The Game Boy will be proud 32 years old this year – and despite its advanced age, the Nintendo Handheld does not seem to be a rust. A German hobbyist impressively proves that even current games like GTA 5 are still running on the ancient console – albeit with a trick.
GTA 5 can be played on the Game Boy thanks to WLAN cartridge
For the Game Boy there are numerous interesting games, some of them are real handheld classics. However, GTA 5 is not part of this. However, this has not held the German physicist Sebastian Staacks to make Rockstars Open-World-Traferbener on the ancient console of Nintendo playable.
Although there may be more potential in the Game Boy, when it becomes apparent at first glance – there is no hardware at the end of the day to run GTA 5 natively. Instead, the game is streamed via WLAN thanks to a special Cartridge on the old handheld console.
For this, the video signal of the console on which the game is running is passed on to a PC via a Capture Card. This compresses the video data and adjusts them so that they can be displayed on the Game Boy. The edited and strongly retracted video signal is then transferred to the Game Boy over the wireless network.
At the same time, the entries on the Game Boy are also wirelessly passed on to the console, so that the game is actually controlling the old handheld console. This is a greatly simplified explanation. Who wants to deal with deep technical background, finds a complete breakdown of the project on Staash’s blog.
_CUDEM, the smart habitant also introduces its work process and the result in a YouTube video. So if you want to see how GTA 5 looks in motion on the Game Boy, the best looks pure: _
Buy Classic Game Boy at Console Cost
Interesting feasibility study
Granted, a feast for the eyes is not GTA 5 on the old game boy screen. This finally offers only a resolution of 160 x 144 pixels and inadequate contrast. And also the Input LAG, which comes about through the WLAN transmission and additional work steps, does not have a positive effect on the flow of the game.
Nevertheless, it is fascinating to see what is still possible with the over 30 year old Game Boy. Oh, and if you have the question of you now: Yes, on the Game Boy is in this way crysis.