VIDEO: It's Doom 2 Running on a Color Calculator

By Kevin Parrish
published

It's Doom 2 running on a TI-Nspire CX graphing calculator... in color!

Are you sitting in Geometry class bored out of your mind, and all you can pull out of your pocket is a TI-Nspire CX graphing calculator? You're in luck, as TI Planet now offers a Doom 2 port, nDoom 2 Final, that actually runs the classic game in full color. That's right: instead of pushing in heavy numbers during an exam, you can shoot loads of buckshot into zombies and Imps, just don't let the teacher catch you.

Hack A Day reports that the game originally appeared in beta form a year ago, running in black and white on a hacked TI-83. Since then, several versions have been released, tweaking the controls and adding a menu system which switches out the menu seen in the original DOS-based retail version.

This specific release also adds the Ndless 3.1 program which unlocks the calculator's hardware, allowing users to perform their own hacks. Sound, unfortunately, still isn't present in nDoom 2, so don't let the video demo pasted below fool you.

Kevin Parrish
45 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Super_Nova
    Can it play Crysis?
    Reply
  • memadmax
    Wow, thats pretty good, but I think my car's engine computer could run doom2 at this point now >_>
    Reply
  • joytech22
    LOL.. Our calculators are now doing what computers did like 10-15 years ago..
    What the heck are calculators of 2022 going to be able to do..? :|

    Let alone computers..
    Reply
  • Travis Beane
    Paid $100 for a bloody calculator, and had two stolen in a year... There must have been some reason the TI 83+ costs so bloody much. I'll admit, it does have great battery life, but I'd sooner use a bloody smartphone. Waiting a few minutes for it to do a calculation; doing complex equations and running out of memory; refusing to work when it's cold (I live in Canada, of course it's going to get cold in my book bag).
    People have been making games for these for quite a while though. Neat to see there's finally something playable.
    Reply
  • nottheking
    I always felt that graphing calculators were a huge rip-off: like textbooks, they're grossly overpriced because he makers know that students need them. The prices made sense back in the 1980s and 1990s, when such computing devices in a tiny space were unheard of. The Ti-83, -84, and -89 series were still just antiquated 1980s technology re-hashed over and over again. Until the Ti-89, the CPU was was a feeble Z80; some here might recall that was the kind of CPU used in the original Game Boy.

    This shows us an improvement that's a start, at least: we've moved to a more modern ARM CPU, and on the slowest models it runs at least at 90 MHz. While this probably won't let you run, say, Quake, it'll be sufficient for 386/486-era games. And the jump to 16MB+ of SDRAM (from 256KB from the best Ti-89 and -92s) really helps as well.

    9340509 said:
    Can it play Crysis?
    I think the answer is pretty self-evient.

    9340512 said:
    There must have been some reason the TI 83+ costs so bloody much.
    It's the same reason the calculus textbooks you're using with it cost $150-200 (or more!) new.

    9340512 said:
    it does have great battery life <snip> Waiting a few minutes for it to do a calculation; doing complex equations and running out of memory;
    These are both a result of the same thing... Having a Z80 @6MHz and only 32KB of RAM will do that for you.
    Reply
  • ananthu123
    These are both a result of the same thing... Having a Z80 @6MHz and only 32KB of RAM will do that for you.
    one could buy a smartphone with an 800 mhz ARM at that price and use wolframalpha to do the calculation (atleast the pretty basic ones, including graphs).
    Reply
  • hardcore_gamer
    Super_NovaCan it play Crysis?
    It might be able to play Crysis 2, without the patch of course.
    Reply
  • NuclearShadow
    Bravo to those who made it. I would have never guessed a calculator was capable of such a task.

    Super_NovaCan it play Crysis?
    Only on High, Ultra gets unacceptable performance.
    Reply
  • alidan
    joytech22LOL.. Our calculators are now doing what computers did like 10-15 years ago..What the heck are calculators of 2022 going to be able to do..? :|Let alone computers..
    this is a graphing calculator correct? would a gpu like architecture benefit it? if so, it may get 3d games, but most likely nothing not programmed specifically for it, if we still have calculators that are stand alone by than.

    Reply
  • demonhorde665
    oh just beautiful as if us american's and the youth of today don't already have enough ways to screw off when we should be working ... this is exactly why teh economy is at a state of fail , no one does any real work any more.
    Reply