Neat concept. I had to dig through a lot of the docs before I could get a good grasp of exactly how this works, though. 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).

While the idea of essentially mimicking old school carts by having a dedicated SD card per game is intriguing, I'm not sure I personally see the appeal of something like this over a Steam Deck + EmuDeck installed - particularly since you'll probably need to build/buy a miniPC that is compatible with Kazeta.

Another concern would be controller compatibility, from what I can see only one controller is listed as being officially supported (8Bitdo Ultimate 2C Wireless Controller).

https://github.com/kazetaos/kazeta/wiki/Requirements

• vanderZwan

  today at 7:24 AM

  > 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

    today at 9:35 AM

    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.

    • jnaina

      today at 12:30 PM

      <$3 bucks for 16GB on AliExpress

    • today at 11:54 AM

  • anal_reactor

    today at 8:11 AM

    Practicality is exactly why we abandoned the old designs.

    • stuaxo

      today at 8:45 AM

      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

        today at 9:55 AM

        We are "throwing out" outdated parts of culture, and for one, I'm mostly indifferent to that.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

        today at 10:28 AM

        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

          today at 10:56 AM

          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

        today at 9:02 AM

        Thank you. Why do so few people understand this?

        • idle_zealot

          today at 9:27 AM

          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

          today at 9:49 AM

          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

          today at 9:23 AM

          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

            today at 9:58 AM

            > 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.

      • NaomiLehman

        today at 9:18 AM

        or a book vs Kindle

  • deadbabe

    today at 8:26 AM

    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

      today at 8:38 AM

      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

    • GlacierFox

      today at 9:32 AM

      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.

    • npteljes

      today at 9:45 AM

      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.

    • electroglyph

      today at 8:46 AM

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

This sounds potentially interesting, but the website is so vague it's criminal.

I have absolutely no idea what the "console gaming experience of the 1990s" was. What console? What experience?

I've only owned 3 games consoles in my life.

An original XBox, a gift from a friend which I immediately hacked to be an XBox Media Centre and used daily for years but never played a game on again.

A PS2.

And now a Wii for my kid.

For any website or any publicity material it is always a mistake to rely on shared experience, because whatever your experience, there are billions of people out there who do not share it.

So don't rely on it. Say what your product is and does and how it does it.

This page does not.

• mulletbum

  today at 12:21 PM

  I have to say, this is not targeted at you. I know exactly what a 1990s gaming experience is like and xbox is the console that killed it completely.

• carra

  today at 12:21 PM

  Not saying that you are wrong about that, but if you don't know about 90s console gaming and you only used the XBox as media center you are likely not the target audience for this project anyway.

• ninetyninenine

  today at 12:34 PM

  Makes sense. If you bought a Wii for your kid recently you should know that the console is obsolete. People use the switch 2 now.

  As a kid I would be pissed off. Or maybe you got mixed up and you’re referring to your kid from a long time ago who is now likely closer to an adult.

I am currently working on something like this for audio, basically just like a MP3 player with full size SD cards that plays automatically when you insert them (for kids). It's actually quite hard to find full size SD cards these days and when you do they are comparatively expensive (opposed to current micro SD cards).

Also I wanted to have low capacity like 128MB, so the concept "one album, one card" (as in the OP - "one game, one card") makes sense. These are even harder to get and more expensive (in terms of money per storage). Naively I thought that obsolete hardware should be cheap.

• 112233

  today at 12:04 PM

  Super interested in something like this. Currently there is no easily operated audiobook player for elderly or people with severe arthritis.

  My eventual workaround was cheap bluetooth speaker (because expensive ones did not remember playback position inside a track) and a whole heap of super low capacity usb drives.

  • pipes

    today at 12:21 PM

    https://uk.yotoplay.com/yoto-mini

    My wife bought this. I was deeply sceptical. But it's lovely, you can put story cards in it. My 6 year old daughter loves it. And we listen to a daily yoto podcast at dinner every day.

    Edited, found link to version we own

Happy to see they're actually putting the games onto the cartridges. Most projects like this just use pieces of plastic with an NFC/RFID tag containg the Steam game ID. For me, the fact that the data is actually right there in my hand is half the appeal.

