The e-Reader.

[Joshua Milton N]

The e-Reader for the GBA is coming to stores on September 16 and when you buy it you will get 2 foil packs with it.

The first foil pack is a sample pack that contains a Game&Watch game called Man Hole and the second foil pack ether contains a complete 5 card set of Donkey Kong Jr.-e or a complete 5 card set of Pinball-e so which one of the two will you get is a mystery.

[Warlock]

You also get a Animal Crossing card and I believe several (5?) Pokemon CCG cards that can be scanned into the reader to play minigames.

[mrz84]

well that sounds like something for season 3 of digimon. the scanning cards thing anyways. maybe i just watch too much anime. :p

[Mak-X]

Originally posted by Joshua Milton N
contains a complete 5 card set of Donkey Kong Jr.-e or a complete 5 card set of Pinball-e so which one of the two will you get is a mystery.

What do you mean by card sets? Like different versions of cards with art, or you need 5 cards to play or compile the full game?

[MottZilla]

That sounds odd, and more and more like a cheap marketing ploy.

[The Savior]

For those of us who don't know what the e-reader is and can't find any info on IGN, can anyone explain exactly what the e-read is and what it does?

[MottZilla]

It's supposed to be some device for the GBA that will let you put "cards" meaning some type of cheap cartridge or other medium to play the games stored on them. Basically Nintendo wants to make cheap older games for it and you buy them. Or something like that. It's all marketing.

[vegeta1215]

Ok, I'll try.

I guess you could call E-reader a GBA add-on. Swiping different kinds of cards will do different things. There will be many sets of cards that are stand alone games. For instance, The original Donkey Kong will be 5 cards. So when you swipe those 5 cards, you can play the full NES game (they fit all that info on there!) Many more games will come.

Also, there wiil be cards that interact with GCN games, and cards (like Pokemon ones) for trading and mini games.

All in all, it sounds neat. I hope they release alot of old Nintendo games for e-reader.

[MottZilla]

They can only release Nintendo made games though. That limits the selection... Most of my favorite NES games don't belong to nintendo. Ninja Gaiden, MegaMan, Contra, Etc.

[Masamune]

i think warlock aleady made a topic about this... i think the e-reader is a very poor way of using the GBA's power. if they want to market old games then put them all on one cart.

[Warlock]

First off, where did you guys read 5 cards? What I read suggests they are on one card with multiple strips you have to swipe (like both sides maybe). I believe IGN even said most of the NES games have two strips.


Originally posted by Masamune
i think warlock aleady made a topic about this... i think the e-reader is a very poor way of using the GBA's power. if they want to market old games then put them all on one cart.

The problem with that is that not everyone wants to buy all those games. Plus, carts are expensive. If you only intend on using the e-reader for one game, then yes, it's prob. a rip off.. but the games will only be $5. So if you buy multiple games, you'll eventually get your money's worth.

[Mak-X]

Originally posted by Mottzilla
They can only release Nintendo made games though. That limits the selection... Most of my favorite NES games don't belong to nintendo. Ninja Gaiden, MegaMan, Contra, Etc.

According to EGM, "Nintendo even hinted to us that some third parties may get in on the action, sticking their NES classics on memory cards as well." in their Animal Crossing preview.
Also "but since new games (Zelda, please?!) can be distributed via memory card, the possibilities are limitless."

Maybe not exactly with the cards but along the same lines with the old games. As for the Card e-Reader, your really only going to be able to take advantage of it if you get Animal Crossing and any other games that will use it like Pokemon. I'm not going to run out and buy the Card e-Reader any time soon, but when I get into Animal Crossing, I very well may.

The idea of playing old NES games on my GCN or on my GBA is interesting to me, I think its neat anyways :shrug:

Here's a article on the e-Reader and cards
http://www.nintendo.com/news/news_articles.jsp?articleID=6730

Since I used to play Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game where you buy packs of cards to boost your decks, the idea of buying card packs that contain NES games on cards is kinda neat, and the fact you can store a video game on a card. The article says the packs cost $1.99 - $2.99 which is average for trading cards. Dunno how much you get per pack though.

[MottZilla]

well, there goes that idea.

Olympus Optical Co., Ltd. provides the "Dot Code Technology" used by the e-Reader to read data embedded on each e-Reader card. Each card can hold up to two code strips. A long bar holds 2.2 kilobytes of information and a short bar holds 1.4 kilobytes. The memory configuration in the e-Reader is 64 Mb mask ROM and 1 Mb flash memory. The scanned information transforms into a digital display on the Game Boy Advance screen.

2.2kb... it would take 232 strips for a 512kb NES game (they don't ussually get that big.) So that'd take about 116 of these cards. That'd be a bitch to load that game then. However ussually games don't exceed 256kb. So anyway, don't expect to see Zelda on this eReader thing unless it can hold 128kb. Unless there is some catch, which there may be, I don't see zelda fitting on this...

If anyone has more realistic information on stroage space that'd be nice.

[vegeta1215]

Originally posted by Warlock
First off, where did you guys read 5 cards? What I read suggests they are on one card with multiple strips you have to swipe (like both sides maybe). I believe IGN even said most of the NES games have two strips.

The latest Nintendo Power (with Mario Sunshine on the cover) has a little two page article on the E-reader. hey gave Donkey Kong as an example and said it took 5 cards. Then they said Manhole (G&W) game would take 2 cards. It all depends on the game.

I was thinking that it'd be cool if they had some games that required a save, and you could hook up your GCN and use one of it's memory cards to hold your save info. Zelda and Metroid...man it'd be neat to see those on E-reader...

[Mak-X]

Well, like I posted from EGM, games can be distributed on Memory Cards, so if it won't fit on a card, they can give them out on Memory Cards.

[MottZilla]

So it's cards with the strips, or "memory cards" which i assume are a cart with a rom chip inside?

[Warlock]

Originally posted by Mak-X
Well, like I posted from EGM, games can be distributed on Memory Cards, so if it won't fit on a card, they can give them out on Memory Cards.

That's really cool.. you know, they could do some great promotions with that. Like, do one of the original Legend of Zelda and package it with Zelda GC.. or package the original Metroid with Metroid Prime (or perhaps Metroid Fusion as that way they will def. have a GBA at least).. it would be a good incentive for people who are buying these games to pick up an e-reader..

[MottZilla]

Ya, hence, marketing scheme. ;)