Two tech researchers at Kitten Labs have discovered that an old TP-Link WiFi router can be used as a gaming PC of sorts, running a version of Linux and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City when connected to an external AMD Radeon HD 7470 graphics card.The experiment, first spotted by The Verge, was published on Kitten Labs’ website and also shared as a YouTube video Sunday. In the video, the router is connected to a monitor, keyboard, and GPU through a series of cables. The game powers up and the playable character gets in a vehicle and drives around town for a few minutes while the game’s music plays through external speakers. Notably, only a keyboard is used to play the game itself, with its arrow keys used to navigate through game selection menus. “For the last few years I have been really annoyed with companies that advertise so-called ‘gaming routers.’ None of them are ever capable of running any games,” wrote one of the tinkerers known as TobleMiner on Mastodon.
The TP-LINK TL-WDR4900 router, which has its own already built-in PowerPC CPU, was first released back in 2013 and has a 36-bit address space. The router itself did require some tweaks, though, as the pseudonymous testers at Kitten Labs added a miniPCIe connection. The testers also installed an older graphics card driver for the connected Radeon HD 7470 card, as newer drivers seemed to be incompatible with 32-bit systems. Kitten Labs was able to run a reverse-engineered version of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City known as ReVC via the router after spending “several days patching the game,” according to the post. Back in 2021, GTA developer Rockstar Games’ parent company Take-Two Interactive filed a lawsuit against creators of old versions of its reverse-engineered games, including Vice City, but Kitten Labs reports that the files are still publicly accessible.
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Overall, Vice City appears to run pretty smoothly and the graphics look solid given the router-based system. But Kitten Labs notes that the router’s version of GTA is limited. Interacting with any non-playable characters in the game’s world causes the game’s graphics to flash different geometric shapes onto the screen, making it virtually unplayable. Playing the game in a more empty world without NPCs allows it to run, however. But tech skills aren’t required to enjoy the 2002 game again. In December, Netflix released mobile-friendly versions of old GTA games for its subscribers, bringing Grand Theft Auto 3, GTA San Andreas, and Vice City to the app stores.
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