In the discussion of the Triforce arcade compatibility, there's some discussion of "IC Card" support needing to be implemented, and doing so unlocking a lot of missing functionality.

I think this is referring to the Japanese rail payment cards? I know you can use them on things like vending machines, but from the article it seems like the Triforce cabinets let you save game progress on them too, which would be a great feature I've never seen in US arcades.

> Triforce games can support two types of cards for saving: Magnetic Cards (magcards) and Integrated Circuit (IC) cards. Magcards are cheaper, fragile, and can only survive so many writes before failing. They have the added bonus of having a printable side, where the game can print a player's achievements and more. IC cards are more like old credit cards with a thicker plastic. They weren't printable, but were much sturdier.

Source with photos: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2026/02/16/rise-of-the-triforce...

It's referring to memory cards. This is the Triforce feature, almost every game on it uses cards for savegames. The arcades you're thinking of almost certainly had a version of Mario Kart Arcade GP - you may just not have played it.

It exists in US arcades. It's a similar concept as an AIME card which you use to authenticate when playing maimai, chunithm, dance dance revolution, dance around, beat mania, etc. Triforce IC cards store data instead of just being for authentication.