Doom is unique in the way that it has been launched on all kinds of devices, from fridges and ATMs to calculators and pregnancy tests. Reddit user g_calgary is the latest fan to try a new way of playing the iconic game – using an old-fashioned rotary phone.
On January 4, g_calgary published a post about his project on Reddit – he converted an old rotary phone into a functional numpad keyboard. One of the commentators suggested playing Doom this way. The author of the project accepted the challenge and shared his results shortly.
The video's author demonstrated the process of playing Doom using a rotary phone as a gamepad but noted that remapping the rotary phone keys for Doom was an "awful experience." For example, number 1 was used as ctrl, number 2 as a left arrow, number 3 as a right arrow, number 4 as an up arrow, number 5 as a down arrow, and number 6 as a spacebar.
Of course, due to the specific slow nature of a rotary phone, some actions were performed incorrectly. In addition, the rotary phone gamepad suffers from an input lag, hence Doom moves much slower, too.
One of the original creators of the game, John Romero, noticed the project of g_calgary and commented on it on his Twitter:
Hello operator? I'd like to report a Cacodemon. https://t.co/s1fhBXBZNH
— 𝕵𝖔𝖍𝖓 𝕽𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖗𝖔 (@romero) January 10, 2022
The original Doom is, of course, playable on modern platforms as well, such as PC, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation and Xbox consoles.
