Playing GTA 5 On A Game Boy? You Won't Believe How a German Physicist Achieved It!

You may have the most powerful PC that can play any triple-A game at maximum resolution.

However, nothing beats a classic handheld gaming device from the 80s that can play Rockstar’s GTA 5.

A German Physicist’s Unbelievable Achievement: Playing GTA 5 on a Game Boy!

A physicist from Germany named Sebastian Staacks has made GTA 5 playable on a 1989 Nintendo Game Boy using a custom-built Wi-Fi cartridge. He uses a console like the PlayStation and is streamed back to the Game Boy.

Playing GTA 5 on Game Boy — Image from “there oughta be”/Youtube.

The concept is the same as the modern PlayStation Portal, which was announced on May 23, 2023, and will be available on November 15, 2023.

It lacks powerful hardware for playing games individually, but it can stream games through an internet connection.

Just like the PlayStation Portal, it doesn’t indeed allow you to play GTA 5 on the Game Boy. Instead, it streams the game using a modified Wi-Fi cartridge that Sebastian Staacks created.

When a button is pressed on the Game Boy, it sends the command to the PlayStation, allowing you to control the game remotely.

Interestingly, he chose to use the 1989 Game Boy, which makes it a bit more challenging, instead of using newer models like the Game Boy SP or Advance.

The Explanation

He explains in his YouTube video how he managed to stream GTA 5 on a pixelated gaming handheld. He also shares the challenges he faced at the beginning of his project and how he overcame them.

One challenge he talked about was making GTA’s 3D graphics work on the Game Boy’s small 160 x 144 screen. To do this, Sebastian came up with a clever solution.

Sebastian’s solution was to remap images from the game and piece them back together as tiles of pixels.

You can watch the YouTube video at “2:23” where he explains how to adjust the resolution for the smaller Game Boy screen.

After Sebastian converted the resolution and found an acceptable data transfer speed, along with his custom-built Wi-Fi cartridge capable of streaming GTA 5 at around “20 frames per second“, he now has the opportunity to test it out.

The Code is Open Source

It is worth noting that the code and all associated scripts are open source and can be accessed by the public on GitHub.

In his blog, he has provided a detailed explanation of how the video transmission was successfully transferred to the Game Boy and which code and software components were required.

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