• imiric

  today at 7:08 AM

  I appreciate that as well, but SD cards still aren't the same as old game cartridges. On consoles up to the Nintendo 64, plugging in a cartridge expanded the physical memory of the system, and the CPU read data directly from the ROM on the cartridge. This is why there were no loading screens.

  On SNES, and I believe N64 as well, cartridges could also expand the graphical capability of the system, which made some games really special.

  Replicating this on a modern indie console would, of course, be prohibitively expensive and impractical. The speed of modern hardware and physical media, along with more sophisticated game engines, has also practically eliminated loading screens. And this likely wouldn't be an issue on small indie games either.

  Still, this is not strictly about loading screens. There was something magical about game consoles before roughly the fifth generation which we're unlikely to ever experience again. Nostalgia probably plays a role in that feeling, but the way they worked was truly different from what we have today. Modern game consoles are essentially small PCs within a walled garden.

  • murderfs

    today at 8:16 AM

    > I appreciate that as well, but SD cards still aren't the same as old game cartridges. On consoles up to the Nintendo 64, plugging in a cartridge expanded the physical memory of the system, and the CPU read data directly from the ROM on the cartridge. This is why there were no loading screens.

    SD Express is just NVMe over a PCIe lane, so you'll get to do all sorts of fun DMA tricks when it starts becoming more popular.

  • GTP

    today at 7:14 AM

    What you said is true, but this project is about replicating the experience, not the hardware. Maybe it will feel less magical, but the hacks you described were cool but needed due to HW limitations of the time. Using commodity hardware not only makes economic sense now, but also makes the project much more accessible by not requiring a specific console.

Though it may be impractical I can definitely see the appeal of something like this. I'm not a fan of the current gaming model. Games we buy should be something we can own, preserve and control. It would be enticing to have a physical collection of actual, working games and to be able to use them without internet connection, user accounts, EULAs, launchers, stores, etc.

Before reading this I didn’t realize how today gaming is different from 80’s and 90’s gaming , to the point Kazeta is a thing! I thought that mostly, CDs had replaced cartridges and loading games became slow, but apparently subscription plans, online chat and “micro transactions” are now accepted as standard gaming?!

• npteljes

  today at 9:59 AM

  Of course. Physical media is long out. What was the last time you saw a laptop with a DVD drive?

  On PC especially, online is first. Games come with update managers, "launchers", and that's the absolute standard - publishers either roll their own, or submit to established ones like Steam.

  Micro-transactions are accepted, but far from universal. People bemoan them for some reason, but I'd say that the vast majority of games don't have it.

  Subscriptions normally come with games with a managed online gaming experience. How else are supposed to be funded, I wonder? I think it's normal to pay for a service, be that gaming, or a gym membership.

  • sgbeal

    today at 12:10 PM

    > Micro-transactions are accepted, but far from universal. People bemoan them for some reason, ...

    Because, for one, with them came "Pay to Win". Nothing good comes from Pay to Win except that someone lines their pockets.

    A professor once told us that something like 1/3rd of people have personalities which are prone to become truly addicted to something. Microtransactions, regardless of their justification[^1], actively target personalities which are especially prone to instant gratification and the endorphins triggered by spontaneous purchases.

    [^1]: They _are_ fundamentally justified - it costs money to keep any digital service going, and tons of it for a service like an MMORPG.

• ZaoLahma

  today at 5:30 AM

  Yep. Most games nowadays are released broken and incomplete. Being able to patch a game after release truly is both a blessing and a curse. Then they throw microtransactions on top of the already rather ugly mess.

  Microtransactions were supposed to finance free to play or "live service" games where they paid for new content over several years, but (of course) they've found themselves into what's solidly not... that.

  • opan

    today at 12:04 PM

    >Being able to patch a game after release truly is both a blessing and a curse.

    Very true. We got stuff like Minecraft, Terraria, and Core Keeper that got updates to improve the game at no additional cost for years after release, but we also got early access games that sell you on a potentially good future game, and only sometimes deliver. Starbound is a disappointment that often comes to mind.

• voidfunc

  today at 6:08 AM

  Have you been living under a rock for the last 15+ years?

  I haven't touched a CD since the late 2000s.

