Rare footage shows Bill Gates with shotgun on Doom set

A recording that surfaced online shows Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on a Doom-themed set during a private 1995 presentation called Judgment Day. In the clip, Gates wears a trench coat, carries a double-barreled prop shotgun and pauses to fire at an on-screen demon while discussing Windows 95 and DirectX.

The presentation took place in 1995 as part of the Windows 95 campaign and was aimed at highlighting DirectX, a new set of application programming interfaces intended to replace older DOS-based development tools. The event was designed to show game developers and industry attendees how Windows 95 could support richer graphics and multimedia.

Viewers of the newly surfaced footage see Gates walk onto the set, handle the shotgun prop and interrupt his remarks to address a demon that appears on stage. The video is grainy and the audio is poor, but it matches long-standing descriptions from people who attended the private event.

DirectX was introduced to make it easier for developers to use Windows graphics and sound features rather than rely on DOS-era methods. After Doom became available on Windows 95 with graphics upgrades for its time, a greater number of developers began releasing games for Windows.

The Judgment Day presentation is referenced in later accounts of 1990s PC gaming history. The resurfaced recording does not add technical information about DirectX, but it provides a rare visual record of a theatrical marketing moment from the early Windows 95 campaign.