As an additional signal of the continuing retro revival in gaming, a Steam Deck consumer has modified their Deck to make use of modified floppy discs to begin up video games, as VideoCardz reports. In contrast to a latest SATA SSD mod that stored the sport recordsdata on the drive itself, this one would not truly retailer the video games on the disks, but it surely does boot them up as quickly as you plug them in, making for a basic console-like expertise.
The way in which it really works is every floppy (with beautiful game-appropriate artwork) incorporates a Steam URL that may inform the Steam Deck to launch the sport. So when it is plugged in, the file runs, and the sport runs in flip. It is a clear implementation, given that every floppy disk can solely maintain 1.44MB.
The method is rather more convoluted than simply working the sport usually. It takes a number of makes an attempt within the preview video to get it to work, and the floppy drive takes a number of seconds to learn the URL it is making an attempt to make use of as well the sport. The noises are actually nostalgic, although, and a few commenters identified that utilizing bodily video games on this method could be a a lot easier strategy to age-gate a Steam Library than the fashionable household management system.
That is all vibe-coded with Claude, so hand-written code would doubtless do it much better and cleaner. Nevertheless it’s a neat little mod that pays homage to a lifeless know-how in a enjoyable and trendy approach. The developer says it additionally helps NFC tags, QR codes, and USB drives, so there’s potential to broaden this technique for different makes use of.