The Nintendo e-Reader is a little-remembered card reader addon for the Game Boy Advance, with... a lot of different uses! It was released shortly after the Game Boy Advance launch, and despite the GBA being a massive success for Nintendo, this Swiss army knife of a peripheral... was not, lasting only two years in North America. It was the key to unlocking bonus content in a handful of GBA games and GameCube games, as well as capable of playing games itself and, sidenote, was not Nintendo's unexpected foray into the cutthroat world of e-book devices like the Amazon Kindle, which is probably what you were trying to google. Like a lot of Nintendo's gadgets, it was a little ahead of its time and a little too unwieldy for its own good. Still, it's a fascinating device for this show we call Punching Weight, where we celebrate the weird, ambitious and unnecessary, and in this episode we're gonna take a deep dive into the Nintendo GBA e-Reader. But first, a huge thanks to NordVPN for sponsoring this video. Listen, since the use of emulators and ROMs are increasingly under threat, you're gonna want to use a VPN to protect yourself and keep your data safe, wherever you go! You can save 66% off a two-year plan if you go to nordvpn.com/stopskeletons and use the offer code ‘STOPSKELETONS’. On with the show! It's easy to forget about the trading card game boom of the late nineties and early aughts. Magic: The Gathering had been holdin' it down for years, but then along came Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh, and suddenly we're seein' trading card game spinoffs, trading card minigames, and whole games based around a deck of cards! Cards were hot! And when you also take into account Nintendo's penchant for differentiating themselves from the competition with neat system add-ons, it's no surprise they wanted in on the action. The GBA e-Reader was a collaboration between Nintendo, Creatures, Inc., who also had a hand in the Game Boy Camera, and HAL Laboratories, with the actual card-reading tech developed by camera manufacturer Olympus. It was originally a far less ambitious device: First unveiled to the West as the Pokémon e-Reader at E3 2001, only as a device to turn your GBA into a virtual Pokédex for the Pokémon TCG. In fact, when it was first released in Japan in December 2001, it did not have link cable capability, which we'll break down in more detail in a minute. Nintendo would later release an updated version, the e-Reader+, that included link cable support and opened up a whole new world of possibilities. This is technically the version released in September 2002 to North America and Australia, however, it was simply known as the e-Reader, to avoid confusion. For reasons that'll become clear later on, the e-Reader never made it to Europe. It retailed for $39,99 in the US, which is about 55 bucks today, with various packs of cards ranging from three to six bucks. Not too bad, but to really make it work, you needed a lot of extras on top of that, depending on how you wanted to use it. The GBA link cables, a second GBA... ... a GameCube, GameCube GBA link cables for that... ... and then of course, the cards themselves! e-Reader cards, and there were over a thousand of these, held data on a dot-code strip printed along the card's border. Cards had one-to-two stripes, holding 2,2k of data on the long side, and 1,1k of data on the short side. For those playing along at home, that's about 544 cards for the DOS shareware of Doom if they were using the two long sides, which I don't think anyone's put GBA Doom on the e-Reader yet, so... Get on that, modders! Now, the technical details are cool, but, like... Whoa, gee, oh... Grace, what is this?! Is this... ? Ladies and gentlemen, we did the math! The No-Intro version of GBA Doom could fit on 486 cards with the vertical and horizontal dot code, and 180 cards with the two horizontal dot codes, to make... ... 666 cards! My god... ... what have we done?! Or not done. GRACE: Get on it, modders! DEREK: So technical details are cool, but what do these cards actually do? Well, they did a lot of things! They could have full NES games, original minigames, a whole standalone board game, videos, and tons of extra content for games, like new areas, new challenges, items, music, and at least one time where it was used to patch out a glitch! So in short, it did a LOT of things! In fact, too many things! There were also a lot of different ways to actually get cards: The e-Reader came packed with cards, some games came bundled with cards, some were packed into magazines, and others were given away at special events and are very rare. But most cards were sold as packs for about five bucks a pop. ... well, at least the NES ones were. Cards for games like Animal Crossing and Pokémon though, in keeping with the tradition of trading cards, were parts of a larger set. For example, Animal Crossing-e series 1 had 66 total cards, and sold five cards in a booster pack for $2,99 each. It was difficult to collect them all, and it's easy to see why it'd be hard to convince Mom to indulge in any of this. So that's a lot off the top, but the real question I'm sure you're wondering is: "How does it actually work?" The e-Reader itself is a rather big device, bigger than a GBA SP. Doesn't exactly fit in your pocket, it's not really portable. It is essentially a GBA cart with a giant card reader on top, with a slit for