Doom's been ported to everything from toasters to refrigerators, seemingly leaving little room for truly novel platforms. However, a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: porting Doom to a PDF file playable within a browser.

While features like text and sound are absent, the core gameplay of E1M1 is surprisingly intact. This feat, inspired by the TetrisPDF project, was accomplished by Github user ading2210, who leveraged Javascript within a browser's PDF reader.

Despite browser security limitations on PDF scripting, ading2210 cleverly utilized Javascript's computational capabilities. A six-color ASCII grid renders sprites and graphics, resulting in a playable, albeit slow (80ms per frame), version of Doom.

While not a replacement for modern gaming hardware, the achievement of running Doom within a PDF is remarkable for its ingenuity and the surprisingly clear visual output. Even TetrisPDF creator Thomas Rinsma praised ading2210's "neater" implementation on Hacker News.

The continued porting of Doom to unusual devices and file formats, including even gut bacteria, remains a testament to its enduring legacy and the boundless creativity of its fans.