Can a Receipt Printer Replace a PC and Monitor for Gaming?

Receipt printers are very economical, because the printers themselves are cheap, they don’t need ink, and the receipt paper is affordable. They also print quickly. But do they print quickly enough to reach a usable frame rate for gaming? Bringus Studios found out by running Doom on the printer itself.

The goal for this project was simple: print each frame out at a rate fast enough to make gaming possible. Thermal receipt printers are fast, but it isn’t like 60fps is achievable. However, even at very low framerates, some games can be playable. Something like a chess video game would be an obvious choice, since framerate doesn’t really matter. But even Doom is theoretically possible.

To make this project even more interesting, Bringus Studios also chose to run an operating system and Doom on the printer itself. That wouldn’t normally be possible, but this particular Epson thermal receipt printer actually contains its own tiny computer. There is even a hard drive in there!

That computer was locked down for whatever weird OS Epson had installed, but Bringus Studios was able to get through the BIOS locks and install Debian 13. From there, it was a matter of taking the game’s video output and sending it to the thermal printer one frame at a time.

This isn’t something anyone else would ever want to do, but it does work. Bringus Studios tried several games, but Doom was the highlight. That was playable enough that someone very familiar with the game could probably get through the first few levels.