eli5 How are people playing Doom on so many different (and usually very old) devices? A notepad, pregnancy test, how tf?

Question

Like how tf does one play Doom on a pregnancy test???????

In: 647

Answer 1

The Notepad one is simple, use a converter that transforms the actual graphics into ASCII text (for instance, VLC has a plugin which does it), then pastes the text into Notepad. Notepad has no way of running an executable inside itself.

The pregnancy test one is even simpler, [they just replaced the guts with a better display and microcontroller.](https://www.pcmag.com/news/yes-doom-is-playable-on-a-pregnancy-test) Funny for the memes, not an actual demonstration of computing power. Pregnancy tests are meant to be disposable and simply check for a hormone level, they don’t need a fancy display and processer which would jack up the price.