A Japanese company is producing console-style miniature game cartridges that plug in to an iPhone. It seems to be aimed largely at nostalgia fans as there’s virtually no practical benefit in the system.

Beatrobo has recently demonstrated a proof of concept of the Pico Cassette, a tiny cartridge that plugs into the headphone socket. Unlike with consoles, there’s no actual content on the cartridge itself. Instead it emits a sound through the socket that is recognised by a pre-installed app on the phone. The sound acts as authentication to let the player access the game.

Each Pico Cassette is linked to a particular user’s online account, meaning you can unplug it, attach it to another device, and then access your games, saved state and high scores. Of course, that’s perfectly possible to do with many online games anyway, without the extra hardware.

It seems Beatrobo is simply trying out a quirky way to repurpose one of its existing products, the PlugAir. That works in a similar way but for digital music and videos. It’s used in a Japanese music store chain as a way to sell albums and movies for people to access immediately (subject to a decent data connection) rather than have to play or rip via a computer or disk player.

[Via: The Verge]