This nice chap got DOOM running on Notepad.exe, for reasons

The meme of running DOOM on unconventional platforms simply won’t die. DOOM was among the first games Microsoft used to showcase its DirectX technology all the way back in 1996, and the game remains a staple fixture in shooter legend, joining Wolfenstein as one of the games that mass-popularized the genre. 

DOOM lives on under id Software in the form of DOOM Eternal and doubtless future games, but the classic DOOM is still finding itself ported to the least likely of places. 

Perhaps the most ported game of all time, DOOM has been ported to the Apple Watch, graphics calculators, and even a pregnancy test. But the ports keep on coming, and now we even have it running on unmodified Notepad.exe on Windows 10, using ASCII graphics as a rendering engine. For reasons. 

Created by developer and YouTuber Samperson, we can see the above running entirely within a Notepad window on Windows. This is running with zero modifications to the Notepad executable, and is fully playable. Samperson says he plans to release NotepadDOOM in the coming days, too. 

If that wasn’t impressive enough, Samperson is also working to resurrect Microsoft’s murdered Kinect accessory. For those not in the know, Kinect was a camera technology that lives on as part of HoloLens, with advanced tracking techniques with the aim of powering motion-controlled games. In practice, it didn’t work particularly well, and had middling support from developers. Despite that, Microsoft has continued to refine the ideas behind it for HoloLens’ augmented reality camera array, but what about the camera itself?

In a video filled with dramatic twists and turns, Samperson outlines his plan to revive Microsoft’s doomed peripheral with a snowboarding game that actually looks kind of fun. 

Perhaps next we’ll get KinectDOOM? One can dream.