Doom and Quake mark the dawn of 3D gaming on the Palm Pre

Two all-time favorites from the glory days of id Software have now made their way to the Palm Pre (of all devices), continuing our retro 3D shooter theme.

Say hello to Doom and Quake. Although it’s been a while since these games were new, I suspect you’ll have fun playing them nonetheless. Especially, when they’re only at arm’s length wherever you go.

The Palm Pre (and WebOS in general) used to have major problems with 3D games – WebOS had no means to let 3rd party apps access the hardware acceleration, while native apps were not allowed to do so. Firmware version 1.3.5 seems to have resolved both issues, but since it’s not official, you have to use workarounds to install both games (Preware and Terminal). Anyway, here are the results of this important change.

First up is Doom – the pinnacle in 3D graphics in 1993. There are still a lot of kinks to work out – for example you have to launch the game from the Terminal application and you need Preware. The game runs in a card-like style like regular WebOS apps and it seems to run pretty smoothly too though the controls seem quite awkward.

Here’s a video demo of Doom running on a Palm Pre:

Next comes Quake, a game that came out in 1996 and featured much better 3D graphics than Doom. The WebOS Quake port is not nearly as complete as the Doom one however – it runs a bit slow and there are some issues left to iron out.

It’s a work in progress so these bits and pieces should be fixed eventually. At least the controls make full use of the touchscreen.

Naturally, there’s a video demo:

Now, everyone who can’t wait to see Quake II ported with multiplayer enabled, raise your hands! Yeah, me too!

Source: WebOS internals Doom page, WebOS internals Quake page