// THE VERGE — HARDWARE & GADGET
The amazing USB-C gadgets that play old Nintendo cartridges
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The Epilogue SN and GB Operator are dream gadgets for Nintendo cartridge collectors.
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Last week, I powered on a 26-year-old copy of Pokémon Pinball, one of the best Game Boy games ever made. My save file was no more. The Charmander I’d caught for my daughter, the high scores we’d set together… gone. Before flash memory, Nintendo cartridges used tiny watch batteries to save their games, and those batteries were never meant to last this long.
But it’s not a huge deal, because I saved my family’s save file months ago. I backed it up with an Epilogue Operator, a device that connects your real Nintendo cartridges to Windows PCs, MacBooks, even a Steam Machine.
The $50 GB Operator is a transparent trapezoidal cartridge reader that reads and writes to real Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges over a USB-C cable; the company’s new $60 SN Operator does the same for Super Nintendo and Japanese Super Famicom titles. Epilogue’s also got a N64 version coming.
They’re not just for backups! As you can see in my embedded video, these gadgets can play your carts, too. My Xbox Ally now takes Super Nintendo cartridges, my Steam Deck plays Game Boy carts, and my phone is a Game Boy Camera, because I attached an Epilogue Operator to each one. (Double-sided magnet rings and Mechanism mounts helped.)