GoKawiil
Tech News
Nintendo has told customers it plans to keep selling physical game cartridges for its consoles, even as Sony moves toward phasing out physical discs for PlayStation titles. Nintendo's reassurance follows gamer backlash against Sony's shift toward digital-only distribution.
BJ, an independent builder, has created the Retro Song Bird, a device resembling a Game Boy cartridge reader that plays only the music and sound effects stored on Game Boy cartridges rather than the games themselves. It includes a built-in speaker, stereo line-out for external audio equipment, and USB audio streaming of each of the Game Boy's four sound channels, plus the ability to back up ROMs, save data, and export music as WAV files. Only a handful of prototypes exist currently, and the device is not yet for sale.
Epilogue makes USB-C cartridge readers, the $50 GB Operator for Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance carts, and the $60 SN Operator for Super Nintendo and Super Famicom titles, with an N64 version in development. The devices connect real cartridges to Windows, Mac, Steam Deck, Xbox Ally or even phones, letting users back up save data and play games through companion Playback software that pulls the ROM and runs it in an emulator.