Playing Doom in a PDF!!!

[thewayne]

The game was released 32 years ago, and inspired by someone figuring out how to play Tetris in a PDF, someone known only by their Github alias worked out how to make Doom playable in said PDF! It has a refresh rate of 32 ms and is in glorious 6-bit monochrome, but you can actually play Knee-Deep In The Dead in a PDF!

While completely silly, this is quite awesome! People have figured out how to hack refrigerators, washing machines, coffee makers, and all sorts of things to play Doom. If it has an LCD screen of some sort, it either has Doom running on it somewhere, or someone is working on it.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/doom_delivered_in_a_pdf/

Comments

[silveradept]

I think DOOM-on-PDF is a fine demonstration of the vulnerabilities of the document format, in the same way that any other document that can execute code should be considered untrustworthy. It's funny to see how many things can run the game, but it's also a reminder of how much electronics and code we have in our lives that's not being properly maintained.

[thewayne]

The fact that so many things are insecure is the sad testimony that we just can't have good things. ;-)