Sebastian Stacks is a programmer and an excellent traditional repairman, and his blog There Oughta Be (as it should be) is filled with all kinds of technological wonders, from LED cubes to a homemade lawn automatic irrigation system. Recently, Staacks has been very nostalgic, first making Wi-Fi Game Boy cassettes, and then getting GTA 5 and DOOM to run on the nearly half-century-old handheld.
A few weeks ago, I created a Game Boy cartridge with built-in WiFi, Staacks wrote, and now I have it streaming video and games to the cloud at full resolution 20 FPS on the original, unmodified Game Boy.
He presents more detailed technical intelligence on his blog, as well as a more general explanation video. In the video, you can see that these modern games are indeed running on this black and white handheld, and it really works like magic.
My #GameBoy “plays” #DOOM! pic.twitter.com/yxZz4KnMZk
— Jesse Doherty (@systemoflevers) January 11, 2022
The original Game Boy’s screen clearly wasn’t quite up to the task, especially given the contrast issues, where the black and white and gray areas weren’t obvious. He then showed off his Wi-Fi cassette on Analogue’s high-definition Game Boy Pocket console.
All systems in the world have three things that must work: Bad Apple, Crysis, and the original Doom. Naturally, one of his fans showed his Game Boy running Doom. However, considering that some players can even create computers in Minecraft that can run Doom, it’s not surprising that the Game Boy can run the game.
Finally, Staacks said: With the new demo, a lot of other demos can’t compare to it anymore. I can (get the Game Boy) display anything, I can control anything that can be displayed and controlled on my PC. Of course, the interface and graphics are almost unusable, so some specialized usage might be interesting. I didn’t change the audio at the same time, which was an unfortunate big mistake when I designed this cassette.