Duke Nukem 3D now fits on a tiny RP2350 board

Duke Nukem 3D now runs on a microcontroller. A port called pico-duke3D puts the 1996 shooter on four small hobby boards built around the RP2350 chip, with HDMI out, a USB gamepad or keyboard in, and the game’s data on an SD card, according to the project’s GitHub page.

That’s a bigger jump than it sounds. Hackaday’s Jenny List points out that DOOM’s minimum spec in 1993 was a 386 and 4 MB of memory, and three years later Duke Nukem 3D “required at least a 486DX2 and 8 MB.” She calls it a Quake competitor rather than a DOOM competitor, and the power it needs stepped up to match.

The README’s list of what works reads like the whole game. It has sound effects and Adlib / Sound Blaster music, savegames and screenshots on the SD card, and NES, SNES and Wii Classic controllers on the boards that have those connectors. The shareware version works, and so does the registered or Atomic Edition if you own it, though no game data comes with the port, so that file is on you.

The credits are the other surprise. The README says it was “ported by Frank Hoedemakers, with most of the code written by Claude Code,” built on Chocolate Duke3D and Ken Silverman’s BUILD engine. Hackaday’s commenters weren’t charmed. One wrote, “No video, no information about basic things like framerate, all Claude,” and the README doesn’t list one.

If you want to try it, read the board table before you buy anything. The README says a Pico 2 or Pico 2 W “will not run the game,” because Duke needs extra memory: the Pimoroni Pico Plus 2 carries it, and a stock Pico 2 on the Olimex board needs a PSRAM chip fitted on GPIO 8. You also need your own DUKE3D.GRP file and a micro SD card formatted FAT or exFAT.

In 1996, Duke wanted a 486DX2 and 8 MB. Today it wants a little board with extra memory and your own copy of the game.