If you’ve seen the headlines about classic games like Pac-Man and Tetris continues Bitcoinor a pixel-perfect port of iconic shooter Doom becomes playable on Dogecoinyou might be wondering: wait… what does that actually mean?
Honest question! Fortunately, the explanation isn’t that complicated, but the whole concept of video games running on blockchains designed solely for digital money doesn’t make much sense at first glance.
But thanks to the launch of NFTLike protocols on these chains, people “subscribe” media such as works of art and even playable video games to these decentralized networks – whether it is to preserve them in perpetuity, or just for the novelty of it all.
Whatever the reasons, the end result is classic games that you can play straight from the blockchain. And here’s a quick look at how that all works, starting with a simple explanation of the technology that made such advances possible.
What are ordinal numbers?
The Ordinals protocol launched in early 2023 as a way to convert media into on-chain assets on Bitcoin, the original blockchain and home to the largest and best-known cryptocurrency. Unlike chains such as Ethereum And SolanaBitcoin does not support standard executable code (in the form of smart contracts) that could power things like NFTs or decentralized apps and games.
So Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor got crafty. He discovered a way for users to “subscribe” media to an individual satoshi, Bitcoin’s smallest currency. It is equivalent to just 1/100,000,000 of a full Bitcoin.
And unlike many NFTs, which rely on remote servers, Ordinals media is added entirely to the chain itself, so all artwork, games, and apps posted to the Bitcoin blockchain are fully intact.
Ordinals’ innovation has led to an explosion of experimentation around Bitcoin, including the launch of fungible tokens using the BRC-20 and Runes token standards, plus extensions of the Ordinals technology with “recursive inscriptions,” which allow developers to chain multiple inscriptions together to create richer apps and games.
It has also prompted developers from other chains to emulate the Ordinals protocol and create similar functionality. That’s how we ended up at Doginals Dogecointogether with Ordinals-like assets on Solana, AvalancheAnd BNB chain.
How do you play games in the chain?
Ordinals and Doginals allow users to enroll entire applications into the chain, assuming they fit within the storage limits of each standard. This allowed people to put entire games on Bitcoin and Dogecoin, which could then be played via a web browser.
In terms of implementation, it is actually no different from playing a web game. The little applet runs in your browser window and then you can control characters or complete actions using your keyboard and mouse. But due to size requirements, such assets can only hold relatively simple games. That’s why classic titles fit together perfectly.
As such, games like Pac Man, ZorkAnd Tetris are ideal inscriptions for Bitcoin. And the Dogecoin standard offers a little more room to work with, allowing a full-fledged shareware version of the influential first-person shooter Doom apparently that wouldn’t fit on a Bitcoin Ordinal. There is one simple Doom knockoff on Bitcoinbut it really can’t be compared to the real thing.
Now we’re also starting to see original games appear on these protocols, such as Super Doginals, a classic arcade-style beat-’em-up with original artwork deployed on Dogecoin.
What’s the point?
This is harder to determine, partly because we can’t assume the intentions of people who included these games in the chain. To be clear, it is usually not the original creator or developer of these games who turns them into Ordinals or Doginals. They are fans and/or developers, or just people experimenting with on-chain assets. Super Doginals is an exception, and perhaps the first sign that something is about to happen.
In some cases, such as the classic games written on Bitcoin during the first days after the Ordinals protocol launched on the mainnet, it appears that people were simply experimenting with what kind of assets could fit on the chain and turn. There is undoubtedly something new in saying that you play Tetris on Bitcoin.
In other cases, there is a sense that the blockchain provides an immutable way to preserve games through a decentralized network that cannot be easily removed. At least that’s what the creators of the Bitcoin Pizza collection said when they… wrote up a Super Nintendo emulator on Bitcoin that allows users to play digital copies of classic 16-bit games. They then did the same with a Nintendo 64 emulator.
Whatever the reason for registering the games, the end result is still the same: there are classic games that can be played via Bitcoin and Dogecoin. Assuming these networks remain active for many years to come, these games will be there for you to play.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on February 2, 2024 and last updated with new details on November 13.