Is the e-Reader worth the money? That's a hard one to nail down, but Rick takes a look at the hardware and card sets to give you an idea ...
Nostalgia has never been more in fashion, with fans clamoring for old hits and emulator use on the rise. Nintendo, always looking for more money-generating opportunities and ways to innovate (as well as protecting copyrights) is answering the call with their GBA “e-Reader” peripheral. The e-Reader is an optical card reader, which can read small “dot-codes” on paper trading cards and turn them into code which can be used to play games.
Showcasing the e-Reader’s abilities are the re-releases of classic NES Games. To date, there have been two separate series of e-Reader NES games. Series 1 included Pinball-e, Tennis-e, Excitebike-e, and Donkey Kong Jr-e. Series 2 included the original Donkey Kong-e, Mario Bros-e., Ice Climber-e, and Urban Champion-e. Pushing the link between the GBA and the GameCube are the Animal Crossing e-Cards, which give unique items, songs, and patterns for use in Animal Crossing. Lastly are the Pokemon Expedition e-Cards, which in addition to being a collectible card game set, has data for each Pokemon in one data strip, and part of a mini-game on the other.
Rather than review each of these as separate games, since there is very little to be said about any of them as individual products. Instead, this review will be more about the e-Reader and the released card sets as a whole.
The e-Reader hardware requires you to scan the dot-code strips on each card, with each card having up to two strips. As a convenience, there is memory in the e-Reader which will allow you to save a program that you’ve recently scanned (or transferred from the GameCube, like the Animal Crossing e-Card reader program). The e-Reader plugs into the Game Pak port, as well as the Link Port. There is a second link port on top of the reader so that it can be connected to the GameCube with the GBA/GameCube Link Cable. One flaw that becomes very apparent is that existing plug-in light sources, such as a Worm Light or Flood Light, no longer work properly with the e-Reader attached, making the games very hard to see.
The NES games have been a little hit and miss. They are faithfully emulated versions of the original NES games, but compromises had to be made to get them to work on the portable system. First, some of the games have been visually “compressed”. This means that some lines of detail were removed in order to get the games to fit the small GBA screen. Other games where two-player play was a key gameplay element are noticeably lacking when that feature is removed (namely Mario Bros., Baseball, and Ice Climber). This is an inexplicable omission when you consider that there is a link port on the eReader that could have easily been used. It seems that Nintendo wanted to just emulate the code and not make many changes. Frankly, the NES games included in Animal Crossing (once you’ve found or traded for them) are more entertaining, and the e-Reader series of games are certainly showing their age. However, when you take into account the limitations of the data strips and the generic emulator in the e-Reader, these games are certainly worth the five dollar price tag.
Owners of Animal Crossing will love the collectible e-Cards for the GameCube game, each of which containing a portrait from a character in the game, and a dot-code that can be scanned that gives you items in the game. These items can include new songs that will be played in your town, or new patterns for clothing and signs. The cards are cheap, three dollars a pack, and there are a total of sixty cards in the Series 1 set. The Pokemon-e Expedition series cards are going to be very familiar to anyone into the collectible card game, with the addition of a Pokedex-like feature. The mini-games are nothing special, but can be a fun diversion, not to mention a clever reward for collecting all of the evolutions of a Pokemon.
Surprisingly enough, the most fun game released for the e-Reader to date was a game they gave away at point-of-sale… this being the Air Hockey game. It’s a very simple game, but very fun and easy to see in just about any light. It should have been packed in with the e-Reader, but free is free.
It’s very hard to tell at this point how well-supported the e-Reader will be going forward, but at the least, there is a second series of Animal Crossing e-Cards planned for release very soon. Nintendo could really leverage this into something special with some thought and planning, but perhaps the $40 price tag is going to keep some people away.
