Getting "DOOM" to run somewhere it clearly wasn't designed for has become something of a running joke in the gaming world, with the classic shooter having shown up on everything from printers to robot lawnmowers.
The latest addition to that list is another unlikely place you'll play a game on, and it uses nothing more than a basic drawing tool most people associate with childhood Windows experiences rather than gaming.
Can You Run 'DOOM' on Microsoft Paint?
Yes, and the project behind it is entirely real. Built by Mark Russinovich, the current CTO of Microsoft Azure, the tool called "DoomPaint" uses Microsoft Paint as a live display for actual "DOOM" gameplay, running the original shareware release rather than some simplified imitation.
According to Russinovich, every frame gets placed onto the Windows clipboard and pasted directly into Paint's canvas as a genuine document edit, which is what lets the game visually render inside an app never built for anything close to real-time graphics.
Performance actually holds up reasonably well given the circumstances, hitting frame rates of up to 35 per second, a solid number by 1990s PC gaming standards. Since "DOOM" first launched in 1993, getting it to run on unconventional hardware and software has become a tradition among developers, with past examples including everything from chatbots to gut bacteria, the latter of which reportedly needed around 600 years to complete a full playthrough.
How to Run 'DOOM' on Microsoft Paint
The project is available through Russinovich's GitHub page, where the necessary files and setup instructions are provided for anyone wanting to try it themselves. Running the batch file included in the repository automatically creates a virtual environment and installs the required dependencies on the first launch, after which Paint opens, and the game becomes playable using standard movement keys for walking, turning, strafing, and firing.
What makes the experience unusual goes beyond just visuals. Because every frame functions as an actual edit within Paint, pressing Ctrl+Z effectively rewinds time, undoing whatever just happened on screen, including character death.
Saving the file at any point also produces a legitimate PNG image of the current frame, since as far as Paint is concerned, the player simply drew it by hand. Sound and music are included as well, pulled directly from the game's original files and converted so they play through the same session.
What Makes MS Paint Run Games?
Technically speaking, Paint itself does none of the actual computing. The real engine driving the experience is ViZDoom, a system that simulates the game logic separately and only sends finished visual frames to Paint through the clipboard, which then pastes them onto the canvas as if a person had done so manually.
Paint's role is purely to display what it's handed, not to process or calculate anything happening within the game itself.
That distinction is part of what makes the project function as intended, and also part of the joke behind it. As Russinovich put it plainly in the project's documentation, Paint renders the game but computes nothing, since it has never been built to do so.
id Software's OG 'DOOM'
The original "DOOM," developed by id Software, has earned its reputation largely through the efficiency of its underlying code, a trait that has made it a favorite target for developers looking to prove a piece of hardware or software can technically run games.
Its shareware version specifically, the same one powering this Paint experiment, was designed to run smoothly even on the limited computing power available when the game first released. This is part of why it continues to show up in projects like this decades later.
That efficiency is exactly what allows something as unconventional as a static image editor to display it in near real time, turning a program built for drawing into an unlikely home for one of gaming's most enduring titles.
