Parents beware: Halloween candy found running 1993 MS-DOS game Doom

Halloween is nearly upon us once again, and while that means plenty of spooky fun, you also need to remain vigilant - you never know if your kids might bring home candy laced with the iconic 1993 MS-DOS game Doom.

The folks at Adafruit Industries crafted one such candy bar as part of a very short, very goofy video which shows Doom running on a small screen inside a (seemingly plastic) Milky Way bar. The video ends with the warning "do not eat if it's Turing complete."

Adafruit has not provided any details on how this tiny version of Doom was built, but earlier this year, they demonstrated the game running on a miniscule device called the QT Py ESP32 - it's likely the same device is in the candy coating here. Unfortunately, I'm not seeing any buttons on the bar, so I'm not sure how you'd actually play the game, but running Doom's title screen demo still counts as running Doom.

Did you know Milky Way bars are sold as Mars bars outside the United States? That means Doom, the game about demons invading Mars, is now running on (a) Mars (bar). Society has peaked.

Of course, the real thing you need to be vigilant about this Halloween is falling for the hysteria around poisoned or drug-laced candy, which has never been verifiably documented to have killed or permanently injured any children after being distributed to random trick-or-treaters. Though I guess eating a small computer is probably worse for you than any actual narcotic.

How many devices can Doom run on? That number is probably approaching infinity, but pregnancy tests and tractors are two of my favorites.