sliding cards. And because it is essentially just a GBA cart, it works with anything with a GBA port, including the GameCube GBA Player and DS! The problem comes with the link cable port: While it fits perfectly for the classic GBA and GameCube Player, it's not the best fit for the SP, requires a link cable adapter for the Micro, and physically doesn't fit the original DS, though if you carve out a hole in the plastic casing, it will work. This is not an issue for the DS Lite, by the way, but it's so weird-looking with a giant card reader bolted to it! Again, can't imagine why this never caught on! Side note: Because all GBA's are region free, the e-Reader itself is also region free, except the cards themselves are not! So that sucks. The device itself works well enough, though can be temperamental. A big problem is that scanning is actually a real pain, you have to slide a card at just the right speed. [Beep!] "Read error." [Grace chuckles off-screen] Most cases require multiple swipes from multiple cards. Luckily you can swipe cards in any order you want, but you're required to hit A on the GBA every time a swipe is successful or unsuccessful. We found using the GameCube GBA Player works best because it stabilizes the unit. GRACE: Noooo! DEREK: Thankfully the e-Reader has its own internal memory, so once you've swiped in a game, it stays saved in the e-Reader until you swipe in something else, which is really cool! When we pulled this thing out of storage, there was a game still saved on here from probably 15 years earlier! Speaking of the games, let's start diving into the actual uses of the e-Reader. Like we said, this thing did a LOT of things, but our favorite are the classic NES games. Predating the Virtual Console and the Classic NES Series on the GBA, these were one of the first times Nintendo re-released old games as standalone content, and it was a major selling point in commercials. Like we said, sliding ten data stripes will test your patience, but having an entire NES game stored on five cards is still such an amazing thing! There were 13 classic NES games released in total, and we happen to have four of them. Of the games we were able to test, none had anything that isn't in the OG NES versions, in fact, they're actually missing features! Balloon Fight and Ice Climber are missing a two-player option, and Excitebike still does not have the ability to save custom tracks, though they at least took the option out. The biggest knock against them is that none of them save high scores. I mean, the damn thing is rewriteable, you'd think that storing high scores while the game was loaded into the e-Reader wouldn't be too big of an ask. At any rate, high score saves, two-player mode and even the ability to save custom tracks were later implemented into the GBA Classic re-releases, which renders these e-Reader versions... pretty obsolete. Another negative: Each NES games comes on five cards. Again, the novelty of having an entire NES game housed on ten lines of data, printed on five cards, is still pretty mind-blowing! But if you lose a card or buy an incomplete set, the rest are basically useless! And I dunno about you, but I wasn't the most organized kid growing up, I'm honestly not sure how I managed to keep all these together after all these years. Similarly to the NES games, Nintendo also planned on dipping into the vault for Game & Watch re-releases, but that was canned after the e-Reader underperformed. Manhole-e came packed in with the e-Reader, and it is the sole Game & Watch game for the e-Reader. Here's something odd: Unlike the NES games, it does not save onto the e-Reader, and needs to be re-scanned every time you want to play. So you could either lug around your GBA and your e-Reader, and your Manhole-e card... ... or just play Manhole on one of the various Game & Watch collections for the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. Needless to say, the e-Reader version does not save high scores, which is almost the entire point of games like that. But hey, this is Punching Weight, and we are all about unnecessary! Moving on, the next e-Reader game is pretty damn impressive, it's both one of the coolest e-Reader games, and the biggest indicator that Nintendo did not believe in the e-Reader: Mario Party-e! Yes, not only did Nintendo actually release a board game version of Mario Party, its cards had e-Reader support! It's an otherwise fully functional tabletop board game, with extra bonus games played on the GBA. Yes, the e-Reader games are just extra bonus games, because it didn't even come bundled with an e-Reader. Nintendo expected you to already have one, I guess? The game can be played without an e-Reader, so we also have no idea why it's called Mario Party-e. But the king of trading cards was, of course, Pokémon! "Gotta Catch the Cards!" Pokémon TCG cards had e-Reader dot codes from Expedition to EX Team Magma VS. Team Aqua, which comes out to over a whopping SIX HUNDRED cards! Geez! You might have had e-Reader cards in your collection this whole time and not even known it! Most of these cards had a single code stripe on the short side that displayed Pokédex information, which, if you'll remember, was the original intention of the e-Reader, but other cards also had long slide codes that unlocked minigames, animations and music! Some even unlocked secret attacks that could be used during play, but these