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 ports. 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 those overdue 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 proved sufficient.

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

While not a replacement for your PS5, the accomplishment of running Doom inside a PDF is remarkable, especially given its legibility. TetrisPDF's creator, Thomas Rinsma, even praised ading2210's "neater" implementation on Hacker News.

This might not be the ideal way to experience Doom for the first time, but the continued stream of unusual Doom ports—from devices to files and even gut bacteria—remains endlessly fascinating.