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Digital Foundry speculates on Doom's performance on Switch

by: Sean Colleli -
More On: DOOM Nintendo Switch

Getting 2016's Doom to run on Nintendo Switch sounds like a homebrew project your crazy programmer friend might undertake in a weekend when he messed up his Ritalin dose. Wait, we all had friends like that in college, didn't we? Was it just me? Nevermind.

As we learned earlier this month, developer Panic Button is doing it for real. The sticklers over at Digital Foundry are naturally wondering how in frozen-over hell Panic Button are doing this, and while DF can't post their typical exhaustive side-by-side comparison yet, they can do the next best thing.

The folks at DF have built a PC out of hardware from yesteryear, to roughly simulate the performance of the Nintendo Switch. It isn't perfect but it does estimate what the game will look like and how it will run. Of course Panic Button are working with the actual Switch API and they have internal documentation, and it looks like Switch Doom will run on a custom grabbag of effects, scaling texture detail and variable resolution between both docked and portable mode. It also looks like they're targeting 30fps, which while not perfect is still admirable. 

Check out the video, it's fascinating speculation.