Doom isn’t the only game being ported to devices that were never intended to run a video game. Grand Theft Auto: Vice CityRockstar Games’ hugely popular open-world crime game from 2002 is also joining in. Thanks to a skilled inventor, the classic can now be played on a router with a few modifications.
As discovered by PCGamesN and posted on KittenLabs on March 3rdModders Manawyrn and tSYS took a TP-Link TL-WDRR4900 (a router I used and still own) and turned it into a tiny PC capable of running software and video games. This is possible because the TL-WDRR4900 contains a PowerPC e500v2 32-bit processor. This CPU offers plenty of power, more than enough for an internet router released in 2013 and just enough to run older games.
This can be achieved even with the relatively powerful hardware in the TP-Link router Vice City Working on it wasn’t easy. Since this thing didn’t include a graphics card (remember, it was a router and never needed one), the modders had to create and add a custom mini-PCIe breakout and plug that into the router. This allowed them to connect an external AMD Radeon HD 7470 graphics card and bam, they could now connect the router to a display and run software.
Not quite. As documented in detail on KittenLabsIt took a lot of problem solving to get there Vice City Runs smoothly on a router. At some point they contacted the person behind a Vice City WiiU port I’m asking for help as the inside of the Nintendo console has some similarities to TP-Link’s CPU.
When everything was said and done, the two were able to play Vice City on a ten year old router running Linux, a modified version of Game source codeand an external GPU. So not the easiest way to play GTA: Vice City, and performance is not perfect. Still, it’s an impressive achievement that’s just as cool as any strange hacks and ports People have created for Doom over the years. Well, when can someone get it Vice City runs on a cash register?
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