Even DOOM Can Now Run DOOM!

For years now, the standard test of any newly hacked piece of hardware has been this: can it run DOOM? id Software’s 1993 classic first-person shooter has appeared on everything, but here’s one from [kgsws] that’s a bit special. It’s DOOM, running inside DOOM itself.

So how has this feat been achieved? There’s a code execution exploit inside the original DOS DOOM II executable, and that has been used to run the more modern Chocolate Doom within the original. It appears as an in-game texture, giving an odd effect as if it’s being watched in a cinema.

The video below the break shows the game-in-game in action, but the real value lies in its in-depth description of the exploit, that takes us through some of the inner workings of the game and ably explains what’s going on. It finishes up with a specially made cinema WAD in which to play DOOM-in-DOOM, and even Hexen-in-DOOM. Pick up your trusty chainsaw, it’s going to be a long night.

30 thoughts on “Even DOOM Can Now Run DOOM!

      1. I think it’s called to doomcursion . That movie was many peoples first exposure to recursion, and now they think recursion == inception. Webster will likely have to add ‘recursion’ to the definition of ‘inception’

        1. Yeah, even though the ‘inception’ had nothing to do with the dream inside a dream inside a dream, except for hope to plant the idea so deep that the person thinks they came up with the idea themselves.
          Oh well, what can we do…

  1. Let’s go in the other direction: I think I play Doom in the “real world”. But actually, I’m inside an instance of Doom, and someone else outside controls me as I play Doom.
    That someone else thinks he’s in his real world. But actually … hey, how many layers up does this go anyway?

  2. i dont play online doom anymore (skulltag and later zandronum),
    but when i did, i always wished this was possible every time i played this PWAD (add-on WAD) that included a doom-movie theatre, a doom-arcade, and i think a doom-“sports” field

    actually, saying that makes me wonder about the moral implications of what might be scheduled to be played on that field… ;)

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