Monday Mods: Doom in Mario 64

Two titans of gaming, a pair of games that paved the way for early 3D gaming, each taking a completely different approach: id Software’s Doom, and Nintendo’s Mario 64. But what if they were to have a baby together? That’s the question that one intrepid modder has sought to answer, with this Doom mod for Mario 64.

We’ve already seen a variety of mods made available for the fanmade PC port of Mario 64, including those improving performance and visuals, but this is something rather different. Here we see the pioneering first-person shooter mashed together with the groundbreaking 3D platformer, in a remix that I never knew I wanted until I saw it realized.

This mod centers around the idea of recreating the look and feel of the original Doom, inside Mario 64. Levels, environments, and items from Doom have been rebuilt to be playable inside Mario 64, and Mario himself has been given an entirely new outfit to match the wardrobe of Doomguy.

It’s rather strange seeing Goombas and Bob-ombs casually strolling around E1M1, and we’re more used to seeing Mario pick up coins and mushrooms than spinning skull icons, but there is a fairly consistent logic to how this mod works at least.

This mod is still very much in development, where the latest addition is a somewhat scrappy implementation of a HUD to match what we saw in the original Doom, complete with Mario’s face right in the center of the bar across the bottom of the screen, with a facial expression to represent his current health status. There’s even a cheeky nod to Doom creator John Carmack having joined VR company Oculus, where the icon for the first-person view from Mario 64 is switched from a floating Lakitu camera operator with a picture of Carmack’s face next to a VR headset.

We can’t help but wonder what other games could do with an unofficial crossover like this? What if we could blend Fortnite and GTA? Or combine the worlds of Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid? Let us know your gaming mashup ideas in the comments below.