Modders Manawyrm and tSYS demonstrated Grand Theft Auto: Vice City running on a heavily modified TP-Link TL-WDR4900 v1 router in March 2024. It took a custom PCIe connection for a Radeon graphics card, Debian for the router’s PowerPC processor, a compiled version of the reverse-engineered reVC game engine, and code changes to handle the router’s big-endian architecture. This was a one-off hardware and software project—not a way to install the game on an ordinary router.
What it took to run Vice City on a router
The project, reported by KittenLabs on March 3, 2024, used a TP-Link TL-WDR4900 v1. Its unusual processor and PCIe capabilities made it a possible platform for experimentation, but the stock device was not a ready-made gaming system. Tom’s Hardware independently covered the build on March 4, 2024.
The router’s PowerPC processor
The TL-WDR4900 v1 uses an NXP/Freescale QorIQ P1014, a 32-bit PowerPC e500v2 processor. KittenLabs’ boot log reports CPU0 at 800 MHz and 128 MiB of DRAM. Those are configuration details from the project, not evidence of a particular game frame rate or benchmark result.
A graphics card connected through custom hardware
The modders designed a miniPCIe breakout board, cut traces leading to one of the router’s Atheros chipsets, and redirected the PCIe connection to a graphics card. The router did not have a factory external GPU port. The project’s boot log identifies an AMD Radeon HD 7470 connected over PCIe.
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The team first tried an RX 570, but reported graphics artifacts with the AMDGPU driver. They then used a Radeon HD 7470 with the older Radeon driver, which worked for the project. This describes the outcome of this build, not a general comparison of the cards or their compatibility with other routers.
Why the software needed substantial adaptation
OpenWrt base, Debian userland
The team began with OpenWrt to get a working kernel and base system. According to the KittenLabs account, the standard OpenWrt userland lacked the graphics and game libraries they needed, and its default kernel did not include 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.
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Compiling reVC and handling byte order
Rather than running a standard PC installation, the modders compiled reVC—a reverse-engineered version of Vice City—for the router. The game and rendering engine expected little-endian data, while the PowerPC platform operated in big-endian mode. The authors patched more than 100 mechanisms so loaded data structures would be converted to the host’s byte order and saved data would retain the expected format.
How the player-rendering problem was fixed
Even after the game ran, the player model did not render correctly. The modders spent months investigating, comparing the same source and software stack on an x86 system and looking at possible kernel, compiler, driver, and library causes. They also tried endian patches from an existing Wii U port.
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Updating Mesa and related dependencies eventually 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 identify which library or underlying issue was responsible, so the fix is documented but its exact cause remains unclear.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Can you run Vice City on your own router?
Not by following a normal installation procedure. Reproducing this demonstration would require the specific router platform, substantial hardware modification to redirect PCIe, a compatible graphics setup, a custom kernel and architecture-specific Debian environment, plus changes to the game and rendering code. The project establishes that this particular modified TL-WDR4900 v1 could run reVC; it does not establish that typical routers, other router models, or arbitrary graphics cards can do the same.
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The report also does not publish a measured gameplay frame rate. The documented CPU and memory figures describe the router configuration, not how smoothly the game ran.
Quick Recap
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