Color iPod is Doomed

It has come full circle, folks--some intrepid programmer with WAY too much time on his hands has ported the original Doom onto a color iPod. It requires the click wheel of the Mini and Photo iPods, and so doesn't really work very well on earlier models, but I'm sure these intrepid digital explorers would be happy to work on one in exchange for a kind email and a blank check. There is video (QT) of the game running (albeit a bit laggy, as the processor is not really designed for video gaming) on the website here and has to be seen to be believed. Doom has served as a benchmark for gaming since the days of the venerable Intel 386 processor (how the time flies...), showing up on each new generation of gaming, through the NES, SNES, Playstation, and even on cell phones and now, iPods. There are games that give me motion sickness (Half-Life 2), and yet id Software's revolutionary brainchild is still one of the coolest games ever. Who can say no to a double-barreled shotgun, anyway?

In a related story, another (yes, there are more people doing this kind of stuff) [I wonder if there's a support group - bg] venerable gaming benchmark has been ported through ipodlinux and microwindows. This emulator requires a bit of geek cred and linux skill, but if you're hacking your iPod, it shouldn't be too hard for you. All in all, Game Boy games aren't too far off the games included in any iPod or even the latest cell phones, but brick bashing just ain't no fun without Mario stompin' Goombas to boot. This project, at GB Emulator, is not quite as far along as the aforementioned Doom port, but an alpha release has been disseminated, and this thing is COOL! Old skool gameboy on a 4G iPod is just crazy! What's next, Super Mario Kart? 10 years ago we all went nuts over a pixelly, first-person shooter that required pretty hard-core hardware for the time to run well. Now, just a few short years later, we're running these games on music players. Moore better pick up the pace on his law... [Britt Godwin]