Inventor created a "real-life home screen" for physical game discs

Nothing beats the feeling of owning physical games, but a digital library on a home screen has its own perks.

Being able to instantly flick through box art and pick a title with a controller feels convenient, though it lacks that sense of ownership. Now there's an invention that brings virtual game selection to an actual shelf.

A retro console and gadget enthusiast known as almostinventor showed off a physical game collection with a digital selection twist, calling it the "IRL Homescreen". At first glance it looks like another AI fake, but the system genuinely uses a projector paired with a rail mechanism.

The setup makes Wii game boxes glow when selected, then pushes the chosen box forward while a larger version of the cover art appears underneath. Essentially, it looks like a digital library interface where you pick games using a Wiimote or controller, except it all exists in the real world.

There's something a bit absurd about it, since you could just get up and read the spine labels. But for anyone who struggles to process text on boxes lined up in a row, this kind of setup turns out to be genuinely useful.

Behind the "home screen" sits a laptop connected to an ESP32-C3 Robot control board with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. It translates button presses into specific vertical positions that light up boxes and trigger the rear rail mechanism.

That means the system doesn't actually recognize the boxes themselves – it displays artwork and glow purely based on positioning. In other words, if you shuffle the boxes around, the system won't be able to push out the right one anymore.

The obvious limitation is that the current build only holds a small selection of boxes inside an IKEA KALLAX shelf unit. Adding more games to the row will likely hurt accuracy, since the projector would need repositioning to display cover art and startup animations while still lighting up the boxes correctly – and multiple shelves would complicate things even more.

On the plus side, the build includes a slot-machine-style lever that triggers a randomizer, sparing you from agonizing over what to play before a session.

The creator has already experimented with picking games using "the force" through hand tracking, so this idea likely has more room to grow.