  • rkagerer

    today at 6:25 AM

    Have you been living under a rock for the last 15+ years?

    Yes, and I'm not coming out until projects like this finish scooping up all the crap MBA's have excreted all over the place in that time.

  • pansa2

    today at 6:56 AM

    CDs specifically are obsolete, but games on optical media are still a thing. Unlike ROM cartridges, which AFAICT died with the GBA in 2008.

    • sgbeal

      today at 12:11 PM

      > Unlike ROM cartridges, which AFAICT died with the GBA in 2008.

      Look up the Gameboy 3DS :).

      • pezezin

        today at 12:27 PM

        3DS carts are actually NAND flash, and if you don't play them for long enough the may lost all the data!

        https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/05/psa_yes_your_ds_an...

    • masklinn

      today at 7:08 AM

      While they’re flash rather than rom, the switch 2 still supports physical distribution media.

      • euLh7SM5HDFY

        today at 8:48 AM

        I was under wrong impression that it doesn't. They really muddied the water with those other "game-key cards".

      • pansa2

        today at 7:26 AM

        True, but the way they work is more like discs than ROMs: their data isn’t immediately available but needs to be loaded into RAM.

• carra

  today at 7:20 AM

  Also, don't forget there are now launchers (you can't run your game yourself, it has to go through us) and EULAs (you can only play what you buy in our terms). Nice times indeed...

• reactordev

  today at 6:08 AM

  My children have only known micro transaction riddled games. When I show them old school games, they scoffed at the graphics and returned to their phones.

• alex_suzuki

  today at 6:40 AM

  I had to explain to my kids (10 and 6yr old) recently what this shiny round thing was that they got from the library…

  • sgbeal

    today at 12:14 PM

    Back around 1990 my youngest brother, who had always seen CDs, asked me one day, "what are those things in your closet?" "What things?" "They look like CDs but they're big and black!" He had never seen a record before.

  • Gabrys1

    today at 7:28 AM

    They got a coaster from the library?

• hulitu

  today at 5:33 AM

  > apparently subscription plans, online chat and “micro transactions” are now accepted as standard gaming?!

  And looong download/update times (Delta Force - almost 4 hours). Makes a ZX Spectrum which loaded games from cassettes pale in comparison.

Such a cool concept! For anyone who didn't slog through their docs, the recommended hardware system (and the box in their product shots) is the Geekom A5 https://www.geekom.co.uk/geekom-a5-mini-pc and the 8BitDo Wireless controller https://www.8bitdo.com/ultimate-2c-wireless-controller/

Those + some SD cards and a spare evening for setup makes this a really tempting £400 project.

• SomeoneOnTheWeb

  today at 11:08 AM

  For the same price you have the Minisforum UM760 Slim which should be 100% compatible and provide VASTLY superior performances. Or you can check cheaper models that would have the same level of performance as the A5.

  Geekom make nice products but they are usually both very expensive and very noisy compared to competitors. Their selling point is mainly their top-notch design, but I find these to be function-over-form most of the time.

  • robbbbbbbbbbbb

    today at 11:24 AM

    I guess the lack of a built-in SD card slot might make the Minisforum options less attractive

My kids play the N64 more than the Wii because the Wii is quite frustrating to set up and maintain batteries and controller connections. The Switch is even more awful, but they’ll play it handheld. The PS5 is complex but generally straightforward. It helps that the controllers are big and we have a nice, clean charging dock for them. The Switch charging dock is finicky and annoying with the tiny controllers.

I think my immediate feedback is that the game cards could be a lot bigger. Anyone out there want to make a ridiculously beefy SD card adapter and corresponding slot? Or maybe even one that interfaces like a puck/block with some keying and locking.

But overall this is 100% on target for my 6 and 8 year olds. They want to play games, not operate a console.

We take them to a Retro Gaming night every few months and I’ve noticed that the X-in-1 consoles (even the brand names) are rarely touched, and all have laminated cards desperately attempting to tell kids how to get into a game. The console UX is paramount.

• cornholio

  today at 9:58 AM

  > They want to play games, not operate a console.

  I've gifted my decade old development laptop (after a beefy RAM+SSD upgrade to the best modern version it supports) to my 7 y/o nephew and he seems satisfied. It cold boots Windows 10 in less than 30 seconds and he can play Minecraft, Roblox, BeamNG, watch Youtube etc. in the living room where he can be supervised, without hoarding the family TV with their console.

