Back in 2005, a full 12 years after the game was initially released, a version of DOOM was ported to old style mobiles with T9 keyboards. Impossible, you say? Ah, but this port was a DOOM RPG, and thanks to the efforts of some GitHub devs, the game is now available to play on Windows.
Just when you thought you’d see every version of DOOM, here comes another one. Oddly omitted from id Software’s Year of Doom event at E3 back in 2019, the DOOM RPG has been revived by Costa Rican outfit GEC Inc.
Back in the day, DOOM RPG was developed by id Software’s John Carmack (John Romero had departed by this point) with Fountainhead. It was playable on any phone that supported BREW, Java ME, or J2ME. The game was so successful that it won several awards and spawned a sequel, DOOM II RPG, as well as inspiring a Wolfenstein RPG along the same lines.
GEC Inc’s Erick194 told the Doomworld forum:
“Created using SDL2 and BREW version doomrpg.mod original file reverse-engineering […] You need to get the original files to be converted into a friendly format for the port.”
The legal way of doing this would be to buy an old phone with the game preinstalled, but you might simply download the necessary DOOM RPG files from the Doomworld forum thread…
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Christian Cawley is a writer and editor who covers consumer electronics, IT, and entertainment media. He has written for publications such as Computer Weekly, Linux Format, MakeUseOf.com, and Tech Radar.
He also produces podcasts, has a cigar box guitar, and of course, loves retro gaming.