A PC Doom Engine Hidden Inside a Game Boy Advance Cartridge
The retail Doom for Game Boy Advance, published by Activision on 5 November 2001, was built on the Atari Jaguar version of the game, so it came with simplified maps, a censored look (green blood) and no Episode 4. This cartridge goes further. It carries Kippykip's PC Doom Total Conversion, a patch that replaces the Jaguar-derived engine with a homebrew port based on the work of a coder called doomhack.
At a glance
- Based on: Doom for Game Boy Advance (Activision, 2001; developed by David A. Palmer Productions)
- Created by: Kippykip (patch), built on doomhack's PrBoom port for GBA
- Released: 2021 for the 1.7 version
- Genre: First-person shooter
- What sets it apart: The full, non-simplified PC maps on real GBA hardware
What the conversion changes
- Full PC levels instead of the stripped-down Jaguar maps
- Higher-quality sound and a corrected soundtrack, with better framerate
- A HUD copied from the retail GBA Doom II, B to fire and A to use or sprint, and a gamma slider
- An FPS counter reachable through a cheat code
- Link-cable multiplayer is not included
The engine story behind it
David Palmer's team had spent about nine months writing its own GBA 3D engine, reportedly about 95 percent complete, when John Carmack found the Jaguar source and Activision insisted on using it. The port still sold around 140,000 copies, but this conversion shows what the hardware could manage with a more modern approach.