[vanderZwan]

> It's an OS that mounts/searches all drives (such as an SD card reader) for the first available KZI file which is a format that describes how a specific game is run (the runtime, additional gamescope options, etc).

I hope it also supports putting multiple games on one cartridge and choosing between them at boot time? Don't see a reason to waste a multi-gigabyte SD card on a single ROM of a few megabytes.

[cout]

Is it still possible to buy smaller SD cards in bulk, maybe 8mb or 16mb? The smallest I could find was 128mb for about the same price as a 2gb card.

While I like the idea of physically separate cards for each game, at $10 per card it seems economically limiting.

[DSMan195276]

As an alternative you can still buy small flash drives in bulk (Amazon has listings of 128MB ones for less than a dollar per drive). They don't look as good as SD cards on their own but you could rip out the internals and place them in 3d printed enclosures, which could be an even better result.

I would assume the quality of those things is not great, but the design of this system means they're basically read-only so that should hopefully help them survive longer.

[ofrzeta]

The smallest I could find was 128MB (see adjacent thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45101932) on Aliexpress but you are right, they are comparatively expensive. A source for those obsolete cards would be great. Have they all been shredded by now? Or is there a forgotten shipping container somewhere? :)

[fragmede]

Given storage sizes, the cartridge is symbolic. Use NFC tags and a reader and just load the appropriate ROM off disk.

[jnaina]

<$3 bucks for 16GB on AliExpress

[grugagag]

Still feels like a waste to put 4mb game on it

[gravitronic]

Don't worry, it's actually a 4MB SD card with a fake sticker

[grugagag]

Im sure there are such rippoffs, I’ve heard of them but they were still way bigger than a game cart. I like the idea of physical cartriges/media for games, let’s see how this catches on.

[nilamo]

Finally a use for all the free SD cards MicroCenter gives away, lol

[deadbabe]

It’s more romantic to have each game on individual cards that you can touch and feel rather than cramming a bunch of them onto one card.

When you hold a game cart in your hand, you can close your eyes and imagine holding that entire game’s essence in the palm of your hand, you can see it and picture it, and in this sense it’s no longer just bits of data, but rather an entire world just waiting to be explored.

These people who don’t want carts and just want everything downloaded straight to a device and packed in an NVME can fuck off, I see now that it was this kind of min/max thinking that killed a lot of the fun rituals that made the gaming experience more magical. The practicality and instant gratification wasn’t worth the trade off, that’s why games suck today and we get micro-transactions and subscriptions shoved down our throats.

[probably_wrong]

It would be 90s accurate, though, as pirate multi-game cartridges [1] were very common (and very cheap) at the time.

Same goes for the Atari 2600, with the difference that the game selection was made with physical switches instead of a menu screen.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ullO54qsP_8

[npteljes]

That's a flawed premise, as games totally don't suck today. There are so many to choose from, and people create new ones all the time, experiences where you can clearly feel that they poured their hearts and sweat into it.

For me, the practicality of gaming doesn't get in the way of the same enjoyment that you described feeling. I love it that I can have my favorites and current ones loaded in a single console, which I hold exactly as dearly as you described with the game cartridge. To me, most games are experiences though, and therefore I have no use for the media, packaging etc after I have experienced it. When I want to refresh my memories, I rather look at the screenshots and videos I took of the game, rather than the box or cartridge, as the media I created is much more personal.

[GlacierFox]

I have fond memories of looking at all my GameBoy Advance games stacked up on the shelf as a kid now and then. The idea that there's a little world in each individual one I can dive in to brought great joy. I totally get you. Sure there were custom carts back then to stuff 100 games into one cart but I didnt ever feel like getting one even back then, sucked a little of the joy out of it for me.

[otabdeveloper4]

We had MS-DOS shovelware shareware on CD-ROM back in the day. The cartrige thing is a specific nostalgia thing not everyone experienced.

[vunderba]

I grew up in that era.

And part of that magic was the UNIQUENESS of the "cartridge", be it a Genesis cart, an NES cart, or even a PC big box. Having them displayed in your bedroom on a shelf was part of that experience. Personally I think you lose a lot of this magic with a tiny and somewhat generic looking SD card.

Also let's not pretend that there wasn't a metric F###-ton of garbage day games [1] back in the day. The only difference is the barrier to entry to game development and production is significantly lower - so there's just orders of magnitude more.

There are still plenty of VERY high quality games released today - you're either not looking for them or deliberately choosing to ignore them. (Spelunky, Shovel Knight, BG3, Tomb Raider 2013, Doom Eternal, Cuphead, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, etc.)

