Modders Manawyrm and tSYS demonstrated GTA: Vice City running on a heavily modified TP-Link TL-WDR4900 v1 router in March 2024. It took a custom graphics-card connection, a Debian Linux setup for the router’s PowerPC processor, and a compiled version of the reverse-engineered reVC game implementation—not an ordinary router setup.
How did they run Vice City on a router?
The project combined the TL-WDR4900 v1’s unusual processor and PCIe capability with hardware and software changes. The router’s NXP/Freescale QorIQ P1014 is a 32-bit PowerPC e500v2 CPU. Its architecture made the experiment possible, but the stock router was not a ready-made gaming machine. KittenLabs’ project report documents the build.
| # | Preview | Product | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | $31.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 2 |
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Grand Theft Auto Vice City (Renewed) | $20.05 | Buy on Amazon |
| 3 |
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Grand Theft Auto Vice City | $39.98 | Buy on Amazon |
| 4 |
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Grand Theft Auto V - PC | $36.99 | Buy on Amazon |
| 5 |
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Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City | $64.99 | Buy on Amazon |
They added a graphics-card connection
The modders designed a custom miniPCIe breakout board, cut traces leading to one Atheros chipset, and redirected the PCIe connection. The router did not have a factory external GPU connection. The project’s boot log identifies an AMD Radeon HD 7470 on PCIe.
An initial attempt with a Radeon RX 570 produced graphics artifacts with the modern AMDGPU driver. The Radeon HD 7470 worked with the older radeon driver. These are outcomes from this particular build, not a general comparison of the cards or a guarantee about other hardware.
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- Features exclusive to the PC version include the ability to edit the lead character's appearance and switch to a radio station that plays MP3 files stored on the computer. Perhaps the biggest change is the improved visuals, now optimized specifically for high-performance systems. Players will be able to view the game with new 32-bit textures, longer viewable distances, and support for multiple display resolutions. Furthermore, players can watch replays of the last 30 seconds of action and then e-mail them to friends.
- Offers support for 32-bit textures and multiple display resolutions for sharper visuals than the PS2 game Import your favorite tunes for play on a custom radio station, or listen to over nine hours of '80s music
- Record the last 30 seconds of stunts, shootouts, or fiery crashes and show them to friends via e-mail
- Customize the look of Tommy Vercetti and his threads with the player skin editor
- Supports EAX 3.0 audio for enveloping sound effects and music
They built a Linux environment for PowerPC
The team started with OpenWrt to get a working kernel and base system. According to the project report, the standard OpenWrt userland lacked the graphics and game libraries they needed, and its default kernel lacked the desired AMD graphics support. They built a custom OpenWrt kernel with added modules, then bootstrapped a Debian PowerPCSPE userland for the e500/e500v2 processor family.
They compiled and adapted reVC
Rather than install a standard PC copy of the game, they compiled reVC, a reverse-engineered version of Vice City, for the router. The game and rendering engine assumed little-endian data, while the router platform was big-endian. The authors patched more than 100 mechanisms so loaded data structures would be converted to the host’s byte order and saved data would remain in the expected format.
Rank #2
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- Set in the 80s
- Power, glamour, and corruption
- More freedom of movement than ever before.
- Gangs are much more intelligent in this game, and so are pedestrians - don't worry, you've got all-new moves and weapons to face them with
What fixed the missing player models?
The game initially had a player-model rendering problem that took months to resolve. Manawyrm and tSYS compared the same source and software stack on an x86 system and investigated possible kernel, compiler, driver, and library causes. They also tried endian patches from an existing Wii U port.
Updating Mesa and related dependencies restored player rendering on the router with hardware acceleration. The authors wrote: “After installing new libglvnd, drm and mesa, player rendering started to work fine on real hardware (with acceleration!).” They did not establish which library or underlying issue caused the problem.
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Rank #3
- Set in the 80s
- Power, glamour, and corruption
- More freedom of movement than ever before.
- Gangs are much more intelligent in this game, and so are pedestrians - don't worry, you've got all-new moves and weapons to face them with
- There's also a much wider selection vehicles -- boats, motorcycles and more New camera angles like the over-the-shoulder view
What the demonstration does—and does not—show
KittenLabs’ March 3, 2024 report lists CPU0 at 800 MHz and DRAM at 128 MiB in the project’s boot log. Those are configuration details, not a gaming benchmark. The report does not publish a measured frame rate, so there is no supported figure for how smoothly the game ran.
Tom’s Hardware independently covered the build on March 4, 2024, describing the TL-WDR4900, Radeon HD 7470, Debian, reVC, and Mesa update as central parts of the project: Tom’s Hardware’s report.
Rank #4
- Will take full advantage of the power of new generation systems and PC to deliver across-the-board enhancements including increased resolution and graphical detail, denser traffic, greater draw distances, upgraded AI, new wildlife, and advanced weather and damage effects for the ultimate open world experience.
- The biggest, most dynamic and most diverse open world ever created and now packed with layers of new detail.
- Grand Theft Auto V blends storytelling and gameplay in new ways as players repeatedly jump in and out of the lives of the game’s three lead characters, playing all sides of the game’s interwoven story.
- Includes Grand Theft Auto Online, the ever-evolving Grand Theft Auto universe.
- All new content and gameplay created and released since the launch of Grand Theft Auto Online including new Jobs, an arsenal of new weapons, scores of new vehicles, new properties and player customizations
The result is best understood as a custom hardware-and-software demonstration on one specific router. It does not mean a typical home router can run Vice City or accept a graphics card without substantial modification.
Quick Recap
Best Value
- Both games are standalone releases that do not require the original Grand theft auto IV game, an Xbox live connection, or even an Xbox 360 hard drive to play.
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon at the time of purchase will apply.
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