When retro computing nostalgia meets modern wireless wizardry, you get a near-magical tap-to-load experience. It’ll turn your Commodore 64 into a console-like system, complete with physical game cards. Inspired by TapTo for MiSTer, this latest hack brings NFC magic to real hardware using the TeensyROM. It’s been out there for a while, but it might not have caught your attention as of yet. Developed by [Sensorium] and showcased by YouTuber [StatMat], this project is a tactile, techie love letter to the past.
At the heart of it is the TeensyROM cartridge, which – thanks to some clever firmware modding – now supports reading NFC tags. These are writable NTag215 cards storing the path to game files on the Teensy’s SD card. Tap a tag to the NFC reader, and the TeensyROM boots your game. No need to fumble with LOAD “*”,8,1. That’s not only cool, it’s convenient – especially for retro demo setups.
What truly sets this apart is the reintroduction of physical tokens. Each game lives on its own custom-designed card, styled after PC Engine HuCards or printed with holographic vinyl. It’s a tangible, collectible gimmick that echoes the golden days of floppies and cartridges – but with 2020s tech underneath. Watch it here.
This satisfies so many itches for me, bravo! Very cool system!
I still have not seen a single hobbyist media player use case where NFC is superior to QR, Barcode, card punch or OCR. Card punch is absolutely simple, especially if your library is only 64 or 128/256 programs large.
I assume it’s just an excuse to experiment with NFC, in which case fair play.
Just reminds me of the kids at my high school trying to use a power supply with 100s (if not 1,000s) of volts to activate a solenoid deadbolt instead of using a rack and pinion or some other low voltage option.
Just as an aside, you could put an SPI ROM onboard a (very cheap) PCB and have physical media. 256kb is $0.40 apiece or so.
This is definitely the thing for a Museum or Demo environment, because if the cards wander off there is no program on them. A menu program might be an option for home users though.
NFC has bidirectional communication. It’s useful for security handshaking. All optical reading is just one way. Plus QR is much more computationally and bandwidth costly; however, barcode and card punch are fairly simple. When it comes to commanding a computer, you really want some security – you don’t want someone unauthorized executing code. Maybe it’s not in the hobby world, but it is a concern.
The concerns about security are generally valid, but not for this application. It’s literally an 8 bit machine with 64kb of total RAM that has zero outside world communication ability and contains zero PII or otherwise useful data. Initially, I had hoped someone figured out to put the full payload of a game (170kb per floppy disk side) directly into a token, but I guess it was essentially just a link.
On the one hand you could put that game path on a barcode or qr code.
On the other hand, not needing line of sight makes it cool, and immune to dirt.
Considering that NFC is bidirectional, I could imagine adding authentication, with the card being able to prove to the game console that it was legitimately issued by the maker of the game, something a qr code cannot do.
The artwork on those nfc cards look very cool. Fun project.