Today, however, I feel like doing something a little bit different. Instead of reviewing a game, I decided to review a piece of hardware. Now, don’t worry, it’ll be a full review, but I’ll be talking about an accessory that helps you play more games on a pre-existing game console. These types of devices aren’t unheard of in the game industry; if I say “Sega CD”, I think you guys would know exactly what I’m talking about. However, it’s rare that they are a success, so how did this one turn out? Without any more hesitation, let’s talk about the Nintendo e-Reader add-on for the Game Boy Advance.
The Nintendo e-Reader was an accessory released in Japan in late 2001 and in North America in September of 2002. This add-on allowed you to scan specially encoded data on the sides of cards to access games or other features. The concept was pretty cool for a few reasons. First off, cards are a lot cheaper to make and distribute than video games. This meant, not only could they be cheaper for the gamers to buy, but it might be easier to get your hands on them. As a matter of fact, Nintendo Power took advantage of this by including a couple of games inside their magazine, and some of the official Pokemon Trading Cards also had strips of data (so yeah, you could get a video game inside your card game. Xzibit would be proud).Secondly, it was possible to add more content to some already existing games through the e-Reader. Get the right cards and you could have more levels, exclusive bonuses, tips, cheats or other neat stuff (kind of like DLC before it’s time).
The e-Reader itself was packaged with one game from the Classic NES collection (like Excitebike, Urban Champion or Ice Climbers). This was a unique (and relatively cheap) way to play old NES games on a newer system before the Virtual Consoles. There were also a lot of “mini games” and the Mario Party Card Game available for it. Games compatible with the e-Reader for extra content included Animal Crossing, Super Mario Advance 4 and most of the Pokemon games to come out around that time. With all this offered though, why is it that the e-Reader vanished from North American markets so quickly?
The e-Reader was actually a lot of hassle. For example, the classic NES games meant that you had to scan ten dot codes. If you planned on playing one over and over again, you could store one in the e-Reader’s memory and keep accessing it. However you could only store one at a time, so if you wanted to play a second e-Reader game, get your wrist ready to scan. Some of the smaller, mini games (like the Pokemon ones) required fewer cards, but the scanning itself can still be a pain. Sometimes you’ll get that one card that doesn’t want to scan, so you do it over and over until it FINALLY goes through. Plus you could easily lose or damaging one of the cards, and you really need them all.
But that doesn’t compare to how much stuff you need if you want to add content to a game. Let’s say you have a card that lets you import a design onto Animal Crossing. To get that design into the game, you’ll need the card of course, along with an e-Reader and a Game Boy Advance. You’ll also need a copy of Animal Crossing to load it and the GameCube (and a TV) to play it on. All that’s obvious, right? Well you also need the GameCube-Game Boy Advance link cable that’s sold separately. That’s a lot of work and money just to get a picture of Link.
So that’s the Nintendo e-Reader and honestly, one thing I asked myself a lot while preparing this review was “What would I do differently?”. Well, I’d start by giving it bigger memory so it could store multiple games and not have to scan cards every time (I’m sure it was possible). Also, I would have included the GBA and GameCube to GBA link cables with the system to cut down on the cost, as well as make it a worthwhile bundle (including just one of those would have helped). But one drastic idea could have been not making it an add-on at all: just add a screen and a couple of buttons and you’d have a mini-system (yeah, the price would go up a bit, but it would have to be less than what the e-Reader plus a GBA were together at the time). Regardless, the e-Reader was a good and ambitious idea in theory, but practically it was too much hassle than it was worth. I don’t feel justified in giving the e-Reader a rank just yet though, as since it’s an add-on, so its full value comes with its content. So, how about we look at that next time?
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