It's so crazy this is even a thing. Way back in what, 2004? The e-card reader seemed like a viable alternative to those Chinese flash carts, which were hella expensive at the time. There weren't a ton of options for playing NES games on the go, back in those days.

March 26, 2026 - 03:22 UTC

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Eventually, the NES games were released on their own cartridges, which made sense in the case of especially large games, like Castlevania. The e-reader games were generally around 32K, and still required a good number of card swipes!
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It's pretty wild how small they had to be! For NES games, the e-reader's emulator is limited to 16kb of program code (prg) and 8kb of graphics data (chr). Super Mario Bros 1 wouldn't even fit! (It's 40kb, with 32kb of prg)
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