Can Nintendo’s Alarmo run Doom? You bet it can

Nov 04, 2024 01:22 AM - 1 month ago 50059

What do John Deere tractors, Ikea smart bulbs, Lego bricks, and the MacBook Pro Touch Bar person successful common? They tin each tally Doom, and naturally, truthful tin Nintendo’s adorable Alarmo siren clock. It was only a matter of clip earlier personification pulled that off, but what I didn’t expect was that erstwhile it happened, it would beryllium playable.

That’s precisely what hacker GaryOberNicht, who precocious figured retired how to tally civilization firmware connected the Alarmo, did successful a video posted to Mastodon and their X account yesterday. In it, they play by turning aliases pressing the mushroom-shaped blob connected apical of the Alarmo to move and pressing the different buttons to sprout aliases unfastened doors. Here, person a look:

Gary said it’s “possible to load the shareware type of Doom wholly from USB, without modifying the Alarmo.” And they’ve put the package and instructions for moving it on Github, truthful almost immoderate sufficiently knowledgeable and wished Alarmo proprietor tin do it, too. Best of all, it tin beryllium done without opening the timepiece up astatine all.

How did they propulsion this off? Gary explains successful a blog post that aft different personification called Spinda hacked the Alarmo (with a Flipper Zero) and dumped the firmware from memory, Gary worked retired a method that uses a USB mode and the USB-C larboard to constituent the Alarmo to civilization outer firmware, instead.

Given really easy it appears to beryllium reproduce what Gary has done, Alarmo package modding almost surely won’t conscionable extremity astatine Doom. Of course, really acold immoderate online organization efforts to move the Alarmo into a bizarro crippled console will get astir apt depends connected really Nintendo, which has been particularly active pinch its copyright disputes lately, feels astir it.