Porting video games to devices they should never be played on is a long and storied tradition. People have been playing Doom on smart refrigerators, camerasand twitter for years, so it’s only fair that other titles come to non-gaming home tech.
A Reddit user has his eye on the humble electronic reader as the next unexpected gaming platform, showing that it is possible to play Infinite HaloGTA 3, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republicand other classics in grayscale, E Ink canvas.
Achilles wingthe Reddit user and apparent aficionado of the ereader in question, started a multiplayer game of Infinite Halo in the e-book reader of your choice, demonstrating exactly what the device can do. As you’d expect, it’s not the smoothest experience, suffering from an extremely low refresh rate, lots of image ghosting and constant stuttering, but definitely Halo Infinite is playing on a device intended for reading books.
halo_infinity from r/einkgames
GTA 3 is noticeably better. Its simpler graphics allow it to run much more smoothly, and the game is almost playable. It’s certainly good enough to let you run around its grayscale open world and cause some carnage.
They also initialized Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republicand suggested that its turn-based combat, sluggish dialogue system, and high-contrast color palette make it particularly suited to being played on an e-book reader.
Achilleswing also tested The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, Morrowind, Pokémon Crystal, and Paper Mario on the device. They even created their own subreddit to share clips of each game in action.
gta_iii from r/einkgames
As for how they managed to play the games on their e-book reader, Achilleswing some tricks up the sleeve. They use an Onyx Boox Nova Pro, an Android ereader that can support the Google Play Store after a few tweaks in the settings menu. Add the Google Play Store app and you can download Android ports of various games directly to your ereader, including GTA 3 and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
To run Halo Infinite, Achilleswing says he downloaded the Xbox Game Pass Android and played the game remotely by connecting to a Xbox one.
He emphasizes that his Boox Nova Pro is a fairly cheap model with low hardware specs compared to many ereaders on the market. If your device supports a high refresh rate and is capable of downloading the Google Play app, you can connect some games of your own.
Analysis: Putting games where they don’t belong
There’s little reason to want to run any of these games through an ereader. Watching a Spartan jump up and down, or a Jedi light his lightsaber on a grayscale screen is quite amusing, but it doesn’t serve much of a purpose. It would be better to run the games through an Android phone or tablet as their apps were originally designed.
But Achilleswing’s efforts are a firm reminder that hardware enthusiasts will always enjoy porting video games to places they don’t belong. ONE pregnancy test It’s not a great place to enjoy Doom’s high-octane first-person shooter, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t strangely satisfying to see it run the game.
The Achilleswing subreddit not only works as a place for them to share their ebook gaming habits, but also to invite others to join them. While ereaders aren’t the next must-have gaming platform, some enthusiasts are likely to catch the trend.
Of course, if you prefer not to remove all the color from Halo Infinite, you can take a Xbox Series S below instead.
