After March’s announcement that the hard-as-nails, retro-stylized platformer Cuphead was coming to the Nintendo Switch, we wondered what platform might be the next to see a port. Anything from iOS or PS4 to Linux or Google’s upcoming Stadia seemed at least plausible.
We did not, however, think of the Tesla car line as the next Cuphead port platform. And yet here we are, listening as Elon Musk announced during a podcast interview this week that Cuphead is “working” on the car’s central-console touchscreen.
Maja Moldenhauer from Cuphead developer Studio MDHR confirmed the work on the limited port to IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey, saying Tesla only required that the game “play super, super clean” on the car’s internal hardware. For this reason, the game will only work by plugging in a wired USB controller rather than allowing for controls directly on the touchscreen itself (or with the Tesla’s steering-wheel buttons). And before you ask, the car has to be in park to play the game, a move that probably makes Tesla’s lawyers very happy.
Cuphead on a Tesla doesn’t come as a complete surprise, as Musk put out the call for car-based game development about 10 months ago. Since then, Tesla has launched and expanded a set of classic Atari games playable on the central console, and Musk has tweeted about efforts to port the Unity Engine and Unreal Engine to the car’s included computer platform.
Still, Tesla’s Tegra-powered central touchscreens don’t seem like they were designed with gaming in mind. As Musk notes on the podcast, “You have to decide what game you want to play, and then it will download… if you want to play other games you have to delete that one and download another one.” That limited storage space means that only the first level of Cuphead, Inkwell Isle One, will be available in the Tesla version, according to Moldenhauer.
In any case, work on gaming ports like Cuphead should serve as a fun diversion as Tesla continues to work out some potentially lethal kinks in the car’s Autopilot system.https://arstechnica.com/?p=1516255