A notable breakthrough comes from an American biotechnologist affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has managed to run one of gaming history’s most iconic titles, Doom from 1993, on a computer built from living intestinal bacteria. This unusual experiment drew interest from the gaming press, including Rock Paper Shotgun, for its striking demonstration of unconventional computing platforms.
Across the years, enthusiasts and researchers have demonstrated Doom on an astonishing array of devices and environments. The list includes everything from smart refrigerators to electronic pregnancy tests, and even experiments with brain tissue in laboratory settings, highlighting the game’s enduring versatility and the curiosity it inspires in people exploring biology and computation.
The researcher designed a one-bit display with a 32 by 48 pixel grid, rendered in black and white using living cells. Each bacterial cell served as a single pixel and was activated with a specialized fluorescent protein that fluoresces under specific conditions, creating a working visual representation of the game scene.
Even though the setup proved functional, the performance was painfully slow. A single frame required about 8.5 hours to render, making it impractical for real-time gameplay. Still, the experiment served as a provocative proof of concept, illustrating how biological substrates can be harnessed for digital visualization tasks, even if the speed is far from optimized.
To put the scale of the challenge into perspective, the classic Doom game progresses at roughly 35 frames per second. If one attempted to complete all levels in the gut-based system with the same pace, it would amount to many centuries of computation before finishing the entire game, underscoring the gap between novelty experiments and practical gaming hardware.
Earlier demonstrations of the concept included a version of Doom that runs on older television technology equipped with teletext, showcasing how retro display technologies can be repurposed to render modern game experiences and sparking ongoing interest in experimental computing methods. [Citation: Tech exploration reports]