People have been pushing the boundaries of the devices the original Doom can run on for a long time. So far, we’ve seen the 30-year-old first-person shooter run on an Apple Watch, a treadmill, a pregnancy test and even a tractor. Now, one researcher has taken what Doom is capable of running on to the next level.
Lauren Ramlan, a biology Ph.D. student at MIT, has technically gotten Doom to run on gut bacteria. However, there’s one small caveat — it would take 600 years to beat the game. Why, you may ask?
Well, here’s your fun fact of the day. Bacteria is obviously not designed to run a video game. Ramlan got Doom to display using gut bacteria by creating a cell wall of E. coli bacteria and a 32×48 1-bit display. It takes 70 minutes for the bacteria to illuminate and render one frame of the game and eight hours to return to its starting state.
In other words, it would take about nine hours per frame. So, after a few fancy scientific calculations, this means it would take roughly 600 years to finish Doom in this form.
Important note: The bacteria aren’t technically running the game; instead, they combine to act as a tiny monitor that illuminates and renders the gameplay of Doom.
Ramlan’s work here is impressive and fascinating to watch unfold. Check out the video for yourself below and enjoy the wonders of coding and science in action.
Image credit: ID Software/Lauren Ramlan
Source: Lauren Ramlan Via: Engadget
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