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Probably better matches the makeup of RAM and processor speed. The GBA only has 384KB and runs at 12.5MHz.

Also a quick background and the GBA port is a port of the jaguar port which is a port of the SNES port.

So somewhere in that heritage is the SNES version of doom. A 16bit version.

Correct. It's actually not even Doom:

The game does not use the Doom engine, but features a custom engine, known as the Reality engine, programmed by Randy Linden.

The Jaguar port is not a port of the SNES port. It was built in-house at Id and was developed by Carmack himself. See Doom Wiki: https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Atari_Jaguar

The SNES port runs on a bespoke engine written by Randy Linden. Whereas the Jaguar Doom is the basis for many console ports, SNES Doom is something of an (incredibly impressive!) dead-end on the Doom family tree.

Not all projects have #defines for pointer and type sizes, or hardcode values for these sprinkled through the code. So probably to port to GBA they had to go through the code and fix these. Now this specific codebase of Doom is better suited for other ports as well.

I took this to mean the assets rather than the code.