Hackers Are Working To Bring Every Doom Game To Switch

This is the open source version of Doom 3 running on a Switch. It’s only a matter of time before Doom 64 and the rest arrive.

There’s a long standing mission to run the original Doom on every object humanity’s ever encountered. But with Doom 2016 arriving on Switch last autumn, the first time the series had been ported to a Nintendo console in almost two decades, focus on bringing the games to the handheld has been renewed.

Recently, the iodoom3 Twitter account shared an image of the third game making that exact voyage.

Doom 3 running on the switch thanks to dhewg pic.twitter.com/Dy4LDCzwgR — iodoom3.org (@iodoom3) February 23, 2018

In 2011 id Software released the source code to Doom 3, and iodoom3 is one of the projects aimed at updating and porting it to various platforms.

It’s not the remastered Doom 3: BFG Edition released in 2012, but since that game is available on the Nvidia Shield, whose Tegra graphics chip is also what the Switch uses a modified version of, getting to that shouldn’t be an impossible task.

With the pace of homebrew progress for the platform picking up, it’s probably only a matter of time.

Recently, Switch hackers have managed to get Linux up and running on the handheld, offering a lot more avenues for quixotic dreams like this.

Of course, their methods haven’t yet been revealed and pushing a piece of technology outside the boundaries of its original intended uses always runs the risk of doing irreparable harm (i.e. finding a way to check Twitter maybe isn’t worth potentially bricking the only device around that plays Super Mario Odyssey).

Last December, videos started going around of Doom 1993 running on the Switch, another cool development although not as surprising given that the classic shooter is often one of the first games to get ported to any new piece of technology.

Of course, even that beta version released by kgDoom was full of bugs and not a clean port of the original PC version or SNES port, but it’s renewed the promise that the Switch could be the first Nintendo system to be able to play every Doom game ever released.

What that achievement would actually mean in some greater cosmic sense is unclear, but that’s never stopped people before. Especially for fans of id Software’s groundbreaking series, simply shouting “DOOM!” usually work as its own rationale.

At the very least, it could put pressure on Bethesda and Nintendo to actually provide proper, official ports, either through some sort of future virtual console (or the subscription plan Nintendo seems to be replacing it with) or even a remastered anthology.