Wii U GamePad hacked to allow streaming from PC

A small team of hackers has managed to figure out how to stream PC games to Nintendo’s tablet-like Wii U GamePAd. The team showed off its hack at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress. Despite some crashes, the demonstration was smooth and the team was even able to boot up a Gamecube emulated session of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

Thought using the Wii U GamePad as a simple PC controller was a neat trick? Try this on for size: a small team of hackers has figured out how to stream PC games to the tablet-esque controller natively, circumventing its host console. The hack was shown this week at the 30th Chaos Communication Congress, where the group revealed how it reverse engineered the GamePad controller. After weaving a complex tale of dumped firmware, decoded video and buggy streams, the team showed a simple drawing app streaming from a laptop to the Wii U GamePad. Impressive? Sure, but the crowd didn’t erupt into applause until they booted up a Gamecube emulated session of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.