Im wondering what games beside doom and classic arcade games like pong, can run on any sort of device and what the limitations are? everyone says will it run doom? but what others games have the same support doom has?
Im not sure if this post goes here but ill start here.
Another World. It’s impressive how it’s done, the game is programmed in a custom bytecode, and runs on an interpreter for the game. Porting the game to other platforms just requiere implementing the interpreter.
That allowed the game to be ported even to GBA.
There is a blog post that explains everything about it, and it’s super interesting.
Attack of the PETSCII Robots. Been ported to a ridiculous number of retro computers.
Snake
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That’s a fun question. I’d also add Snake to the list — it’s been recreated on calculators, old Nokia phones, smart fridges, and even in Excel. It’s probably one of the most reimplemented games ever. Not as “epic” as Doom, but definitely just as portable!
Seconding this. No joke, snake runs on my electric tea kettle: https://fellowproducts.com/blogs/learn/how-to-play-wormy-on-your-electric-kettle
Probably tetris.
It may look like Tetris, but due to international copyright law, it isn’t.
There are three Tetris versions that are all pretty good and very easy to emulate: The GB version which came with every device, the NES version and PICO-8.
My understanding is that Doom can run on any device because it is written in C. So any game written in C could be compiled to run on your target device.
There is way, way more to it than that.
Nethack
Tetris
OpenTTD
Nethack. I played it on an Amiga, PC, Mac (ppc), Raspberry pi, Android, Linux.
I was disappointed to find out NetHack isn’t on the Apple IIe. I’m not sure if it’s possible though
Don’t think any game has the same support doom has. Doom has become a benchmark of sorts so gets ported to the strangest of places. Not normally places you would bother to port any game. It is done for the challenge of the port rather than any practical reason.
There are tonnes of games that could run in the same places as doom, many could run in far more places. But doom is complex enough to be an interesting challenge while being simple enough to run on very limited hardware. And has been open sourced while being a classic icon which makes it attractive to be a benchmark for getting to run in the weirdest of places.
The architecture of Doom was specifically designed for portability. If you’d like to learn more, check out this video. For those that don’t know, tl;dr, the game’s structure is compartmentalized with specific connections (interfaces). The game logic runs separate of engine logic. If you write the specific engine hookups, the game logic should then run. Also math & clever level design implementation.
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I vote we try it with a bunch of old point and click adventure games like Monkey Island or any other that have simplistic enough graphics and gameplay. Couldn’t tell you how to do it because I don’t know what code they run and how inefficient it could be by the standards at the time, but I feel like a lot of old point and click games could probably run just fine on a lot of modern devices that aren’t computers, if given a Doom level community support.
Actually one of the more popular things to do with a hacked Wii back in the day.
Definitely heard of it. Had no idea what it was for. Good to know, I guess.
Solitaire, 2048, Chess, Zork
Came here to write Zork.
Any laptop made in the last decade will run basically everything from the GBA back to the Atari 2600.
Also DOS, PS1, probably at least some PSP and maybe N64.
I doubt you could find a laptop made in or after 2015 that won’t run N64.
This is how I’m finding out 2015 was a decade ago. I am shocked and appaled.
Hell, I was playing N64 on the school computers in 2008.
Yeah, Conker‘s Bad Fur Day ran on a Pentium D, which was a doubled Pentium 4 and the emulator didn’t use the second core.
Somewhat the opposite, but can it run Crysis?
I installed crysis not too long ago to fire it up on max settings. Past me didnt have a machine that could run it when it came out. Uninstalled right after. Justification for better employment.
Tic-Tac-Toe.
Edit: I remember that were a version of pac-man that was like 32x32 pixels.
Snake would also fall under that category
Probably Breakout as well.
I remember seeing a version of snake that runs on a car dashboard as an easter egg (like, literal dashboard, tiny screen where the gas milage is shown)
We know Tic-Tac-Toe runs on really old government command and control systems. It will even support the game realizing the only win is to not play.
How about a nice game of chess?
Later. Right now lets play Global Thermonuclear War.
Any sort of device? Well, to run a game, at a minimum there must be some kind of input and output, but not necessarily any storage. I think the one that could run on the most would be one that requires only one button for input, and one LED for output, that just tests your reflexes. It would have to read out your time by counting out flashes. You could also have a Simon-like game, with pattern memorization.
Rollercoaster Tycoon and RCT2 should work well on most machines. They are smallish games and written in assembly.
I feel like that would make them much harder to get running on different things. No compiled code means you would have to rewrite the whole game for different instruction sets. Very difficult for anything that isn’t x86.
