The Shores of Bell: Play Doom on Nintendo’s $99 Alarm Clock

Earlier this week, a creative Twitter user known as GaryOderNichts managed to hack Nintendo’s Alarmo alarm clock to play the shareware version of Doom. Gary shared the entire process through a series of tweets, complete with a video of this delightful oddity in action.

In his Twitter thread, Gary provides a rundown of the current limitations, notably the absence of audio support. To make Doom’s shareware version work, you need to compress and decompress the .wad file on bootup to maneuver around the USB loader’s memory constraints. Fortunately, you don’t need to tinker with your own Alarmo to give this a shot—all the necessary project files are conveniently accessible on GitHub.

Curious how Gary accomplished this? He laid it all out in an extensive blog post. The adventure began by disassembling the Alarmo to investigate its internal components. This nifty gadget features an STM32H730ZBI6 Arm Cortex-M7 processor, which is well-documented, giving Gary the necessary insight to connect his Alarmo to a Raspberry Pi and start the hacking process.

Despite the initial soldering and modifications required to test this hack, the version Gary shared on GitHub is simplified. It doesn’t demand a custom-modified Alarmo to get Doom running directly from a USB stick.

As for playing Doom on the Alarmo, functionality revolves around its built-in controls. Among these, the interface includes two buttons and a touch-sensitive dial that can be pressed or swiped. The swiping action lets you aim left or right, while firing your weapon is done by hitting the notification button on the bottom right. Some controls either aren’t explained or simply weren’t utilized in the video, which features gameplay from one of Doom’s initial levels.

Even though a $99 alarm clock from Nintendo isn’t where you’d typically expect to see Doom, there’s a storied history of unusual tech conquests involving this storied game. Doom has also been seen running on devices like a smart lawnmower, the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2350, and even an air hockey table. Not to be outdone, someone even crafted an expansion card for the Commodore 64, bringing enough power to the old machine to run Doom.