The Nintendo Alarmo just got released and people can already run games on it. And no one is surprised...
It was only a matter of time before this was going to happen. User GaryOderNichts got the famous shooter from the 90s running on an alarm clock. Not just any alarm clock, either.
What is Nintendo Alarmo?
Nintendo Alarmo is Nintendo's most recent project, to give the people something to buy while waiting for the Switch 2 to come out. It's an alarm clock that plays music and sounds from various Nintendo titles, such as Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Splatoon, and many more.
Alarmo was officially announced on October 9, but so far it can only be purchased by paid Nintendo Switch Online members. It will be available to the public somewhere in the middle of January 2025, according to the official Nintendo Alarmo page.
It is extremely expensive, sitting at $99.99 in the official store.
GaryOderNichts' Nintendo Alarmo project
GaryOderNichts, best known for his work on reverse engineering the Wii U, did not take longer than three weeks to not only obtain the Nintendo Alarmo, but also to take it apart and modify it. What first started as a project of curiosity, quickly turned into him being able to run custom code on the Alarmo.
And what better thing to showcase than a picture of a cat?
It's possible to run custom code on the Nintendo Alarmo via USB - without opening it up!More details in the blog post here: https://t.co/a0YBiwCVpj pic.twitter.com/NWJwHVvZcD
— Gary (@GaryOderNichts) October 30, 2024
To achieve this, GaryOderNichts didn't even need to take the Alarmo apart, as people worried he might have to. No, he did his magic using the USB port.
But he took the Alarmo apart, anyway, mostly out of curiosity. He even posted about it in great detail in his blog, giving insight into both the product and his methods of hacking into it.
But things didn't stop there.
Doom on Nintendo Alarmo
Immediately after GaryOderNichts posted his achievement of loading a picture of a cat on the Nintendo Alarmo, people immediately asked the question:
It's a long-running joke on the Internet for people to get Doom running on pretty much anything that has a screen. So far, Doom can be run on Fortnite, a pregnancy test, a tractor, a LEGO brick, and an absurd amount of other odd things that no one would even think about. The Nintendo Alarmo was not going to be spared from this fate, either.
Of course, there was also a massive demand for Bad Apple to be played on the Nintendo Alarmo, but GaryOderNichts decided to go with the Doom route.
And sure enough, only three days later, Gary delivered to the people what they demanded. With the help of STM32Doom and Chocolate Doom, as well as Spinda and Mike Heskin, he managed to run the classic shooter on an alarm clock.
"After my last post, it was pretty clear what everyone wanted to see on the Alarmo," Gary said when he posted the video of him playing Doom on X/Twitter, showcasing how exactly the gameplay even works on the device.
A major difficulty was likely the limited options when it comes to input — the Nintendo Alarmo only has a single rotational dial and two buttons. Gary worked around this issue, however. Now you can turn around by twisting the rotational dial and walk by pressing it down, while the two buttons on the side of the Alarmo are used to fire your weapons.
"There's currently no audio support," Gary wrote in the description of his YouTube video. "To avoid the USB loader memory size restrictions, the .wad needs to be compressed and then uncompressed to external memory on boot. However, it's possible to load the shareware version of Doom entirely from USB, without modifying the Alarmo."
In the same description, he even links to the GitHub page. It includes the source code and instructions on how to replicate his work, so that people may try it out themselves — if they can get their hands on a Nintendo Alarmo, that is.
What do you think people will get Doom running on next? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
