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Programmer gets Doom working in full color 17FPS on a Casio calculator

If it has a screen, it should run Doom, but we still don't often see Doom running this well on our typical graphing calculators.

TJ Denzer

October 13, 2021 4:00 PM

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When it comes to most things with screens, it should come as little surprise that programmers out there will figure out how to load Doom onto them in some way or the other. The quality of the port is always suspect, though. Even so, the port recently loaded onto a Casio graphing calculator by an enterprising young programmer looks pretty good to say the least.

This original Doom port project was recently shared by Bethesda itself on Twitter, though it was originally posted by alexosk8 on the Subreddit r/InterestingAsF*ck. Alexosk8 loaded a port of the original Doom onto a Casio fx-CG50 calculator. It’s a full-color port that runs at around 17 frames-per-second, featuring full guns, firing animations, enemies and more.

The mad lad did it. DOOM running on a calculator, by alexosk8 on Reddit.

It really can run on everything. pic.twitter.com/7GMAjxYQxV

— Bethesda ANZ (@Bethesda_ANZ) October 12, 2021

We’ve certainly seen Doom loaded to various other devices over the years. Heck, in 2020, we even got to see Doom ported onto Nintendo’s new Super Mario Bros. 35th anniversary Game & Watch. It helps that the Casio fx-CG50 is, itself, a pretty beefy calculator with 61kb of RAM memory, but this might be one of the more versatile Doom ports we’ve seen put on such a calculator (and we’ve seen one run on a device powered by potatos).

The fun part is that alexosk8 even shared a video of himself playing the port he put on the Casio calculator. Anyone who would suggest it could be fake or just a superimposed image can watch him actually playing the game for a little bit and demonstrating its controls.

We’ll go ahead and chock it up to a proper port and slide that Casio calculator onto the lengthy list of devices that can run Doom. Well played, alexosk8.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.