Check this out: https://hackaday.com/2026/07/20/old-ssds-find-new-life-as-game-cartridges/
Just saw it on Hack a Day and remembered this post. It’s using old SSDs instead of SD cards but is basically what you’re describing.
And they’re using auto launch scripts like I mentioned in my first comment and a whitelist to address security.
So Kazeta as others mention is about putting games onto SD cards.
Another project is https://zaparoo.org/ - this one doesn’t store the data on the card, but instead uses NFC so people can have “fake” cartridges that trigger the load of a game on the Linux system. This allows people to make something that looks great but is simply a stylish trigger to load the media (games, sites, movies, doesn’t matter what).
You might want to check out Kazeta, it’s a project with similar goals
That looks epic… I’m guessing it doesn’t work with Steam games though?
It works for all DRM free games. A bunch of Steam games are DRM free so they will work, just not all. Here is a non complete list of DRM free Steam games
Woahh that’s so cool thx for linking
Thought of this because of the Sony announcement.
Would there be an easy way to make the game auto-launch if the card is inserted?
I looked but there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward way to do that in Linux. I was thinking a udev rule but it would be clunky since the low level details for media like SD cards aren’t available. At best, maybe a generic rule that mounts it and looks for an
autorun.shor something, but that’s basically reinventing Autoplay on Windows and would have the same security implications.I read Hack-a-Day frequently, and I’ve come across several projects that use NFC readers so you can tap a card to play specific songs or start playlists. Maybe something like that but launch a specific game instead?
e.g. https://hackaday.com/2025/03/31/a-music-box-commanded-by-nfc-tags/
You could do it on Linux fairly easily with udev rules, but you’d need to write either a separate rule for every game or have each flash drive only contain a single game each with a generic executable name and path so the same rule works for whatever you insert.
Since most games are going to be built for windows you will also need the rule to invoke wine or steam (for proton). That part could get complicated if some of your games need specific versions of wine. Normally people handle this with Steam or Bottles, but both those programs generally assume each game you are launching has its own bespoke directory on your filesystem.
I dunno if you’d wanna waste a whole sd card for a single game when you could fit hundreds on it.
Not if were talking cyberpunk and such
In that case you’d want them on something faster than an SD card, or loading times would be brutal.
The Snes rom set fits in 4gb with room for saves. A 16gb card could likely hold NES, SNES and N64.
I think you might want to have a look at a MiSTer fpga.
(it provides a very authentic experience and can launch games with tags if you choose so)
Recalbox or similar are certainly a thing, but that doesn’t really help with GOG games so much as roms. Depends on what the end goal is.
Plus this for the collection
I only see this working properly if the game is made portable and saves all its data in the game folder. Which would leave mostly DOS games.
Good point :( Maybe it could work like a CD where it’ll install from the card and then you need to plug it in to launch the game lol
I mean, there is also the option of doing symbolic links from the standard save file location to a save folder on the SD card. A lot more work, and only works on systems you configure it for, but its doable.
It could also work if the game had an OS around it in the card, and you’re booting from it to play every time. It would be closer to how the cartridges worked from the player perspective.
I dunno, cartridges don’t stop being cartridges if the save data is on the console instead of the cartridge.
Disc-based consoles certainly don’t put saves on the disc.
– Frost
If it’s a windows game, you could put the entire Wine prefix on the card and it would be portable. The performance would probably be pretty bad though. 2.5" SATA SSDs and a docking station would work a lot better.
Yeah but 2.5" SATA SSDs would be cost prohibitive at least compared to SD cards.
Large, high performance SD cards aren’t cheap either.
If you want something cheap, go with smart cards or RFID cards that will launch a game that’s already installed on the computer.
I see no problem here.
Never looked much into it, but I remeber reading about kazeta somewhere on the fediverse and should work like that
Ok wait what’s the speed of access to the SD here? I always thought it would be a problem.
It’s slow and wasteful
Believe it or not theres a reason we install games locally these days. But many indie games would obviously work just fine.
But i don’t see the value here except nostalgia
Not quite but got this in my recommended after the whole PlayStation debacle
What is a LogiLink?
It just looks like a generic SD card reader, but with a top mounted slot.
I’d rather see someone remake these old games so that the maximum object count can be raised. Just played a ROM of Link to the Past on SNES and the game crawls to a halt in some areas because the engine has to render several objects moving at once…
For SNES specifically, you could about have every game ever made, your save data, and a light OS on a nice sd card.
There are some Pi rigs like that.
I know but the point was to get the old feeling of having each game on a separate card
There’s a lot of support for NFC launchers too. Stuff like Zaparoo, and websites to make custom labels for them.
It’s not the same idea but it’s the same “take a thing off a shelf and use to to play a game” sort of vibe if that’s what you’re after. And it would be a lot cheaper, SD cards have skyrocketed lately.
