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Move Over Toasters: Doom Is Now Playable Inside a PDF

by Joshua Feb 12,2025

Doom's been ported to everything from toasters to refrigerators, seemingly leaving little room for truly novel platforms. However, a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: running Doom within a PDF file viewable in a browser.

While lacking sound and text (minor details, right?), this version lets you conquer E1M1 while procrastinating on, say, your taxes.

Github user "ading2210" drew inspiration from TetrisPDF, a similar feat with Tetris. Leveraging Javascript within a browser's PDF reader, ading2210 overcame browser security limitations to port Doom.

Doom in a PDF? Why not? Image credit: YouTube / vk6.

The PDF's Javascript capabilities allowed for complex computations. Using a six-color ASCII grid for visuals, the result is surprisingly playable, albeit with an 80ms per-frame rendering delay.

It won't replace your PS5, but the accomplishment of running Doom inside a PDF is remarkable, particularly its legibility. TetrisPDF's creator, Thomas Rinsma, even praised ading2210's "neater" implementation on Hacker News.

While not ideal for a first Doom experience, the ongoing trend of running Doom on unusual devices and file formats (including, famously, gut bacteria) remains endlessly amusing.

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