Doom Remastered as Portable PDF Document

Doom's Unlikely PDF Port: A Testament to its Enduring Legacy

A high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: porting the iconic 1993 first-person shooter, Doom, to a PDF file. While the resulting experience is undeniably slow, it remains playable, adding another bizarre entry to Doom's long list of unconventional platforms.

Doom's remarkably compact size (a mere 2.39 megabytes) has always facilitated its execution on unexpected hardware. Recent examples include a Nintendo Alarmo port, controlled via its dials and buttons, and a version running within the game Balandro, albeit with performance limitations. This latest PDF port continues this trend of creative ingenuity.

GitHub user ading2210 leveraged the PDF format's JavaScript capabilities—including 3D rendering, HTTP requests, and monitor detection—to achieve this feat. However, the limitations of representing a 320x200 resolution image within a PDF necessitated a compromise: one text box per screen row. This results in a significantly slowed-down game, lacking color, sound, and text, with a frame rate of approximately 80ms. Despite these limitations, the game remains functional.

This accomplishment, detailed in a video shared by ading2210, underscores the enduring appeal and adaptability of Doom. The project isn't about achieving optimal performance; rather, it showcases the boundless creativity of the gaming community and the game's lasting impact, even three decades after its release. The continued exploration of unconventional Doom ports suggests that even more surprising platforms will host the game in the years to come.