Sure, it’s fun to play Super Mario 3D World or LEGO City Undercover from the comfort of your Wii U GamePad. But this weekend, a team of hackers demonstrated how to stream PC games through the tablet-like controller.

Speaking at the 30th annual Chaos Communication Congress (C3), two presenters explained their reverse-engineered process of circumventing Nintendo’s host console to play a GameCube-emulated session of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.

Still a little buggy, the demo revealed a successful session played via the Dolphin Emulator.

“When the Wii U was released, a few console hackers and I were talking about potential uses for the Wii U GamePad,” the team said in a C3 schedule memo(Opens in a new window). The first step, however, was to understand how the device works and how to communicate with it.

“This started our long journey of soldering wires on Flash chips, reading the h.264 specification, and complaining about the lack of features in most Wi-Fi drivers and devices,” they said.

Interested developers can try their hand at the modifications— available online(Opens in a new window) —which the hackers warned is still in the alpha phase. However, they hope to one day develop software to sync the GamePad with Windows and OS X, as well as a way to play Wii U games on an Android tablet.

The team’s entire “Reverse Engineering the Wii U GamePad” presentation can also be found online(Opens in a new window), for those interested in the very, very long, convoluted methods.

If you can’t wait for an eventual hack, the Nvidia Shield serves as a dedicated gaming handheld and an Android tablet in a single, gamepad-equipped device with a $299 price tag.

Nintendo unveiled its Wii U GamePad in the summer of 2012, sporting dual sticks, a touch screen for finger and stylus interaction, motion and gyroscope sensors, and the ability to act as a TV remote. It also comes with its own dedicated Web browser and can share images and video to a TV.

For more, see PCMag’s review of the Nintendo Wii U and the slideshow above.