We've come to accept over the years that we will never stop finding new platforms on which the venerable FPS Doom can be run. There will always be another system ready to take us to the depths of hell whether it's a keycap or an air hockey table. Today, however, maker and developer Jonas Eschenburg has decided to bring the classic title to the beloved classic console known as the Atari ST. The project's name, STDOOM may be unremarkable, but the work put into this project is truly remarkable.
Goodbye grayscale: DOOM on the Atari ST, now in 16 colors with a lot of dithering. Palette effects (screen going red when taking damage) supported as well. pic.twitter.com/zb6QFiwN7rApril 27, 2025
Part of the fun of Doom ports like these is wrapping your head around its limitations. Sacrifices have to be made when it comes to the quality of output from these emulations and this project is no exception. In this case, the Atari ST has its own specs that push the boundaries of what's necessary to be able to play Doom. The end result is a heavily dithered experience comprised of a total of 16 colors.
Despite the color limitations, the game itself looks quite playable. In addition to the pixelated output, Eschenburg confirms the game also supports what's known as palette effects. This means that the screen illuminates in bright red every time you take damage. It's the little things like this that kick the experience up a notch.
You'll still need your own copy of Doom to run this on your Atari ST. But you can pickup a legal copy of Doom from many online stores. Should you wish to just try it out, then you can also use the shareware demo version. There is one issue though. According to the GitHub readme, the code only compiles on a Linux system. The DOS code version has a copyrighted sound library which prevents its use.
If you're not familiar with the system, the Atari ST is a home computer first released in June of 1985 making it nearly 40 years old. The Atari ST is a distant cousin of the Commodore Amiga 500 with an intertwined history of development. It relies on a Motorola 68000 8MHz processor and can output graphics with 16 individual colors with a resolution of 320 x 200px. If using a monochrome monitor, this resolution could double to 640 x 400px.
Speaking of Commodore systems, you might appreciate the recent release of Commodore OS Vision 3.0. This Linux-based OS aims to recreate the look and feel of computing on old Commodore systems and comes with a handful of cool new features like a Basic editor as well as tons of free retro and retro-inspired games.
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