were never tournament legal. We have the full Machop evolution set, which came packed in with the system, which means we could unlock the minigame Machop At Work! It's a game where Machop is a good boy just doin' his best and workin' for the weekend! But there are dozens of minigames like this, and as far as we know, they have never been re-released, which means there is a TON of exclusive Pokémon content locked within these cards! Now, part of this may be because these minigames were released while Wizards of the Coast was publishing the TCG. When Nintendo took over from them in June 2003, they stopped making minigames altogether, and only published short-side dot codes. Fun fact: Wizards of the Coast actually raised the price of the TCG when the dot codes came out, which Nintendo kept until way after the e-Reader was discontinued in the US. GRACE: Boom! GRACE: Boom. ! GRACE: Boom.. ! GRACE: Boom... ! GRACE: Boom... baby! We'll be right back. [Grace chuckles off-screen] "But," I hear you asking, "What about them poker mayne vydeo gamesz?!" Well you're in luck, because there's also another completely separate kind of Pokémon e-Reader cards that work with Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire! There are far fewer cards for these games, about sixty Battle-e cards, and that's including promo cards, released in North America. Though there were a few more sets in Japan. By the way, to give you an idea of how short-lived the e-Reader was in North America, it didn't even last a full Pokémon generation, as all the e-Reader functionality was taken out of Pokémon Emerald for its international localization. There are a few different types of Battle-e cards, the most common ones are the Trainer and Berry cards, which allow you to battle new trainers, or allow you to get exclusive berries respectively. The most famous and sought-after card, though, is the elusive Eon Ticket, which was only given out by Nintendo at E3 2003, in volume 173 of Nintendo Power, and at some Toys "R" Us stores -- rest in peace, Toys "R" Us. Players who got an Eon Ticket were also able to share copies of it via record mixing, so the e-Reader wasn't the only way to get it. The Eon Ticket let you go to a special location where you could capture Latias or Latios, depending on your game. Unfortunately, to do any of this, you need a second GBA. Remember: The e-Reader is basically a GBA cart itself, so first, you need your GBA with your copy of Ruby or Sapphire, a link cable, and a second GBA with the e-Reader. It was reasonable for Nintendo to expect the average Pokémon superfan to have a link cable and a friend or sibling with their own game and GBA to trade with. That's the entire idea behind making two versions of each game. But this was just a step too far, and it didn't catch on like Nintendo had hoped, at least in North America. Still, my favorite Battle-e card though was a special card released only in a Japanese magazine, that actually patched out a glitch! Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire had a weird bug which basically created a lost year where berries couldn't grow for a full calendar year. This card set could actually execute code into the game and patch it out! Now, sure, there were other ways Nintendo allowed players to patch out this glitch, but for my money, this is one of the coolest uses of an e-Reader card! Another super-cool e-Reader game was Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 a.k.a. the greatest name for a Nintendo game of all time! Though it's a shame they didn't go all the way dumb and call it "Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 e", which is what the cards were called. Side note: The best video game title of all time is still: "Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie" Anyway, SMA4:SMB3eUS had 36 cards spread across two series, and they were all really cool! The cards had a few basic flavors: Demo cards that were essentially speedruns and Let's Plays before YouTube, and Power-Up cards, which let you add items to your inventory, or modify the game itself with switches that change the way the game was played! However, the true star of the show were the exclusive, brand-new level cards. There were 38 total e-Reader exclusive levels, of which only 13 were ever released in the US. By travelling to World-e, you can play these new levels and also collect special coins which were only available in e-Reader levels. Collecting enough coins would actually unlock three more minigames, but because of how bad the e-Reader flopped, two of these minigames were not unlockable in North America because we missed out on 25 level cards. After the e-Reader got kiboshed, it created a weird market in the Mario fandom. SMA4:SMB3e e-Reader card levels would actually save onto your cart after you unlocked them, so for a long time, one of the only ways you could play these levels is if you bought a cart that had all the unlocked levels on it. For example, our copy was bought second-hand, and has a few levels saved on it. In 2016, Nintendo re-released SMA4:SMB3e onto the WiiU Virtual Console, and it actually has all the levels and minigames unlocked from the start, including the levels that were previously Japanese exclusive! Not to mention, a physical cart actually doesn't have enough room for all 38 levels, so this makes the Virtual Console version THE definitive version, which is kind of