Doom, the mythical video game that inaugurated the era of the shooter in the early 90s, happens to be the most ported title in history since the developers have insisted on running it on any platform (or within other games). Now comes another of the most unusual: CoreDoom or what is the same, Doom in a BIOS.
The key to the matter is the release of a new version of the free firmware Coreboot 4.17. If you follow us regularly you will know that it is a project supported by the Free Software Foundation that has the objective of replace non-free firmware of the BIOS/UEFI that -unfortunately- are mostly proprietary.
Coreboot (originally called LinuxBIOS) is a free, open source, lightweight and customizable development since it supports numerous extensions known as payload, that add functionality to the minimal code of Coreboot and together with several supported operating systems and boot loaders complete a very interesting development.
CoreDoom, Doom in BIOS
Using those ‘payloads’ Coreboot has added Doom as other supported gamessince we have to name others that came before like Grub Invaders and Tint, clones of other no less mythical titles like Space Invaders and Tetris.
CoreDoom is based on DoomGeneric, which is a portable version of the original FPS from 1993. It also includes Doom WAD files in the same ROM to improve performance. The development is in its early stage and has quite a few limitations.
Currently requires a PS2 keyboard for WASD movement keys, support for video formats is limited, there is no sound, there is no support for saving games or configuration files, and the system will hang when exiting the game. Obviously, there are better platforms to enjoy the original Doom, but It is curious that it can also be executed from the firmware of a BIOS.
If you are interested (and by the way discover the possibilities of Coreboot) you can Check if your computer’s motherboard is compatible on this support page.
