YouTuber proves your cooking pot is more powerful than you think, by making it run a classic video game

A German tech creator recently showed that a smart cooking pot can run the classic video game Doom. Aaron Christophel, a tech enthusiast, managed to get the 1993 shooter game working on a Krups Cook4Me Smart cooking pot’s touchscreen. This project shows how much computing power is packed into modern kitchen devices.

Christophel’s experiment highlights an interesting point about Internet of Things devices. These WiFi-enabled gadgets often have more processing power than needed for their basic functions. While this makes them vulnerable to security risks like botnets, it also makes them fun for tech experiments.

The Krups cooking pot has surprisingly capable hardware inside. According to PCGamer, it uses a Renesas R7S721031VC System on a Chip with a 400 MHz Cortex-A9 processor, 128 MB of RAM, and 128 MB of Flash storage. These specs might seem basic by today’s standards, but they’re more than enough to run a game from 30 years ago.

Getting Doom to run on a cooking pot was easier than expected

Taking apart the cooking pot was simple. The bottom section that contains the heating elements was held by just one screw. The touchscreen module was secured with only two screws, making it easy to access the internal components.

Once inside, Christophel extracted the device’s firmware directly from the chip. He then reverse engineered the code to create a working version of Doom for the cooking pot. The technical process turned out to be straightforward. Similar tech experiments have become popular online, with creators finding unusual ways to showcase their skills.

The gameplay experience isn’t perfect, but it works. The game runs in a small window in the center of the LCD touchscreen. Christophel created touch controls by mapping buttons to labels around the edges of the screen, which makes playing the game challenging. Like how some gamers refuse specific gameplay actions, players might find the cooking pot controls frustrating.

The controls are rough and not ideal for dodging enemies or finding keycards in the game. However, the fact that it works at all is impressive. It shows how much hidden computing power exists in everyday kitchen appliances.

Christophel acknowledged the unusual nature of his project. “Yeah, I know how stupid this is, but it had to be done,” he said. His experiment proves that many smart appliances contain full computers that most people don’t know about, opening up possibilities for similar tech experiments. Content creators across platforms, from YouTubers collaborating with politicians to tech enthusiasts, continue pushing creative boundaries.