Excitebike on GBA and more

[Tommy Boomfiger]

I havent heard anything about this before, but it looks like Nintendo is putting out another wierd console gadget, a scanner accessory for GBA. The $40 accessory will read dot codes from trading cards which will let you play games or unlock secrets in other games. Games include 8bit favorites like excitebike, donkey kong jr and super mario bros. You will be able to unlock secrets and features in GBA and GC games. Card packs will cost $2-3. Each dot bar code can hold up to 2.2kb of data and the e-Reader has 64mb of mask ROM and 1mb of flash ram. Nintendo claims that each card can only hold 2 dot bar codes, but I think that they could put 8 on each card if they really wanted to. Games like Excitebike or SMB would span multiple cards.

Which brings us to the downsides to the system. Multiple card would be a pain to have to swipe just for a game. For a 5 card game, you would need to swipe up to 10 times to get it in there. Also for GC features, you might want the GBA-GC datacable to transfer the data, so if you only have a GC, youre out of luck.

I think its an interesting little gadget, but not exactly the most convinient. Some of those games are great fun but we'll have to see how well this thing sells. I think it will open some piracy issues for the big N, some will just be able to scan and print them out for whoever to dl, not that 2-3 bucks a game is all that much in the first place, but it could hurt overall profits for the device. What do you think?


Nintendo e-Reader (http://www.nintendo-e-reader.com/)

http://www.nintendo.com/systems/gba/images/gba_over_ereader.jpg

[apmiller]

The Game Boy Advance e-reader came out in late September. It was designed mainly to go with a new Pokemon card game where you scan your character in and can fight it out with other players. To show off the system they came up with the game cards from old NES games.

I've checked out the system and for the most part it just isn't worth the $39.99. Swiping has to be done just right for the reader to read the card. I spent 10 minutes my first time trying to load excite bike which was really ticking me off. :angry:

So far sales have been really low but they haven't really tried to advertise it yet either. It's a nice concept but until they drop the price of the unit...not worth the cash.