Balatro took the world by storm when it launched last year, introducing gamers all over the globe to the world of poker and roguelike deck-building games. Its creator LocalThunk couldn't have guessed how successful the game would go on to be after launch, and I bet they certainly didn't expect that someone would demake it to work with the GBA's e-Reader peripheral!
Yes, this demake from Michigan-based software engineer Matt Greer utilises an accessory that you might have picked up back in the early 2000s. The e-Reader utilised cards with special strips that loaded games onto the GBA. It's a bit of an odd peripheral and one that never really became a 'must-have accessory, though Greer had one back when he was younger and wished more had been done with it in North America. In a bid to write that wrong 23 years later, he has begun work on a 32-bit version of Balatro where players can scan cards into the game.
As it's a 32-bit game to be compatible with the e-Reader peripheral and not a 64-bit game, the score you can get as a player would be limited to 4,294,967,295 by Greer's calculations. The game can only render four numbers of five digits each, so it's going to involve a lot of workarounds and, in Greer's words, clever redesigning and careful pruning back of features.
I know I've just spent the last paragraph talking about how there are limitations, but let's not forget that that's par for the course with demakes in general. Look at the Elden Ring SNES demake I covered recently or the Halo Game Boy Color demake - there's always going to be a payoff for porting a game backwards.
Greer has also begun coding new games for the e-Reader too, championing the physical nature of scanning cards and the nostalgia that comes with it. 'It’s such a strange way to deliver games,' says Greer, 'it’s tedious and slow to scan cards in, but at the same time, the physical nature of it all, I dunno, it’s just really cool to me.'
As to whether this game will be released for fellow nostalgic GBA fans to play with their own e-Readers, it all depends on whether LocalThunk would let Greer bring it to life. 'I have my doubts that will happen. If I ever do make a complete demake, I'd probably make it a regular GBA game though.'
Regardless of whether it becomes a fully fledged GBA game or not, it's nice to see the e-Reader making a bit of a comeback in 2025. And if you want to get to grips with the entire back catalogue of e-Reader games, then you can check out our full article here!
