Home News PDF Doom: Retro Gaming Goes Portable

PDF Doom: Retro Gaming Goes Portable

Mar 13,2025 Author: Ava

Doom has been ported to so many unexpected devices—toasters, fridges, you name it—that finding truly remarkable new platforms seems impossible. Yet, a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: porting Doom to a PDF file playable in your browser.

Sure, it lacks some features like text and sound, but who needs those when you can play E1M1 while procrastinating on your taxes?

Github user and high school student ading2210, inspired by the TetrisPDF project, tackled this challenge. Leveraging Javascript within a browser's PDF reader, ading2210 overcame browser security limitations to port Doom to this unusual format.

Doom in a PDF? Why not? Image credit: YouTube / vk6.

The PDF's Javascript capabilities allowed for complex computations, resulting in a surprisingly playable version of Doom. Using a six-color ASCII grid for sprites and graphics, ading2210 delivered a legible, albeit slow, game experience (80ms per frame).

While it won't replace your PS5, seeing Doom running inside a PDF file is impressive, especially considering its legibility.

TetrisPDF creator Thomas Rinsma commented on Hacker News, praising ading2210's "neater" version of PDF Doom.

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

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