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Can MS Paint run Doom? (Yes)

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Why This Matters

This project demonstrates the incredible versatility and efficiency of Doom's original programming, highlighting how classic games can be adapted to unconventional platforms like MS Paint. It underscores the ongoing creativity within the tech community to push the boundaries of software and hardware capabilities, inspiring innovation and nostalgia alike. For consumers and developers, it showcases the potential for playful experimentation with legacy code and modern tools.

Key Takeaways

The iconic FPS Doom has been spotted running on Microsoft Paint, according to a report by Tom's Hardware. DoomPaint runs the actual original shareware release using MS Paint as the monitor for in-game action. Interestingly, it can run up to 35 FPS. This is actually a decent metric for 1990s PC games.

Also interesting? This whole project was spearheaded by Mark Russinovich, the CTO of Microsoft Azure. "Every frame is placed on the Windows clipboard and pasted into Paint's canvas as a genuine document edit," he wrote on the game's GitHub.

This GitHub repo also includes resources and instructions on how to get the game going on your own version of MS Paint. It's worth noting that this release does include sound and music.

Doom is legendary for its efficient programming, and so since it's publication in 1993, it's become customer to get it running on a variety of platforms it was never intended for. Lawnmowers, printers, chatbots, video game boxes and even gut bacteria can technically run Doom. That last one was especially impressive, though the frame rate was so slow that it would take around 600 years to play the game from start to finish.