Nov 06, 2024 23:00:00

An engineer creates his own 'Card eReader' cards for the Game Boy Advance and plays solitaire

The '

Card eReader ' for Game Boy Advance, released in 2001, allows users to enjoy mini-games and movies by reading special cards with dots printed on them. Software engineer Matt Greer has announced that he has created a card that can be read by the Card eReader, allowing users to play Solitaire on a commercially available Game Boy Advance.

Cramming Solitaire onto a Nintendo E-Reader card | Matt Greer
https://mattgreer.dev/blog/cramming-solitaire-onto-a-nintendo-ereader-card/

Clever coder rams a Solitaire game onto a single Nintendo GBA e-Reader card | Tom's Hardware
https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/handheld-gaming/clever-coder-crams-a-solitaire-game-onto-a-single-nintendo-gba-e-reader-card

You can see how the cards are actually read and solitaire is played in the video below.

Solitaire for the Nintendo E-Reader - YouTube


Greer created the following card, which is unique in that it can reconstruct Solitaire with two 'dots' containing 2192 bytes of data per line, totaling just over 4.3 kilobytes.

The Card eReader has 8MB of on-board storage, and by reading the card, the data can be decompressed and executed on the device, allowing you to reproduce games, etc. In the past, additional stages such as Super Mario Advance 4 and Donkey Kong were provided on cards, and Mr. Greer himself seems to have played using the Card eReader.

According to Greer, the Card eReader supports loading binaries for the Famicom (Family Computer) and Zilog's '

Z80 ' in addition to the Game Boy Advance, so you can build your favorite games by designing it in either way. In particular, software created for the Z80 has the advantage of being able to make the binary size very small.

Greer combined a volunteer-published API for card e-readers with Z80 assembly to create a solitaire game with background music in just 4384 bytes.

'Overall, the API for card e-readers is very useful and has a lot of great features that make development easier,' said Greer, who said he had some difficulties with background rendering and other aspects, and sometimes encountered graphical glitches. He said he was ultimately able to make a satisfactory change to the functions.

ereader sprite limit - YouTube


'My goal is to build more apps for card e-readers and also have a professional manufacturer manufacture the cards,' said Greer. The solitaire cards created by Greer can be ordered for free from the following site.

Retro Dot Cards
https://www.retrodotcards.com/