The woes of Cyberpunk 2077 on consoles are well documented. The game had a disastrous launch on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, leading to an unprecedented response by all the parties involved in distributing the game. What's less publicized is the fact that the game works perfectly well on the Google Stadia, which has driven new interest in the cloud based gaming service. One YouTuber found a way to run the game on the Nintendo Switch via Stadia. Another, Kevin Kenson, found a different way to run the game on a more obscure console: the Atari VCS.
The VCS is, at least partially, what it sounds like -- a modern console that evokes the look of classic Atari machines like the 2600. Like many retro consoles before it, it comes pre-loaded with classic Atari titles like Missile Command and Tempest. It will also play host to Atari sequels like Tempest 4000 and a host of indie games.
What sets the VCS apart is that it's a small PC at heart. Atari touted that the system ran off of a customizable Linux OS when it began crowdfunding for the project in 2017. Kenson used that feature to download Windows 10 on the console. He then sought out current games it could run, including Cyberpunk. To get anything to run, Kenson had to work around the console's limitations, primarily its lack of memory. The VCS has 8 GB of RAM and lacks a graphics card, so it struggled to boot games up without some modifications.
Games like Fortnite needed to be run at minimum settings, meaning the system needed to run a debloating program to cut down on the memory it used. Windows 10 also had to be put in performance mode to minimize the its memory usage. With all of those steps taken, game of the year candidate Hades became playable on the VCS.
To get a game like Cyberpunk to work, Kenson had to increase the page file size of the system. In his words, that meant telling the VCS about all of the space that was made available by those settings tweaks. All of that space became "virtual RAM" the system could use to run beefier recent games.
While DOOM Eternal never booted, Cyberpunk did. Of course, it didn't run particularly well. Even with every setting at minimum, the game's struggles are amplified on the VCS. You can practically count the frames per second as V moves through Night City. That said, it is functional, which is a minor miracle given all of the VCS's limitations combined with Cyberpunk's own issues. Kenson believes it wouldn't have been possible to run the game on the VCS at all without the hotfix 1.06 patch, which was primarily intended to fix save corruption issues.
The obvious question Kenson was asked when he got the game to run on the VCS was whether it was a better experience than the last-gen console versions. While he doesn't have much experience with the PS4, he considered the Xbox One S version slightly better. If nothing else, he could drive straight in that incarnation of the game.
Regardless, Kenson doesn't recommend gamers play Cyberpunk on the VCS, even if you happen to have the desire to spend $500 on one. You'd have to jump through a lot of hoops just to play a version of the game that amplifies its last-gen struggles, although it might at least make Xbox One and PlayStation 4 users feel better by comparison. Despite Cyberpunk 2077's issues on those systems, the game can actually run worse.