Move Over Toasters: Doom Is Now Playable Inside a PDF

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: porting Doom to a PDF file playable within a browser.

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

Github user ading2210, inspired by the TetrisPDF project, leveraged Javascript within a browser's PDF reader to accomplish this feat. Browser security limitations restrict the full potential of PDF scripting, but it was enough.

Using a six-color ASCII grid for visuals, ading2210 created a surprisingly playable, albeit slow (80ms per frame), version of Doom.

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

While not ideal for a first Doom experience, the continued porting of Doom to bizarre devices and file formats (including, famously, gut bacteria) remains endlessly entertaining.