Released in 1993, DOOM is considered to be what cemented the first-person shooter genre. Being a 90s MS-DOS program makes DOOM rather easy to run by today’s standards, and so it has become both a meme and a challenge to try to get DOOM to run on anything with an ounce of processing power and a screen, including a McDonald’s cash register. The challenge has continued to evolved, and now includes getting the classic shooter to run on a Pioneer-brand DJ table.
The trend has brought what many consider to be id Software's perfection of the genre it pioneered with Wolfenstein 3D to unexpected places, such as Nintendo’s new Game and Watch re-release. It has also brought the game to places people may have thought impossible, like running DOOM on a potato-powered TI-84 graphing calculator.
YouTuber TheRasteri shared a video of themselves loading and playing the first level of DOOM on a Pioneer DJ controller. The XDJ-RX2 DJ table has two USB ports, which TheRasteri uses to load the shareware version of DOOM off a USB drive, and then connect a keyboard for controlling the game. The color LCD display on the turntable renders the game well in their demonstration.
A person in the comments asked if it would be possible to control DOOM with the actual knobs and switches of the Pioneer turntable for an extra challenge, like playing Demon's Souls with a Dance Dance Revolution dance pad. TheRasteri said it would be possible, but that it would require much more modification to the table, which they did not want to do with a table they borrowed for the video. However, they say they are considering buying and modifying their own table to make a “proper DOOM port with proper controls and audio.”
TheRasteri notes in the video description that some other hardware and a working knowledge of soldering and Linux is recommended for those interested in replicating their work. It takes a bit of work to make controllers work outside their intended purpose, much like making Donkey Kong bongos work on a PS5 to play the Demon’s Souls remake.
DOOM will continue to appear in unexpected places it looks like, though it may be a different version of DOOM going forward. A modder by the name of vapingwithtwisted420 managed to make the new Doom Eternal run on a Samsung smart-fridge. Now, it looks like anything with a screen and an internet connection can play DOOM, whether it has the processing power or not.