new stuff for gameboy advence come on i bet you never so this its a card e reader
December 07, 2001 - The Card-E Reader, Nintendo's much-announced peripheral that was revealed way back before the launch of the Game Boy Advance in Japan, has finally been released in Japan. This device, a collaboration of efforts and technologies between Nintendo and Olympus, is a self-contained GBA cartridge with a slot that can read specially coded cards. The code is translated into information that the device, and the Game Boy Advance, can understand, turning it into graphic, sound, animation, text, and game data.
The Card-E package costs 5,800 yen in Japan (a little less than fifty US dollars), and comes with the Card-E Reader and a starter pack of ten Pokemon Card-Es. This starter pack is identical in every package, so you're not going to get any rare cards right from the get-go. Extra card packs are selling for 900 yen in Japan, or about seven bucks. When you put the Card-E Reader in the cartridge slot of the GBA and power it up, all that pops up is the title screen. It simply sits there and waits for input from the user. By pressing A, it's ready to accept card data...so all that's required is for you to swipe the edge of an Card-E into the slot and see what happens.
A Card-E has a proprietary code printed on the left and bottom edges. The bottom edge code contains text and data of the character that's on the card, and the left edge, depending on the card, contains game, graphics, sound, and/or music data.
Though the data is printed in tiny dots, it's not a very fragile data strip...to test how durable it is, I marked several points of the code with black marker...and it still scanned in with no problem. But when I completely covered the strip with pen marks, that's when I started to get Data Error messages.
The cards that come packaged with the Card-E Reader are the same size and style as the Wizards of the Coast Pokemon Trading Card Game cards, but have the data strip on the edges. The starter pack contains 10 of the 128 First Edition Pokemon Card-E cards, including Pikachu, Pichu, Chancey, Ghastly, Rapidash, Hoppip, Koffing, Machop, Machoke, and Machamp. We've captured video of what happens when you scan each of the cards, so check out our media page at the bottom of this story.
Here's the list of special abilities of each card in the starter pack:
Pikachu: Installs a digitized "pikachu!" sound effect, which can be used by any card that has music data.
Ghastly: Loads up a Ghastly music tune.
Koffing: Loads up a background graphic for the music program
Chancey: Installs a Coin Toss mini-game
Rapidash: Loads a movie animation of Rapidash running across a finish line.
Pichu & Hoppip: Boots up a minigame where Pichu must save Hoppip balloons from leaving the top of the screen. Both cards are required.
Machop, Machoke, & Machamp: Loads a minigame where Machop must punch as many tumbling rocks as possible before getting hit. All three cards are required.
At Space World 2001, Nintendo handed out a special edition Celebi card, which we promptly scanned in. It loaded up a simple movie where Celebi floats around, eating apples off a tree and is just so very happy.
The potential for this device is amazing. Nintendo could distribute simple games, animations, and music on extremely cheap cards, packing them in with game magazines or even in instruction books for their GBA games. They don't have to be Pokemon related, either...the Card-E Reader will boot up any data from any Card-E compatible data strip. Nintendo is already planning additional Card-E series for next year, including a Mario Party series, a Kirby series, and a Game & Watch series.
The graphic and sound quality of the data from Card-Es isn't amazing by any means...the data strip can only hold 2K of memory on the horizontal strip, 1K on the vertical. But this device could potentially revitalize the whole card-collecting industry -- to unlock certain animations and games, you need more than one card to combine...like the Pichu/Hoppip combination, for example. If you don't have one of the combination, there's no way to load in the designated data. And even if you borrow a friend's card, the minigames aren't saved to the Card-E Reader...you have to scan those cards in everytime you turn on the Card-E Reader for the first time.
Just a warning: according to the manual, the Card-E Reader will only work with card series from Japan. If an Card-E from any other region is scanned on the Japanese Card-E Reader, a "Region Error" message may appear. This could change by the time the US cards are available stateside, but as of right now, the Japanese Card-E unit is only for the Japanese card sets made for it.
But with this test drive of the import Card-E Reader, it's clear just how much potential this little device has for card collectors. The unit isn't going to wow anyone with its rich graphics, vibrant sound and intense gameplay, but it adds a really cool element to gamers who want something more out of their card purchases. I seriously hope that Nintendo continues to support this device with more series beyond the Pokemon license.
The unit is currently available only in Japan, but it can be purchased at import houses such as Upstate Games.. The Card-E Reader doesn't have a release date in the US yet, but Nintendo does have plans for a stateside release for the device.
-- Craig Harris
Media Page
Click here to see more images, movies, and audio files.
i got this from http://pocket.ign.com/articles/100/100330p1.html so dont ...ill ad pics very very soon (in about a few min i think so stay tuned)
