Having wired up the Lego terminal we recently reported on (opens in new tab) as an itsy bitsy external monitor, James Brown has been spotted playing Doom on it. An incredible feat, especially considering the atrocious pixel density of the 0.42-inch screen—I don't imagine they got very far in the game, but still a very cool little project.
The Twitter thread (opens in new tab) goes through the process, piece by piece, and even shows the capacitive touch controls in use with the 'trench run' animation. Now though, there's actual footage of the thing playing Doom, and while it's not actually running Doom itself, we're still hooked.
I wired the brick up as a very small external monitor, so you can, for instance, play Doom on it. pic.twitter.com/uWK2Uw7EgrJune 19, 2022
Really, how small and obscure can we go with Doom? We've already seen it running on a motherboard BIOS (opens in new tab), as well as 100 pounds of moldy potatoes (opens in new tab)—hopefully in a very well ventilated room. We've even seen the game controlled by a rotary telephone (opens in new tab), of all things.
These little Lego consoles have been the subject of an abundance of microelectronics projects too, including a somewhat larger, old-school Lego space computer that really works (opens in new tab). That one didn't run Doom sadly, but it was only a matter of time before the two ideas met in this beautiful marriage of our most beloved childhood joys.
And while fans of these blocky building buddies could always design themselves a Lego PC (opens in new tab) to really get the pixels going, there's something amazing about beaming the game into a ridiculously tiny Lego monitor. It feels like a moment to be celebrated.
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