unprecedented for a Virtual Console release! Now, naturally, all these levels have been recreated in Mario Maker, but this is still really, really cool! However, all the demo movies and Power-Up switches are not available on the WiiU version, but the e-Reader input screen is still there, which is kinda weird. This is particularly upsetting in light of a hidden set of game-altering switches hackers have found buried in the code. The cards that would have activated the switches were never released, so it's worth buying SMA4:SMB3e... ... wait, did I say that right? Yeah, okay... ... SMA4:SMB3e on WiiU Virtual Console for the extra levels, and downloading a ROM to play with the extra switches! Uh... though good luck trying to find those ROMs. Moving on, the third way you can use your e-Reader is with the GameCube, and the main way you would have done that, in North America at least, is with Animal Crossing. Pokémon Channel also had e-Reader compatibility and came with three special cards that you could use for the Smeargle paint minigame, but after the e-Reader got cancelled, they stopped including the cards in the box. They didn't actually remove the e-Reader capability, so you could still play the game if you got your hands on the cards. Anyway, Animal Crossing was a hugely ambitious game for a pre-Internet time, and was compatible with both the e-Reader and the GameCube GBA link cable, using them both to unlock a ton of extra content. Connecting your GBA via the GameCube GBA controller link cable granted you access to the Island, while the e-Reader granted access to a ton of stuff! There are five types of Animal Crossing cards, spread out over four different series, and while that sounds like Nintendo really committing to the e-Reader, it's actually another huge example of them not committing. Let's start with the town tune cards: They had dot code data stripes on them, but also the music notation right there, so you didn't actually need the e-Reader to access the song. Character cards could be used to send letters to animals in the game, but each card also had passwords you could send via a letter instead, again reducing the need to use the actual e-Reader. On top of everything else, card-swiping is particularly time consuming in Animal Crossing because of its flavorful dialog trees. Also because the game kicks you out of the menu if you swipe a card wrong! Design cards can be used to put new designs on clothes, which is convenient if you're not that adept at making designs yourself, but if you DO have a talent for that type of thing, you don't really need the cards. But that sounds like a hell of a chore to me, so I'll just be sticking with the cards, thank you. The fourth type are the game cards, the true e-Reader exclusive stuff! You played them by swiping the game cards, and then swiping character cards to put them in your minigame. Full disclosure though, we don't have any of the game cards ourselves, and had some problems finding videos of this online. Okay, so now we gotta talk Animal Crossing NES games: Hidden in Animal Crossing are 15 NES games unlocked in various ways, from going to the Island, at Tom Nook's lottery, or through promos given away by Nintendo. They're super difficult to unlock in-game, and back in the day internet forums were filled with tons of bunk rumors for what games and how to unlock them. Thank goodness we live in today's Internet hellscape, and we can save ourselves the drama by googling the secret game codes and inputting them at Tom Nook's store. However, this only worked for 15 of the actual 19 playable NES games, the remaining four being Super Mario Bros., which was Japanese-exclusive, the Legend of Zelda, which was never released officially, Ice Climber and Mario Bros. To access Ice Climber and Mario Bros., you can't input a code, you NEED their special Animal Crossing e-Reader cards! Well, either the e-Reader cards, or hacking with something like a GameShark, but I wanna make sure we're crystal-clear on this: The NES cards are NOT how you unlock the rest of the NES games in Animal Crossing, and this copy of Ice Climber will not unlock Ice Climber in Animal Crossing. For the version in Animal Crossing, it needs that one special e-card. Side note: It's pretty cool that Animal Crossing has any NES games at all! And it gets credit for being one of the first ways Nintendo re-released a collection of classic NES games, but I still think the e-Reader NES Classic series takes the cake for being the first "Hey! These games are worth playing for their own sake!" - take on repackaging classic games. It was a genuinely cool way for people to re-experience these games, or play them for the first time! But both Animal Crossing and the NES e-Reader games deserve credit for helping pave the way for the Classic NES series on the GBA, the Virtual Console, and the general retro gaming community! The e-Reader was discontinued in mid-2004, but as we've mentioned, it actually lasted a bit longer in Japan. In fact, its website is still live as of the making of this video! As the e-Reader was phased out around the world, e-Reader compatibility was straight-up deleted from the localized versions. This, combined with the fact that the e-Reader was region-locked, meant that only the staunchest importers got to play these games in a way they were meant to be played. We don't have access to all these games, so we'll just run