It turns out this VIC-20 computer port of DOOM has been around a few years, but even so: wow!
Essentially a cut-down port of DOOM, it features various enemy types, weapons, exploding barrels and even – as you can hear in the video – conversions of the original DOOM MIDI files. It looks amazing.
This is a “port” of iD software’s Doom, for the fully expanded Commodore VIC-20. It’s a mixture of C and 6502 assembly. C is compiled with the cc65 compiler, which you can find on github.
For the uninitiated, the VIC-20 was the forerunner to the Commodore 64. The two computers share a chassis and keyboard design (although the ports on the VIC-20 differ). Aside from a handful of internal similarities, however, they’re quite different.
The full list of features in the VIC-20 DOOM port are as follows:
- cut down versions of shareware DOOM’s levels, minus the secret level
- sergeants, demons, imps and cacodemons, with AI code cut down from the DOOM source
- fist, chainsaw, pistol, shotgun, chaingun
- health, ammo, keys, weapons, security and combat armor
- corpses
- exploding barrels
- secrets
- 11 music tracks, converted from the original DOOM midi files
- 20 sound effects, converted from the original DOOM PC speaker sounds
- cheat codes
- panning and zooming map
- intermission and victory screens
- arbitrarily angled textured walls
Now, some have argued that this version of DOOM is more Wolf3D than DOOM. To that we respond: it’s running on a bloody VIC-20 computer. Sure, it migt be the fully expanded model, but let’s recall that means a VIC-20 with up to 24K of RAM. it’s an 8-bit computer seriously overreaching. Developer Kweepa has done an amazing job – imagine if the VIC-20 had launched with something like this?
You can download DOOM for VIC-20 (yes, I really did type that) from the GitHub project page.
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