For years, all new technology has been judged on its performance by one single test: can it run Doom?
Alright, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but gamers have spent years trying to get Id Software's classic shooter running on just about any piece of tech they can. True, it's not the most complex game in the world – seeing as it was released way back in 1993 – but the idea of playing a first-person shooter on something like a calculator or an oscilloscope just sounds ridiculous.
Of course, as with all things on the Internet, fans have taken it one step further. No, this isn't Doom running on something silly, like a printer or an ancient Commodore computer. No — this time, Doom is running inside Doom itself.
Wait, what?
Yes, what you're seeing is real: thanks to a virtual, in-game arcade cabinet, you can now play Doom inside of Doom. Buckle up — it only gets weirder from there.
Thanks to a mod of the "GZDoom" version of the game, players can find a small arcade cabinet hidden in one of the game's levels. Somehow, the entirety of Doom is held within that virtual arcade machine — but it's not some random copy of Doom, it's the game you're playing at that very moment. Even stranger, you can find the same arcade cabinet while playing on the arcade cabinet — and, as the video demonstrates, you can use the virtual player to kill the real player controlling the virtual arcade machine.
Explaining it is extremely confusing: the version of Doom you're playing through in the virtual arcade is the same Doom that you found the virtual arcade cabinet in. Basically, it's the sort of thing that Kubrick would have put into 2001: A Space Odyssey, if video games had existed when it first hit theaters in '68.
If there's any drawback, it's that once the arcade machine has started, there's no way to go back to the regular version without restarting. Then again, that's a small price to pay for tearing the fabric of space and time asunder.
Who knows — maybe the upcoming Doom reboot will have a version of itself running inside one of the game's computers?
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