A cult video game known for running on unconventional hardware has reached a new milestone, with the 1993 shooter Doom now operating on wireless in-ear headphones. The project, called Doombuds, brings the game to earbuds for the first time by using the open-source PineBuds Pro platform.
The experiment was created by Australian web developer Arin Sarkisian, who adapted the PineBuds Pro’s open firmware to run the game entirely on the device’s own hardware. The earbuds rely on an ARM Cortex M4F processor, which was modified to deliver enough performance to support the decades-old title.
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“The cult classic Doom is famous for running on just about anything,” the project description said, noting that the game has previously been made to run on devices ranging from calculators to ATMs. For Doombuds, the processor was overclocked and power-saving features were disabled, while the game itself was heavily optimized to reduce memory usage.
Because the earbuds do not have a screen, video output is handled through a serial connection, with individual frames encoded as JPEG images and streamed to a web browser. At Doom’s standard resolution of 320 by 200 pixels, the system achieves roughly 18 frames per second, according to the project’s documentation.
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The PineBuds Pro earbuds are currently listed at $69.99 on the manufacturer’s website, and users can queue through the project’s site to play the game remotely. While the project offers little practical value, it adds another entry to the long-running “Can it run Doom?” phenomenon, showing that the game can function even on devices designed solely for audio.
Source: DoomBuds