The real Doom now runs entirely inside Microsoft Paint and it’s actually brilliant

Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich has released DoomPaint, a project that makes id Software’s classic FPS fully playable in Microsoft Paint by essentially turning the app into a monitor.

Rather than recreating the classic shooter inside Paint, DoomPaint runs the real Doom engine and pastes every rendered frame directly into Paint’s canvas, allowing players to experience the game entirely within Microsoft’s iconic drawing program.

DoomPaint uses Microsoft Paint as Doom’s monitor

According to the project’s GitHub README, DoomPaint runs the real shareware version of Doom, with every frame copied to the Windows clipboard before being pasted directly into Microsoft Paint as a genuine document edit.

That unusual setup also creates some unexpected features. Every pasted frame becomes an individual undo step, meaning pressing Ctrl+Z effectively rewinds time after taking damage or dying. Since Paint treats each frame as simply another drawing, players can also save the window at any point to create a legitimate PNG screenshot of their current game.

Despite using Paint as its display, DoomPaint can run at up to Doom’s native 35Hz when played at the game’s original 320×200 resolution. Russinovich explains that the engine continues running at normal speed regardless of Paint’s performance.

The project also includes several technical workarounds to ensure Paint reliably accepts each pasted frame without triggering clipboard errors or interrupting gameplay.

“Paint renders the game but does not compute it. Paint computes nothing. Paint has never computed anything. That’s the joke,” Russinovich said of the project.

Using Doom as an experimental subject has been a recurring trend in the decades since its original release. In addition to ChatGPT being able to run the FPS, scientists have also managed to train human brain cells on a microchip to play Doomguy’s first adventure.