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You can play Doom on a vape, a printer, an oscilloscope, a pregnancy test, an ATM, and inside Doom itself, but can you play it on a Commodore 64? The old 8-bit powerhouse was discontinued just a year after Doom’s 1993 release, and while it was capable of small miracles for its time, it was not a natural home for first-person shooters.
Engineer and programmer Steve McCrea has worked on several Metroid games and Resident Evil 4’s VR port, but his current project is inarguably more important: he’s building Doom for Commodore 64.
It’s a far from straightforward port, and it’s technically not 3D. According to McCrea posting on X, it’s based on code for The Keep, a first-person dungeon crawler he created for the Commodore VIC-20. The VIC-20 is an ancestor to the Commodore 64 with inferior specs, though it only released a year before the Commodore 64’s 1982 launch. McCrea writes that his C64 Doom is “using ray casting in a tile grid”.
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But unlike The Keep, which was more similar to something like Wolfenstein 3D—essentially a flat, grid-locked maze—McCrea’s Doom C64 has variable floor and ceiling heights and elevators. It also has opening doors and “visible weapons” (versus The Keep which didn’t).
Doom for Commodore 64 WIP: sky, shotgun polish, better lighting, temp logo. E1M1 through E1M8 are in. Still looking for a musician! #c64 #mos6502 #doom pic.twitter.com/rBTirViDW9July 29, 2026
It really is impressive, especially this most recent work-in-progress video which shows variable lighting (!) and a skybox. According to McCrea he’s built levels E1M1 through to E1M8, but is currently looking for help on music. Chris Hülsbeck, are you around?
Apogee Software founder Scott Miller, who published Wolfenstein 3D, is impressed. “Back when we released Wolf3D I begged Id to make a C-64 version and they said it wasn’t possible. Now I’m crying.”
