Have you ever found yourself wondering how long the classic game Doom could run before crashing if it had constant operation? Someone conducted an experiment to find out.

User minki from the forum Lenowo performed tests on a vintage PDA, leaving the game running continuously. The expectation was that it would eventually crash as the demo looped indefinitely due to a variable overflow. This means that the game was continually storing values until it hit its maximum limit and subsequently crashed.

The impressive result revealed that it took two and a half years for Doom to crash. “The game had crashed, only hours after the two and a half year mark, proving that the variable did indeed overflow and cause the expected hard crash of the game,” minki noted in their findings.

Comments on Hacker News discussed similar glitches in other retro games. For instance, if Crash Bandicoot 3 runs for over two years, it results in backward-moving enemies and broken levels. There’s also a gameplay design feature in Final Fantasy IX requiring players to reach its last dungeon in under 12 hours or leave the game running long enough (about two years) to unlock a powerful sword.

Other quirks can lead to amusing results as well. Paper Mario has a cake that becomes ‘perfectly baked’ after four and a half years due to a timer overflow.

This phenomenon underscores not just the joy of gaming but also the limits of data storage in programming. It’s a reminder of how unexpected results can bring a fun twist to retro classics.