Justin: OK, so Nintendo has this thing coming out called the e-card reader. It plugs into the GBA's cartridge slot, and uses the GameCube link cable to connect to the GameCube. Each "e-card", which you can buy in packs from the store, has a pattern on its sides, top, or bottom, that can store somewhere around 8K of information total.

Googleshng: Er, 8K?

Justin: Something around there.

Googleshng: That's not enough to do anything really...

Justin: Right now, you can use the reader to get information on Pokemon cards, you can play Game&Watch games stored on the card, you can download new costumes and new areas into Animal Crossing, and they have big plans for it in the future. I actually have a few of the cards here on my desk.

Googleshng: I could see unlocking stuff that way, but not adding, unless 8K was a typo.

Justin: No, 8K isn't a typo.

Googleshng: Show me an 8K 3D character model.

Justin: It takes creative programming. I can't build you an 8K 3D model from scratch, but I can build an 8K 3d model from pre-existing parts. So if they encode models as, say, a head type, a small face texture, a body type, color of skin and clothes, and things like that, it should be doable. Because you'd just need a short sequence of codes to distinguish between parts. Or take F-Zero X: the levels were prebuilt sections connected together. If each section were represented as a series of numerical codes, it'd be easy to fit in 8K. Basically, the game would have all the stuff it needs on the disc, because that's what it would use to build the gameworld for the game you bought. All the card would do is take that data, re-arrange it using 8K of codes on the card, and output a completely new thing by combining the pieces in a different way.

Googleshng: that's what I meant by the unlocking comment

Justin: Well, it's not really unlocking, it's more creating something new from the stuff they used to build the game originally. I think that would be really cool.

Googleshng: Right, but it's more like playing with a level editor than actually adding stuff.

Justin: I mean, "new" models in Perfect Dark could be created using only a few hundred byte grayscale bitmap and a few control points. Plus, I doubt players would really notice.

Googleshng: That's probably true. 8)