Of the many beloved and influential franchises to come out of the medium of video games, Doom is a name that comes to mind for a lot of players. Having defined the standard for first-person shooters for generations and continuing to turn heads today, Doom has managed to captivate players for years. Now, modern science has theoretically proven that the iconic game can run using crabs.
Over the years, Doom has taken many different forms, with fans of the series to this day recreate Doom in a variety of different form factors by way of different tools. For instance, one fan managed to reimagine Doom as an 80s pixel shooter. Although, something that a lot of people might take for granted is the technology that is used to run the many versions of Doom. Interestingly, recent studies show that the game can be run via soldier crabs of all things.
Ethan Mollick, a professor teaching at the Wharton School, recently tweeted out that scientists had successfully built logic gates using soldier crabs. According to Mollick, it takes 80 crabs to create a single logic gate and there are 8 logic gates in one byte. Twitter user Normal Horoscopes did the math and calculated that it would take over 16 billion soldier crabs to run Doom. Though, considering the linear nature of Doom, it makes one wonder how many crabs it would take to run a more extensive game, like The Witcher 3, for instance.
Either way, that is extremely impressive, despite its blatant impracticality. However, it really does put things in perspective in terms of current hardware capabilities. Most members of the gaming community find it impressive that games like Doom (2016) can run on Nintendo Switch, but the fact that, in theory, such a beloved game can run by way of these unusual methods is a wonder to imagine.
In any case, Doom has certainly come a long way since the days of classic Doom. The release of Doom Eternal was received favorably by many in the gaming community and caused the game to be nominated for multiple awards, including Game of the Year, by several different gaming outlets.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds for the series. The second part of The Ancient Gods DLC for Doom Eternal received a release date earlier today. With new DLC arriving very soon and with the game continuing to reach new heights nearly a year after it was first released, it seems now is as good a time as any to be a Doom fan.