Here at Ars, we've covered versions of Doom running on everything from hacked printers to Windows' notepad.exe to a version running inside Doom itself . But these and the other many and varied examples of weird Doom platforms all lack the sheer biological oddness of a new model for displaying the game using a grid of E. coli bacteria.

MIT graduate student Lauren Ramlan outlines a method for creating the quixotic Doom display in "1-Bit Pixels Encoded in E. Coli for the Display of Interactive Digital Media," the final project for a Principles of Synthetic Biology class. Ramlan's project builds on earlier research describing how the DNA in E. coli bacteria can be used to encode full digital circuits and how the bacteria itself can be induced to fluoresce as a crude form of digital display.

The kind of cell grid that could hold a phosphorescent E. coli "display." (credit: Fisher Scientific )

Ramlan's paper doesn't go to the enormous trouble of actually encoding all of Doom to run in bacterial DNA, which the author describes as "a behemoth feat that I cannot even imagine approaching." Instead, the game runs on a standard computer, with isolated E. coli cells in a standard 32x48 microwell grid serving as a crude low-res display.

While Doom can sometimes feel like an overnight smash success, the seminal first-person shooter was far from the first game created by id co-founders John Carmack and John Romero. Now, in a rare joint interview that was livestreamed during last weekend's 30th-anniversary celebration , the pair waxed philosophical about how Doom struck a perfect balance between technology and simplicity that they hadn't been able to capture previously and have struggled to recapture since.

Carmack said that Doom -precursor Wolfenstein 3D , for instance, "was done under these extreme, extraordinary design constraints" because of the technology available at the time. "There just wasn't that much we could do."

Wolfenstein 3D 's grid-based mapping led to a lot of boring rectangular rooms connected by long corridors. (credit: Steam )

One of the biggest constraints in Wolfenstein 3D was a grid-based mapping system that forced walls to be at 90-degree angles, leading to a lot of large, rectangular rooms connected by long corridors. "Making the levels for the original Wolfenstein had to be the most boring level design job ever because it was so simple," Romero said. "Even [2D platformer Commander Keen ] was more rewarding to make levels for."

Enlarge / DOS_deck is an impressive technical feat, sure. But it's also a very keen curation of some DOS shareware classics (pun somewhat intended). (credit: DOS_deck/Martin Kool)

Revisiting a classic game from the AUTOEXEC.BAT/CONFIG.SYS era of MS-DOS can be a fun distraction. But the more friction and configuration between you and a playable game, the more likely you are to fall off before you ever hit the menu screen. You spend enough time fine-tuning your modern systems; doing so within an arcane framework, for a single game, is not everybody's idea of fun.

DOS_deck seems to get this, providing the most frictionless path to playing classic DOS shareware and abandonware, like Doom , Jazz Jackrabbit , Command & Conquer , and Syndicate , with reconfigured controller support and a simplified interface benevolently looted from the Steam Deck. You can play it in a browser, right now, the one you're using to read this post.

In fact, I stopped between that last sentence and this one to play a couple levels of Doom in a Chrome browser. And now I've taken another punctuation break to play the first level of Syndicate , which moves much faster than I remember. The control schemes are clever, the interface is easy to get used to and move around, and there's a host of little extras to appreciate, including constant game progress (game state) saving, and linking and setting certain games as favorites.

Enlarge / John Carmack (left) and John Romero (second from right) pose with their id Software colleagues in the early '90s. (credit: John Romero )

For gamers of a certain age, the '90s break up of Doom co-creators John Carmack and John Romero is a cultural moment on par with the breakup of The Beatles. Now, as the 30th anniversary of Doom 's original release approaches next month, the pair has announced plans to come together for a moderated livestreamed discussion of their most famous creation.

The Twitch-streamed event, announced on social media late last week by Romero, will take place on Doom 's anniversary of December 10. Carmack and Romero will discuss the game and its legacy with moderator and Rocket Jump author David L. Craddock, whom Ars readers might remember from the Long Live Mortal Kombat excerpt that ran on the site last year.

Carmack and Romero reuniting might feel like a historic burying of the hatchet to those who have followed the pair's story over the decades. But "the two Johns" say that reports of their falling out have been exaggerated over the years, to say the least.

Enlarge / Not every screenshot from a developer properly explains what a game is really about or what about it is entertaining. There's not a single screenshot from Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun I've seen that doesn't give you the gist of it in a single frame. (credit: Auroch Digital)

" What is that sound ?" my wife yelled from the other room, 20 minutes into my first session of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun .

I was playing the game on the Asus ROG Ally I had connected to the TV in our tiny, temporary rental. The handheld Ally was propped up on an inactive heating panel, and it was rumbling non-stop. Every thunderous step of my Space Marine Sternguard, every shot, every explosion, every chainsword dismemberment rattled the wall-mounted panel, and she could both hear and slightly feel that one room over. I explained what was happening, but I was smirking the whole time, struck by some distant memories.

Tearing through dumb-as-rocks soldiers and demons? Stomping around in armored boots that sound like a mid-'90s Nine Inch Nails rhythm track? Losing track of time in the depths of a catacomb? You can't go home again, but Boltgun gave me the occasional sense that I was back in front of a CRT monitor and Creative Labs speakers, annoying everybody within earshot.

Enlarge / Doom II RPG isn't exactly like Doom , but you can't accuse it of lacking chainsaws. (credit: id Software)

"Mobile games" were something else entirely in 2005, a time in which Windows Mobile was a viable platform, the only Apple phone was a Motorola ROKR , and none of them had a shot at running Doom , let alone its sequel. That's why id Software made Doom RPG , the weirdest official Doom game that is also still a bit fun. A group of fans known as GEC.Inc ported that game to modern PCs, and they've finally gotten around to its sequel.

Doom II RPG , the iOS version from 2009, is playable the same way Doom RPG was: with an understanding that you, a person in 2023, will somehow have access to the original, potentially still copyrighted assets of the game. The instructions lead you through setting up OpenAL , then loading in an .ipa iOS file (the Internet Archive has a copy). You can use a touchscreen, most modern game controllers, or just your keyboard and mouse. You'll then get to play a Doom II that's not quite like what you're thinking of when you think of Doom II.

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  Playing Doom without the Doom Guy? The 2000s were a wild time.

How does it play? A bit awkwardly, unless you're used to the turn-based, grid-moving, RNG-dominated RPGs of earlier eras. With each turn, you can move in one of four directions, attack with a weapon, or perform some other action, like ripping a toilet fixture off the wall for later throwing (if you're strong enough). If you end up face to face with an imp, there's not much else to do except trade blows, hoping the random hit/miss mechanics are in your favor or that you have enough health packs or snacks to hold out.