- [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LJN

[electroglyph]

i can't say i totally agree with you, but i love your opinion nonetheless =)

[anal_reactor]

Practicality is exactly why we abandoned the old designs.

[stuaxo]

Yep, but we didn't realise what we were throwing out.

Having a tangible thing somehow makes it mean more, think about picking out a record or CD to play and leaving it to play as opposed to scrolling through infinite music to choose what to play.

[npteljes]

We are "throwing out" outdated parts of culture, and for one, I'm mostly indifferent to that. For one, because I'm sure that there will be people who dislike this and try to preserve it, and so, it won't be all be lost forever. Secondly, because culture will always find a way, and I sense the strength in me to find it as well. I have experienced many times that I have listened to all the good music, played all the best games, or seen the most impactful movies. And yet, I always seem to find something that completely blows my mind.

>Having a tangible thing somehow makes it mean more, think about picking out a record or CD to play and leaving it to play as opposed to scrolling through infinite music to choose what to play.

The same could be said in reverse. Just to highlight that this is a subjective experience, and not an objective truth. "Having an infinite pool of music somehow makes in mean more, as opposed to the dusty collection that you happen to have at home".

[slightwinder]

The simple reason is: picking things is annoying. Organizing physical objects is even more annoying, especially if they are bigger. Then you need more physical objects, to organize the physical objects you use, this takes up even more space. And physical organization is also very limited. You have no database, no dynamic filters, no metadata... At the end, having a tangible thing wears off very fast and just becomes a burden.

[camgunz]

A lot of people in the retro gaming space have the conflict you describe. On the one hand, there are a lot of games. Like, a lot. Some (many?) games have multiple versions even! And this is without talking about mods and homebrew.

On the other, there's something deeply "unmagical" about loading up a huge menu of games. Even if they're organized in some way (console, genre, studio, whatever), even if you include box art and info, it's simply not the same experience. Most retro gaming channels I watch on YouTube talk about this phenomenon--mostly in the context of "why do you have shelves full of games".

Different people will think different things about this. I have a 77 square meter home (~830ft2) and like, I'm not fitting all the games I ever bought in this place, let alone all the albums, books, etc. I have flash carts, hard drives, and a kindle keyboard v3. I kind of chalk it up to "life is a beautiful struggle". Friction is good, actually, it enriches life, and these kinds of little agonies are fun to just discuss and find common experience over.

[tines]

Thank you. Why do so few people understand this?

[idle_zealot]

It's completely subjective. It's not an uncommon feeling, but it's far from a universal truth. Some nerds like collecting cards, some like stamps, some like dolls or statues. You like collecting and holding data storage devices. People derive meaning and joy from different parts of life. There's not an understanding being missed, but a difference in preference.

[npteljes]

Because it's not understanding, which would imply an objective truth, but a subjective experience. I personally have great appreciation to music and games, but really dislike physical media at the same time. The way I like to experience them is much better supported by the digital solutions, than the analogue.

Although, to be honest, if the digital world didn't exist at all, I'm sure I'd manage to have a good time all the time. It's just that now that it exists, I prefer it more - streaming over physical media for example.

[anal_reactor]

Because it's not fucking practical. You do it once, it's cool. You do it twice, all right. You do it three times, it's annoying. Most people live in tiny apartments and are overworked, when they have a moment to play games, the "click to run" experience is vastly superior over searching for something in a mountain of plastic that could've been a chair or a plant instead.

I think that what you really want is going back to pre-internet times when access to media was limited, so every single piece of media had value. You had one casette, you'd listen to it back to back because there was nothing else. Nowadays media feel meaningless not because they're not put on physical plastic, but because you have infinite access to it at all times. Some people argue that you could try to restrict yourself to some specific subset, but deep down you'll always know it's just a theatre.

Since I accepted the fact that I hate most of humanity and 99% of commercial products are slop, I started valuing things much more. The rush of "wow I found something that isn't slop" mimics the old feeling of getting a new disc.

[andrepd]

> Because it's not fucking practical. You do it once, it's cool. You do it twice, all right. You do it three times, it's annoying. Most people live in tiny apartments and are overworked, when they have a moment to play games, the "click to run" experience is vastly superior over searching for something in a mountain of plastic that could've been a chair or a plant instead.

There's already every single mainstream platform offering what you want. This is clearly a niche product serving a niche usecase: recreating the experience of physical carts like an SNES or a PS2 or a Gameboy. Some people, necessarily a minority, enjoy this. Why are you so angry? I don't get it.

[jamespo]

Yes, they seem very angry for someone living in a digital paradise

[Chris2048]

Why not just maintain a personal playlist?

[NaomiLehman]

or a book vs Kindle