Grand Theft Auto: Vice City can be seen running on a device you wouldn’t think it could run on…

Last time we reported on DOOM, it was made to run on an electric toothbrush, but until now there’s been little talk of Grand Theft Auto getting similar ports. Especially since it’s a much more complex game than id Software’s first-person shooter, we didn’t think much about the possibility of Rockstar’s hugely successful game running anywhere other than cell phones, consoles, and PCs.

The device they chose to run Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, which was released over two decades ago, is a TP-Link TL-WDR4900 v1. It was able to run the game because it has a PowerPC-based processor with a full 36-bit address space, excellent performance for a router, and good PCIe controllers. That’s how YouTuber Manawyrm connected an AMD Radeon graphics card to it. The performance isn’t great, but we’re talking about a router; TP-Link didn’t design their hardware for this, and in that sense, it’s excellent that the router ran Grand Theft Auto: Vice City!

A blog post documents how Rockstar’s game made it from the PC to the TP-Link router. The task was extremely complex and required a lot of time, effort, blood, sweat and tears to “game” the router. The game itself is not that advanced, nor is DOOM, but its complexity makes it much more difficult to run on hardware that is considered unusual. The more complex a game is, the fewer devices you can run it on, so don’t expect to run, say, a washing machine on a Rockstar story set in 1986, which is unique in its atmosphere.

As you can see in the video, it’s not a scam and it’s not a joke, but it’s still hard to believe that Vice City runs on a ROUTER…

Source: WCCFTech, Kittenlabs