DOOM Runs On Husqvarna’s Robot Lawnmower

DOOM has been ported to a lot of platforms — to the point where the joke is kind of getting old now. Evidence of that is available in the fact that brands are now getting in on the action. Yes, as reported by The Register, you can now officially play DOOM on your Husqvarna’s Automower.

Nice, right? Speedrun it on this interface.

We had to check if this was some kind of joke; indeed, the April release date had us looking at the calendar. However, it seems to be legit. You’ll be able to download a version of DOOM via the Husqvarna Automower Connect App, and play it on the tiny screen of your robot lawnmower. Hilariously, due to the size of the game, Husqvarna notes it “may take up to a week before the game is playable” due to the time it takes the mower to download it, along with a necessary software update.

Controls are simple. The knob on the robot is used for turning left and right, while pressing start lets you run forward. Firing weapons is done by pressing the control knob.

We’ve seen some quality ports before, including an arcade port that was particularly cool. Really, though, at this stage, you have to work harder to impress. Show us DOOM running on a Minuteman launch console or something.

Thanks to [Stephen Waters] for the tip!

26 thoughts on “DOOM Runs On Husqvarna’s Robot Lawnmower

      1. People were shocked at MaxOD because it reveals a side of his interests that his writing does not. When Hollywood gave him a blank check to not just write but direct a movie any way he wanted, he made the kind of movie he liked watching, and he is a huge fan of bad B-grade 1950’s monster movies. Man in a rubber suit, bad acting, characters doing stupid things, poorly translated dialog, all of it. This isn’t a thing that ever came through in King’s fiction. In fact, the short story “Trucks” on which MaxOD is “based” is itself more of a King fiction, being gritty and poignant and devastating. MaxOD is more of an homage to movies like Them or The Incredible Shrinking Man, except with more modern production values. When you look at MaxOD that way it actually does a pretty competent job of what it set out to do, it’s just not what anybody was expecting.

  1. great,just fantastic,one more gadjet for the LLM’s
    to send after us
    instead of zombies it will be lurching appliances
    drones, lawn care equipment and murderous 3d printers giving you the side eye

  2. So, there will be a firmware update, and after that, it’s possible to upload and run custom applications?

    Wonder when we will see the first lawnmower that got hacked and was used against its owner with intent to destroy the garden, or maybe even injure its owner. It’s a weaponized robot, after all.

    I may be too much of an engineer. But I feel that if you gain control over motor speed, you might be able to induce such an imbalance that could tip the mower over and turn it into a blender.

    Or maybe I’m not too much of an engineer, but just watched too many horror movies and news programs.

  3. “DOOM has been ported to a lot of platforms — to the point where the joke is kind of getting old now.”

    Only Turing complete things. Also haven’t run on a mechanical computer yet.

    1. Even at one frame per minute, I hate to think of the lubrication consumed and heat generated by such a mechanical affair. Or the repetitive machinist hours required to build it.

  4. Can’t see doom being played on a launch console, mostly because those LCO guys are as serious as a case of the plague. Not saying it hasn’t been done in a training site or at Vberg, but how would you confirm that

      1. Can confirm. I used to work at a place that made military radios and the developers hid a snake game in there. Triggered by a very specific button sequence on the handset.

  5. Welp. You know a joke is dead once corporations start to get in on it for marketing purposes…

    It also kind of misses the point. The running doom on everything is a Hacking tthing. As in if a device has a way to display the game and can be programmed by hackers, They will find a way to get doom running on it. An official release is just… meh….

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