e-Reader

[M.Buster2184]

Does anybody collect or has anyone thought about collecting for the Nintendo e-Reader? I remember a friend of mine having one for his Advance but he didn't play it much. I thought it as gimmicky at the time, but looking back now I think it's an interesting possibly forgotten piece of Nintendo history. Hey, can't be worse than the Virtual Boy right?...

[goob47]

Man, I saw one of those at a game store recently... I think it would be pretty cool to start collecting for it, but some of the cards and games can get expensive... :|

[Jorpho]

It sounds like a neat idea; I'm a little surprised there aren't more things like Mario Party-e out there now. Except then there are things like Super Mario Advance 4, you actually need two GBAs and the eReader in order to use the cards. How daft.

[CastlevaniaDude]

The e-Reader is an interesting curiosity which I've always seen as kind of the precursor to the Virtual Console. I don't know that I'd ever want to collect for it, but I definitely see the appeal.

[old_skoolin_jim]

I remember the e-reader as being so cool, and having so much potential, seeing what it could do for Animal Crossing and Super Mario Advance 4 (New levels in SMB3? YES PLEASE). A good friend of mine got one, and after using it in practice, it definitely lost enough of its appeal for me to never end up owning one (well, that, and the fact I paid for a hacked AC save to unlock all the classic NES games as well as a few "unofficial" ones tucked away in the game's code).
I imagine it would be a PITA to try to collect for now, though.

[importaku]

Ah i love the e-reader collected for it for years, amassed quite a large collection of cards with many complete sets of various series. I must admit the needing 2 GBA's was a bit harsh as a requirement for some games/cards to work but seeing as i was a typical Nintendo fan i had more than one GBA laying around lol.

Favourite series by far are the super mario advance 4 cards they added so much to the game but the pikmin 2 cards were a great addition to that game too. Still would love a full set of all 7 series of animal forest & the rockman e-reader cards but they are next to impossible to find in large numbers nowdays. Was lucky enough over the years when they were still available to get my hands on most of the series i wanted but wish i had tried harder for the others while they were around in larger numbers.

So far my collection consists of.

Mario advance 4 series 1-2 (full set) all but 1 promo card
Pikmin puzzle series 1-4 (full set) all promo cards
Fzero falcon densetsu (full base set) missing cardass vending exclusives
Mario vs DK (full set) missing promo card
Domokun winter pack (full set) plus the promo
Pokemon colosseum (full set)
Animal forest series 1-3 (partial sets about 80% complete)
Hamtaro (full set) plus complete cinema pack
A handful of misc cards like game & watch/air hockey/pokemon channel pack

Here's a few pics of my collection if anyones curious
http://www.retrocollect.com/Members-Game-Collection-Photos/Importaku/Game-Collection-Photos/2103-Nintendo-E-reader-stuff.html

And a youtube vid of one of my binders as it's easier to show than taking a pic of each page
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NtqgqhU1kg

[M.Buster2184]

It's not practical but something about it still appeals to me. Though it seems kind of a pain in the butt needing two GBA's to utilize the features. I'm sure it'd be a pain to collect for, but I feel like I regularly still unopened card packs at game stores and Expos.

[importaku]

If you have a GBA player for the gamecube you can use that instead of a second GBA, two are only needed for gba games that use the e-reader card function. The cart goes into one & the e-reader into the other. Animal forest & pikmin use the gba to gc link cable for their functions so only 1 gba needed. Some card series are stand alone games. Hamtaro, domokun are like that just swipe to have self contained games

I still keep on the lookout for new ones, the designs of the cards i find appealing. It's nice that they have a secondary function too.

[Tanooki]

Had one when it was new, fun wore off fast with all the card swipes to do anything. If someone wants to throw an offer my way message me as I have two sealed packs of e cards for baseball and donkey kong jr.

[wiggyx]

I used to collect for it. Have pretty much all that I want. Full set of Mario 3 cards and all the classic titles that were released. May look into the Pikmin cards at some point.

[Suikoman444]

I collected for it back when it was still being made. Have all but one of the NES games, about half the Animal Crossing cards, a couple Pokemon Cards, and most of the other cards minus a couple Mario 3 cards.

[Horsehead]

Just out of curiosity, what are these cards worth on average?

[M.Buster2184]

Just out of curiosity, what are these cards worth on average?

Good question. No idea what a fair price is for them. I suppose it depends on which cards.

[Jorpho]

Do you think they'd be easy to counterfeit? A few years ago someone did manage to crack the encoding scheme.

[SparTonberry]

I thought someone said it was as simple as scanning and printing the cards at insanely high resolution.

[Nebagram]

I thought someone said it was as simple as scanning and printing the cards at insanely high resolution.

I've also heard this, as far as I know there are no actual electronic parts in the cards, they are just images on a card, so all you'd need is a good enough scanner and printer.

I've got a few packs of cards myself but I don't consider myself a hardcore collector, largely as virtually all of my GBA games are PAL releases and we never got the e-reader over here so I'm pretty sure any bonus cards (like Mario Advance 4) wouldn't be compatible anyway.

[BetaWolf47]

I'd like to have the full Pokemon e set, which includes Aquapolis, Skyridge, Expedition, etc. just for the sake of it. Despite the blatant capitalism, I consider card collecting to be pretty fun. I got the e-Reader when it was on its last legs, and only have a few things for it, such as the Pokemon Channel e-cards, pack-ins, a few NES games, and some of the Pokemon e-cards.

[calthaer]

I am pretty sure that some of this has been mentioned somewhere in the many threads over the past decade in these forums about this thing, but on the "scanning and printing" thing:

Scanning and printing e-Reader cards can be a very tricky business. The resolution at which those things needs to be reproduced if you want to put it on a card is well in excess of 600-1000 dpi, and it has to be perfect for the thing to work. I looked into possibly creating or re-creating some cards at some point, but couldn't find any printer out there that would print trading cards at that sort of resolution.

That being said, there is a program out there called nedcprint.exe which will print a .RAW or .BMP file with the dot code out to the bottom of a sheet of 8.5"x11" piece of paper. That sheet can be run through the e-Reader to produce whatever effect you want on the e-Reader, if you have the data in perfect .RAW or .BMP format. You can also convert the .RAW file for Japanese cards that weren't released in the U.S. so that you can, for example, add a lot more levels to Super Mario Advance 4. Some games, however, didn't include e-Reader support when they were released in the U.S. (I think Pokemon Colosseum and Pikmin are like this, but am not sure).

That printing program was, I believe, created by some CaitSith2 guy...all his e-Reader stuff (including the Japanese SMA4 cards) can be downloaded here:

http://caitsith2.com/ereader/index.htm

If there are any missing files, I can upload them to my own site...I have them all bouncing around somewhere in my files, and got them to work at one point. But I didn't fool around with and complete all the SMA4 levels.