You probably thought the whole “can it run Doom?” thing had jumped the shark back when someone ported it to the MacBook Pro Touch Bar, but oh how wrong you were. Forget playing the classic first person shooter on a display that’s supposed to be used for gaming, or even a virtual row of software keys. Doom has finally made it all the way into an actual, physical keyboard key, and it is glorious.
A YouTuber by the name of Radioactive Channel has demonstrated that it’s actually possible to play Doom on a single OLED-equipped keyboard key. The keyboard being used for the trick is the Optimus Maximus, which features a 48 by 48-pixel display on each of its 113 keys. The keyboard originally went on sale way back in 2007, and had a price tag that exceeded $1,500. It’s since been discontinued, but as you can see here, it’s still capable of displaying a PC game from 1994.
The tiny display on the key is just big enough to be able to make out what’s going on, though being able to read any screen text or even menu prompts is completely impossible. The game also runs rather poorly, and it’s extremely choppy. That’s likely due to the low refresh rate of the screen displays, which can be as low as 10 frames per second, according to the official specs.
The game itself is being run on a computer, and the keyboard is being used simply to display the gritty, pixelated action. Still, it’s a pretty cool accomplishment. Now someone just needs to figure out how to run 112 other games on each of the other keys, simultaneously, then we’ll really be onto something.
