I dunno if you'd wanna waste a whole sd card for a single game when you could fit hundreds on it.

I think you might want to have a look at a MiSTer fpga.

(it provides a very authentic experience and can launch games with tags if you choose so)

You could do it on Linux fairly easily with udev rules, but you'd need to write either a separate rule for every game or have each flash drive only contain a single game each with a generic executable name and path so the same rule works for whatever you insert.

Since most games are going to be built for windows you will also need the rule to invoke wine or steam (for proton). That part could get complicated if some of your games need specific versions of wine. Normally people handle this with Steam or Bottles, but both those programs generally assume each game you are launching has its own bespoke directory on your filesystem.

I looked but there doesn't seem to be a straightforward way to do that in Linux. I was thinking a udev rule but it would be clunky since the low level details for media like SD cards aren't available. At best, maybe a generic rule that mounts it and looks for an autorun.sh or something, but that's basically reinventing Autoplay on Windows and would have the same security implications.

I read Hack-a-Day frequently, and I've come across several projects that use NFC readers so you can tap a card to play specific songs or start playlists. Maybe something like that but launch a specific game instead?

e.g. https://hackaday.com/2025/03/31/a-music-box-commanded-by-nfc-tags/