Sega 32X for the NES? Or maybe 64x if the code on Pi is 64 bits native.
this would be more like a super gameboy. a full system in a cartridge using the host only for AV and controls.
This reminds me of the Tom7 “Reverse Emulation” also featured on hackaday a while back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar9WRwCiSr0
https://hackaday.com/2018/05/31/reverse-emulating-nes-nintendception/
Would be interesting to put in a slightly more powerful computer that can run Crysis. I’m sure Crysis on a NES would get a lot of views…
Can it run Crisis?
In 256×240 with just a few color, so yeah it can but it’ll look ugly compared to an average $500 Walmart PC with half-decent video card.
That is an interesting choice of cover picture for the cartridge.
Doom on a cartridge? That’s what I have an Atari Jaguar for!
I suspect a no-kidding NES port is feasible, by storing walls and sprites as tile patterns instead of pixel colors. Fill character memory with some JPG-esque blocks. Define e.g. a 128×128 texture using a 16×16 array of those blocks. Drawing the whole screen is tile-order instead of pixel-order. It’s like rendering in 32×30 resolution without looking like MZ-700 Space Harrier.
I’m just frustrated by someone with a lot of talent, patience, and skill not using the right tool for the job – FPGA.