Doom was one of those games that upon release made computer gamers proud. It was a game they could wave in the air at all the Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog fans faces. The fact that id Software opened not only Doom but many of their releases afterward to the fans is a testament to their lasting power (and inadvertently led to “can it run Doom”). While not a straight source code port, this fan port of Doom running on the Atari 2600 is still quite impressive.
Scale Back Expectations This is Not PlayStation 5
If you can wrap your head around the graphics and gameplay you will surely find a lot of fun in this port. I understand that a lot of gamers that are used to PlayStation 5 and such graphics quality will downplay the looks of the Atari 2600 port of Doom. That is fine, this port is not for them.
This port is for those of us that grew up on Atari, through the great times of PC gaming in the 90s and such.
The Flicker is the Emulator
I tried using Stella, as recommended but when I chose the renderer they showed in their setup guide, my screen turned a garbled mess with green lines and I cannot do anything to revert back so I had to revert to using RetroArch.
I know, the flicker sucks but that is from the emulator. I looked up what the developer said on the AtariAge forums but could only find additional downloads when Googling that information. I may be missing something, RetroArch is not my preferred emulator, but it does run some harder to run games.
I am showing the game as it plays on the emulator as it is likely to run for you using that emulator. It is not my intention here to create a tutorial many times longer than this article to get the game setup to run as closely as it would on real hardware (which the developer states has less flicker).
Doom fans will enjoy this 2600 port, even if only for a short trip down memory lane. It is interesting, if not a little confusing at first but it gets clearer as you fiddle around.
Definitely worth the time to download and check out.
Grab the latest ROM on the AtariAge forums