Move Over Toasters: Doom Is Now Playable Inside a PDF

Doom has been ported to so many devices—toasters, fridges, you name it—that you might think there's nothing left to conquer. But a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: porting Doom to a PDF file playable in your browser.

Sure, it lacks some bells and whistles like text and sound. But who needs those when you can play E1M1 while pretending to tackle those overdue taxes?

GitHub user and high school student ading2210, inspired by the TetrisPDF project, took on the challenge. Leveraging JavaScript within a browser's PDF reader, ading2210 cleverly overcame limitations imposed by browser security.

While it won't replace your PS5 anytime soon, the feat of running Doom inside a PDF file is incredibly impressive, especially given its legibility.

TetrisPDF creator Thomas Rinsma, commenting on Hacker News, praised ading2210's "neater" implementation of PDF Doom.

This might not be the ideal way to experience Doom for the first time, but the sheer novelty of seeing it run on such unconventional platforms—from devices to files (or even gut bacteria!)—remains endlessly entertaining.