Someone Got Doom Running on a Hasselblad. Of Course They Did.

A Hasselblad is the sort of camera you buy to shoot 100 megapixel photographs, not to blast demons from a tiny screen. But apparently, nobody told that to Doom fans. Independent camera researcher Radium Wang has developed software that lets the classic first person shooter run on a Hasselblad X2D, bringing one of gaming’s oldest running jokes to a very expensive piece of photography equipment.

The project was first reported by Tom’s Hardware after Wang uploaded the research to Reddit. The source code and related tools are available in the Hasselblad X System firmware research repository on GitHub. The project explores software extensions beyond the camera’s standard factory features, with Doom serving as a particularly amusing demonstration.

Doom running on a Hasselblad X2D.
by u/rrRadium in hasselblad

Doom: the game that tech enthusiasts put everywhere

Released by id Software in 1993, Doom helped popularize the first person shooter genre. Its original PC requirements included an Intel 386 processor, 4MB of RAM and a VGA graphics card. What once required a desktop computer can now run on an astonishing variety of devices.

That has turned “Can it run Doom?” into a long running internet challenge. Programmers and hardware enthusiasts have ported the game to devices never intended for gaming, including cooking appliances, display adapters and even an orbiting satellite.

The appeal is not necessarily playing through the entire game on these devices. It is seeing how far people can push the hardware and software inside everyday gadgets. If a device has enough processing power and someone can work out how to make the game run, it becomes another candidate for the challenge.

From an old Canon DSLR to a Hasselblad

Wang’s project is not the first attempt to bring Doom to a digital camera. A separate programmer previously got the game running on a Kodak DC260, a camera released in 1998.

The Hasselblad X2D sits at the opposite end of the camera market. Its medium format sensor captures 100 megapixel images, and the camera costs thousands of dollars. Its touchscreen, however, was never designed to be a gaming monitor.

That is part of what makes the project entertaining. Both cameras are built for photography, yet their underlying electronics can be repurposed to do something their manufacturers never intended.

Please do not risk your expensive camera for Doom

Wang describes the repository as a collection of source code, offline tools, tests and sanitized research findings. It is not a standard camera feature, and experimenting with firmware can carry risks, especially on expensive equipment.

The tiny touchscreen and camera controls are unlikely to offer a particularly comfortable gaming experience, either. This is more of a technical demonstration than a serious alternative to playing on a PC.

Still, Doom continues to find its way onto increasingly unlikely hardware, and the Hasselblad is another addition to its ever growing list of unexpected hosts. The real question is how long it will take before someone finds an even more ridiculous device to run it on.

---