The Shores of Bell: Play Doom on Nintendo’s $99 Alarm Clock

Earlier this week, a Twitter user by the name of GaryOderNichts managed to pull off an impressive feat: getting the shareware version of Doom to run on Nintendo’s Alarmo alarm clock. He didn’t just keep this achievement to himself, either—Gary shared a gameplay video of his work on Twitter, sparking interest and curiosity among gaming enthusiasts.

In his Twitter thread, Gary explains this unusual venture, noting that, for now, the setup lacks audio support. To overcome the limitations imposed by USB loader memory size, the Doom shareware .wad file must be compressed and then unpacked into memory upon start-up. Interestingly, you won’t need to tweak your Alarmo if you’re tempted to replicate this hack; Gary has generously made the necessary project files available on GitHub for anyone who’s up for a bit of tinkering.

So, what makes running Doom on an alarm clock possible? In a detailed blog post, Gary outlines how he embarked on this project by first examining the hardware guts of the Alarmo. The key here is that the Nintendo Alarmo is powered by an STM32H730ZBI6 Arm Cortex-M7 processor—hardware very well-documented online. This documentation enabled Gary to adapt his Alarmo and hook it up to his Raspberry Pi with a bit of hacking know-how.

Interestingly, Gary’s hack does involve some initial soldering and modding to figure things out. However, the method shared on GitHub simplifies the process significantly, allowing others to launch Doom from a USB without altering their Alarmo devices.

The gameplay controls for Doom on the Alarmo are cleverly adapted to the device’s existing interface. The up-top controls, comprising two buttons and a touch dial, play a crucial role. In this setup, swiping the touch dial lets you aim left and right, while pressing the notification button on the lower right manages shooting. Other controls aren’t extensively detailed, but the video demonstration gives a glimpse of how one of Doom’s early levels looks on this unlikely platform.

Seeing Doom run on such an atypical device as the $99 Nintendo Alarmo might be unusual, but it’s far from unique. This iconic game has previously made appearances on a wide array of unexpected electronics. It’s been successfully played on things like a smart lawnmower, a Raspberry Pi Pico RP2350 microcontroller, and even an air hockey table. There’s even been a case where someone crafted an expansion card to breathe enough life into an old Commodore 64 to run Doom.

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