It is sometimes asked, just what can and cannot play Doom? Since id Software released the source code many years ago fans have been wondering that themselves. One industrious fan decided to see what Doom would look like on an Etch A Sketch. It looks quite good.

Now, before you get all excited thinking this is the Etch A Sketch playing Doom in some weird 1 frame per hour mode (draw time is horrible on this thing) – it is not. This is someone that decided to recreate a scene from Doom on an Etch A Sketch. The results are nonetheless fascinating and quite eerily good considering the limitations of the hardware.

First the artist makes various marks, so they know where to put pieces of the Heads-Up Display, various parts of the room, etc.

There is a bit of cheating going on though. The perfectly angled lines and a few other pieces are drawn onto the screen using a pen. Then the artist goes back and uses those lines as a path to follow to make sure things line up. Don’t worry, those drawn on lines are wiped away later.

What matters the most about this recreation is that the hard parts are don on the Etch A Sketch with those roller controllers that only do X/Y drawing – go ahead, think back to your days of playing on one and trying to do a circle or a diagonal line. Next to impossible. So far that, I can understand cheating and using a pen to get a guideline started.

The result is completely done with the Etch A Sketch though and it is quite impressive. Just watch the video, embedded above, for proof.

What wild places have you seen Doom displayed or better yet, what hardware do you know of Doom being played on. The wilder the better.