down a quick list: Rockman Zero 3 had e-Reader mod cards, and their in-game content was fully translated for the English release, and accessible via cheat codes. Though the cards themselves never made it overseas, this content would be included in the Mega Man Zero DS collection. Rockman EX 4, 5 and 6 had a similar e-Reader functionality, but the North American Battle Network games have never been re-released... yet. F-Zero: GP Legend's e-Reader functionality was somewhat folded into the rest of the game for the US release, and you could unlock certain card features by completing certain tasks. However, staff ghosts and e+ course features were removed entirely from the international game. Mario VS. Donkey Kong actually had five e-Reader level cards that are extremely rare, even in Japan. Nintendo only gave out five cards, though it appears twelve levels were actually planned for the release, and can be accessed via hacking. The WiiU Virtual Console release does not feature these extra levels, like Super Mario 3 Advance. Lots of Pokémon games from this time had extra e-Reader stuff exclusive to the Japanese releases: Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire had a small amount of e-Reader cards that were given out as promotions. Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen's e-Reader functionality let Japanese players scan new trainers into the Battle Tower, but most of these trainers are unlocked by default in the worldwide releases. Pokémon Emerald had its e-Reader functionality removed, but some of the Japanese e-Reader functions were added to the game. The only way to get an Eon Ticket in the PAL and US versions of Emerald is record mixing with another game with an unlocked Eon Ticket already. Pokémon Colosseum had a Card-e room that was completely sealed off in international versions. It's where you'd have your battle card fights, as well as capture three extra Shadow Pokémon. Domo-kun no Fushigi Terebi is unique on this list because it is a completely Japanese-exclusive game. Its e-Reader cards could unlock minigames. Hamtaro Card-e, or "Tottoku Hamtaro Ham-Ham Ham-Ha! Magic Princess", actually doesn't work with any GBA games, it's a card set that works similarly to the NES Classic series. Swiping the cards unlocked cute little minigames that really prove that when you work together, it IS much better! Grace made me say this. ♫ "My ham-hams!" ♫ But perhaps the biggest casualty of all: We were robbed of three different minigames that you could play on the Game Boy Advance in Pikmin 2! So cute!! And as far as we know, these games have never been re-released. How ya feel, Grace? GRACE: Ah... sad! And that just about covers everything! The e-Reader was short-lived and definitely ahead of its time, but was a pretty damn cool device, and a must-have device for hardcore collectors! While Grace and I both love this little thing for all it can do, I can understand why it wasn't successful: Look at how long it took us just to explain it! That's the kind of thing that ad execs lose sleep over! But it's something I hope the hacking community can get excited about! There was a small homebrew scene that seems to have completely petered out by the time the DS conquered the market, but a lot of their documentation is still available for those that are interested! Thanks so much for watching, please subscribe, click that bell, leave a like, leave a comment, and don't forget to check out NordVPN.com/stopskeletons! VPN's are an essential way to protect yourself online, and as the only VPN to get a five-star rating from PCMag, NordVPN is the VPN that Grace and I personally use. Listen: Grace and I do a lot of work at coffee shops and at libraries, and you need to protect yourself when you're using public internet! Again, thanks to NordVPN, you can use the code "stopskeletons" at NordVPN.com/stopskeletons to get a 66% off a two-year plan! That's NordVPN.com/stopskeletons, and the offer code "stopskeletons". Alright, I'll be over here just, uh... ... swiping some e-Reader cards. Yeah... Think I'ma play some Excitebike. [♫ improvised sick beat ♫]
"Load application - Start application" Excitebike... [♫ another sick GBA beat ♫] Ooh, forgot about this rockin' music! Grace, we didn't talk about the rockin' music! GRACE: We forgot... "Read error!" [Grace chuckles off-screen] [♫ fanfare ♫] "Scanning a dot code. Start application." "Okay to overwrite this application?" Yes. "Saving..." [♫ Excitebike intro jingle ♫] [♫ start race jingle ♫]
Oh, e-Reader. Maybe the most underappreciated device in the Nintendo catalogue. Air Hockey-e is still much tougher than it has any business being!
Such a shake this got abandoned so quickly in NA. Would've loved to finish the rest of World-e in SMA4 myself.
I got one for Christmas in like 2002. Had Excitebike and Donkey Kong Jr cards.
Oh hey, I had one of those. Unfortunately, I didn't realise at the time that the European version of Super Mario Advance 4 had removed the e-Reader functionality, so hopes of getting access to said levels by importing the thing from the US were quickly dashed.
Either way, it's a neat video, and the device itself is kind of like a Nintendo amiibo prototype when you think about it. Scanning in physical items to unlock in game content? Guess they were just a bit ahead of the toys to life game back in the early 00s...
No, I most certainly will NOT stop Skeletons from fighting!!