PDF Doom: Retro Gaming Reimagined

Doom has been ported to so many devices—toasters, fridges, you name it—that finding truly novel platforms is getting tough. But a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: porting Doom to a PDF file, playable directly in your browser.

Sure, it lacks some bells and whistles like text and sound. But who needs those when you can blast away in E1M1 while procrastinating on your taxes?

Github user and high school student ading2210, inspired by the TetrisPDF project, tackled the challenge of bringing this classic shooter to Chromium-based browsers via the PDF format.

The Javascript capabilities allowed for arbitrary computation, resulting in a surprisingly playable Doom experience. Using a six-color ASCII grid for sprites and graphics, the port is surprisingly legible, despite a frame rate of around 80ms.

While it won't replace your PS5, the achievement of running Doom inside a PDF file is remarkable, especially given its legibility.

TetrisPDF creator Thomas Rinsma commented on Hacker News, praising ading2210's "neater" version of PDF Doom.

This might not be the ideal way to experience Doom for the first time, but the ongoing trend of running Doom on increasingly bizarre platforms—from devices to files and even gut bacteria—remains endlessly entertaining.