When id Software released DOOM back in 1993 it helped define the genre, but it was hardly the only hit first-person shooter of that decade. There was also 3D Realms’ 1996 Duke Nukem 3D, a game which added some humor to the genre. Here’s [PicoPlus-devel], with pico-duke3D. It’s Duke Nukem 3D, on an RP2350.

Before reaching the conclusion that this might be obvious and easy, the three years between the two releases saw quite significant movements in the world of gaming PCs. DOOM’s minimum spec in 1993 was a 386 and 4 MB of memory, and would have been playable on a basic VGA card in an ISA slot. By contrast three years later Duke Nukem 3D required at least a 486DX2 and 8 MB, which would inevitably have had VESA local bus or PCI graphics. It’s a Quake competitor rather than a DOOM competitor, thus the power required to run it has stepped up a notch or two.

The RP2350 then is up to the job, and runs the game on a DVI equipped Pico clone. It can be controlled via either SNES or USB controllers given the right hardware, making it the perfect one-game console. The shareware game works, as does the full version if you own a copy. Having been around in the ’90s then, we’re curious. Could it be made to run Shadow Warrior as well? You no mess with Lo Wang!

Game jams are a fun competition in which the aim is to write a game under a particular theme while under a time constraint, usually a weekend.  [Hoani] entered one where the aim was to write a game within the constraints of the Nokia 3310’s user interface: a 94 by 48 pixel grey LCD, a buzzer, and a keypad. His entry was Trick Shot II, a ball-bouncing game running on his game engine, which is cool enough, but making a custom PCB for a Nokia 3310 case to run it on? Next level.

Look away if you don’t like restomods, for a real Nokia 3310 is gutted to take this board. On it is a Pi Pico, the Nokia LCD, which has outlasted the original phone as a part by decades, and a Nokia keypad layout. The first prototype was not a perfect fit because it had a 1.6mm board rather than 1mm.

The engine meanwhile is written in Go, and has both graphics and sound APIs. Considering that the Pico’s power exceeds whatever CPU the phone had by many orders of magnitude, we’d imagine it has no problems with such a tiny screen.

We like the attention to detail of this project, and that such a limited interface can still deliver gaming fun. Meanwhile, if you would prefer to use a 3310 as a phone, you can charge it the 21st-century way.

Before HDMI and DVI there was VGA, and before that? TTL RGB, in which instead of analogue voltages, the connector carried TTL logic voltages. TTL monitors used to be ten a penny because nobody wanted them in the VGA era, but the decades have not been kind to the TTL video aficionado. Stuck with a TTL card and no compatible monitor? Never fear, for [Charlysan] has your back with a TTL-to-DVI converter using an RP2350. The PIOs are used to sample the TTL input to a framebuffer, and the rest of the 2350 does the DVI magic using PicoDVI.

It requires a bit of level shifting hardware, which at minimum can be a set of resistors, and it targets the Waveshare RP2350-PiZero which comes with a handy ready-made HDMI socket. There’s a USB serial terminal to manage the thing, for which there’s even a TK GUI script.

This is the type of project which may never be center stage, yet performs such a vital function that it becomes indispensable. It’s not the first such project we’ve seen, a previous one did the same for VGA.