PDF Doom: Retro Gaming Goes Portable

Doom's been ported to everything from toasters to refrigerators—it seems there's no limit to its portability. But a high school student, ading2210, has pushed the boundaries even further, porting Doom into a playable PDF file, runnable directly in your browser.

Yes, you read that right. While it lacks some bells and whistles like text and sound, imagine playing E1M1 while pretending to tackle those overdue taxes. Pure genius.

Inspired by the TetrisPDF project, ading2210 leveraged Javascript within a browser's PDF reader to achieve this feat. Browser security restrictions limit the full potential of PDF scripting, but it was enough.

Using a six-color ASCII grid for sprites and graphics, the result is surprisingly legible, although expect a response time of 80ms per frame. It's not quite PS5 quality, but seeing Doom running inside a PDF is undeniably impressive.

Even TetrisPDF creator Thomas Rinsma, on Hacker News, praised ading2210's "neater" implementation.

While this might not be your preferred way to experience Doom for the first time, the sheer novelty of running Doom on such unconventional platforms—from gut bacteria to now, PDF files—remains endlessly entertaining.