  Sure, a lower friction device is preferable, but the ultimate thing is that it plays the games they and their friends play.

Neat. Couldn't find a video of it booting up. But here's some background info: https://github.com/kazetaos/kazeta/wiki/Technical-Details

• reactordev

  today at 6:06 AM

  >When accessing the terminal/tty, the default username and password is gamer. Because /etc is read-only, this password cannot be changed.

  Oh noes! A little further down they say you can get it online using an Ethernet cable and a command. Let’s just hope its never able to be an ssh host. These kind of things scare me from a security standpoint. I feel like the users and /etc/passed should probably be writable so people can change the default to something not published online.

sd card contact wear is pretty radical on constant insert/removal.

second: one of the things that made cartridges great was that they were human-sized. as were CDs. An sd card inserted into a more handle-able/human 'cartridge' would be cool, maybe gameboy sized was about perfect imo.

fiddling with sd cards and slots isn't great.

an snes/genesis cartridge falls into the thing, you can't miss or do it backwards without reeally trying to. They give an affirmative 'clunk' when fully engaged.

(also the contact wear on those was horrendous too.. maybe the SD card IS authentic..)

• darkwater

  today at 6:38 AM

  An SD card is not that different from what the Switch uses, at least size wise. Use micro-SD for the actual data and a cheap SD adapter with a full size SD slot and contact wear should be an easily solvable issue.

  • sankao

    today at 8:25 AM

    Also solves the wear and tear issue.

This does indeed look cool but is should say:

"A Linux distribution focused on console gaming".

Whenever I see OS I get excited to see a new operating system but end up disappointed when it is yet another distro.

It's less about nostalgia for the 90s and more about a cure for the modern "too much choice" anxiety.

A wonderful gift idea for nerd friends.

…save for the CRT

Not a fan of the trend of misusing the concept of "Operating System".

• coolcoder613

  today at 6:20 AM

  Calling Linux distros operating systems is a very common usage.

  • Gabrys1

    today at 7:30 AM

    Linux distros are operating systems in my dictionary. Unlike Linux which is just an OS kernel.

• flumpcakes

  today at 6:19 AM

  It seems like an operating system to me. What specifically is misused?

  • TickleSteve

    today at 8:19 AM

    The technical definition of opoerating system is the software that manages the resources of the computer, i.e. RAM, storage, processor time, etc (Typically known as the Kernel).

    This usage is more "User Interface" or "shell".

This is stupid in too many ways to count. This is more like a joke than an actual product.

I honestly hope that nobody uses this.

Just to list a few points.

* If you do this for your actual gaming library you need way too many SD cards.

* SD cards die horribly in many different ways and I wouldn't trust it as a medium. Especially if you insert it too many times

* many games are too small to be a good fit for this

* SD cards are fucking expensive especially in odd sizes (which you will need)

* they are too slow for larger games

And sooo many more

• yourusername

  today at 7:26 AM

  A 64GB SD card is $4 and should fit the majority of games that fit the "no DRM" requirement. This product is not for me but i would just standardize on 64GB cards. Should be big and fast enough for most example games they show. For the full old school console experience you shouldn't have hundreds of games lying around anyway, most people had less than a dozen games per console.

  • BlackLotus89

    today at 7:37 AM

    Where I live no 64GB SD card is 4$ and more like 8$-12$ and the quality of those is shit. Even if they were 4$ I would still see it as an absolute waste of money and storage. You _will_ have a better gaming experience using a cheap nvme/ssd. Like I said for games that would require a 64GB SD card sd-speed is too slow. For the full old school console experience you should use a console and not emulate the nostalgia (oh and this doesn't feel nostalgic to me at all)

    > most people had less than a dozen games per console.

    This isn't a console and if you want to for instance emulate every of the dozen games per console you would for 10 consoles still need 120 SD cards at the price you listed this would add up to 480$ for that price you could buy one fast and reliable nvme that would fit your needs...

• paintbox

  today at 8:41 AM

  It's a niche hobbyist thing, it is not meant to replace Steam as a platform.