About Nintendo E-reader (history, compatibility, hidden features)

History of the Nintendo E-reader

The creators of the E-reader were 4 companies:

1. Nintendo Co., Ltd.

2. Creatures Inc.

3. HAL Laboratory Inc.

4. Olympus Optical Co., Ltd.

The original idea of the Nintendo E-reader came from Creatures Inc., whose employees came up with the concept of this device, but let's start with a moment that, at first glance, seems unrelated to the E-reader.

In 1996, the Pokémon Trading Card Game was released. This game was created by Creatures Inc. In this company, there was a manager of card game production, Takumi Akabane, who was haunted by the thought of how to add additional value to any card, while keeping this value invisible to the naked eye.

Takumi tried different methods: invisible ink, changing images with a magnet, burning images, until he saw Olympus's "Dot Code Technology," which allowed placing a maximum amount of information on a minimal area of the card.

During one of the meetings, Motofumi Yoshino from Nintendo's development department was present, and he heard about the further development of the Pokémon card game. Yoshino immediately realized that this was a great idea that would also help Nintendo. He got the green light from Nintendo to implement this idea, and the group of four companies was formed: Creatures Inc. provided the idea and the cards themselves, Olympus Optical provided the technology, HAL Laboratory developed the E-reader, and Nintendo handled overall coordination, parts procurement, and assembly.

It took 5 months to create the first prototype of the Nintendo E-reader, and it was developed by Kazuhiko Fukuda from HAL Laboratory.

The first presentation of the E-reader took place on the artificial island of Odaiba in Tokyo Bay! Well, actually, in early March 2001, another event was held on this island – it was a closed event for the press, where the new Game Boy Advance was shown, but the president of "The Pokemon Company," Tsunekazu Ishihara, also attended and presented the E-reader to the world, and this was the prototype:

In Nintendo Power issue 144, there was a note about this presentation.

Of course, everyone was puzzled by the size, which was about twice as thick as the final E-reader, but the worst part was that the first prototype of the E-reader required separate batteries to work.

And this is very strange, because on May 29, 2000, a patent was registered with the patent office, with a beautiful small design:

Here, by the way, you can see that initially it was planned to have 4 code strips on the cards, but this idea was abandoned because, from the designers' point of view, it did not look good.

The question remains why it turned out the way it did.

Many of the shortcomings of the first prototype were fixed by the E3 exhibition, where the first final version could be seen:

Note that the device was called Pokemon CARD-E READER and indeed was an extension of the Pokémon TCG, not a standalone device.

Let's take a moment to step away from the history and appreciate what this was and what was meant by "card expansion":

These are three real cards from the Pokémon TCG, and you can see six strips on them, three short and three long.

If you scan the short strip on each card, additional information about the card will appear:

And if you scan all three long ones, a game will appear:

Journalists first got to try this device the day before the Tokyo Game Show 2001, when a press day was organized. And in general, we did not find any enthusiastic reviews. Just a mention that there is such a device and that there is information about it in the booklet, by the way, here is a photo from that booklet:

Here you can see the Celebi card, which was distributed to journalists on that press day. At one point, we thought that this card would add Celebi to the game and it could be obtained, but it turned out that it would just show a short animation.

On August 23, 2001, an official note about the release of the device was published on the Nintendo website: www.nintendo.co.jp

And nothing changed except the renaming of the device.

Release of the E-reader

This device still had its main problem: it was designed for a very narrow audience, namely exclusively for fans of the Pokémon TCG. Imagine that you have an electronic Pokédex for your cards. That's the whole idea. Besides, the device was exclusively in Japanese and no other releases were announced.

On December 1, 2001, the first version of the Nintendo E-reader was released.

You can see detailed photos of the E-reader and its packaging in our article: Photos of the first generation Japanese E-reader.

And this could have been the end of the history of the Nintendo E-reader as an extremely niche product created exclusively for the Japanese, if not for Nintendo's understanding that something had to be done about it.

Therefore, by the time this device was released in the American market, it was changed. And it cannot be said that the device was changed very much, but they added two functions that make this device so cool. The first function was very simple, it was a regular network port, meaning you could now insert the E-reader into one Game Boy Advance and connect it to another Game Boy Advance with some cartridge inserted. And the second function was the built-in flash memory in the E-reader, which allowed saving NES games (exclusively them) on the cartridge.

On September 16, 2002, the device was released in the American market, and on October 31, 2003, in Australia.

And in general, if we exclude Japan (we'll talk about it separately), the device did not find support among users.

If we look at the reasons for such a failure, we can say that:

1. It was not a compact device, but it was an addition to a portable console, and it turned out to be a strange story: either you had to carry a whole bag with you, or use it only at home.

2. To fully use this device, you needed two consoles, meaning you either had to buy a second console or go to a friend's place, which was also not very convenient.

3. The cards themselves were made of cardboard, which immediately implied careful handling.

4. The most interesting cards (which modified games) started appearing in mid-2003, that is, a year after the release of the E-reader.

There were probably other reasons that hindered players, but it is certain that the device had a number of shortcomings that prevented full use. Perhaps the right decision would have been to include a cartridge slot in the E-reader to directly record additional materials into the game, but then it would have made the E-reader even larger.

This is how journalists from NintendoWorldReport described the E-reader:

A fun, though somewhat useless addition to the GBA. Bulky and not very fitting with the GBA style. It's hard to believe it was developed by Nintendo.

Therefore, in early 2004, support for the Nintendo E-reader in America and Australia was discontinued.

On the other hand, in Japan, the story with the Nintendo E-reader went completely differently!

On June 27, 2003, the third version of the E-reader was released. And this is the Japanese version of the same E-reader as in America.

Around this time, the coolest cards started appearing, adding various interesting things to the game, and therefore the E-reader gained popularity in Japan, while in America it was already dead, and this is related to the biggest problem.

The E-reader had a region lock, meaning all cards released in Japan did not work on the American E-reader, and if the first sets of cards were released for all regions, the remaining ones were only for the Japanese region, meaning you couldn't play them in English.

And so if you wanted to diversify your gaming experience and add new trainers, new berries, or secret islands to your original Pokémon Sapphire/Ruby cartridge, you couldn't. Or could you?

Actually, some packs did manage to come out for the English E-reader, so something could be unlocked, but read more about it in our other article: Guide to using the Nintendo E-reader without cards (or without the E-reader itself).

Compatibility with consoles

The first E-reader does not have a network port and is compatible with all consoles (GBA, GBA SP, GBM, NDS, NDS Lite).

But the problem with the new E-reader was its compatibility with other consoles. And by this, we mean not software compatibility, but physical compatibility.

If in the Game Boy Advance the E-reader fits completely and sits as it should, then with all other consoles it looks strange, and in some, it simply doesn't fit.

And we can say that it is completely incompatible only with the Nintendo DS and Game Boy Micro, but with all other consoles, it can be used quite well.

Game Boy Advance - works fully as intended.

Game Boy Advance SP - for network functions to work, you need to insert the network cable not into the E-reader, but into the console itself. And then everything works as it should.

GameBoy Micro – inserts with force (apparently, a special cable is needed for network functions).

Nintendo DS – does not fit.

Nintendo DS Lite - fits, but network functions do not work, as there is no necessary port on the console.

Region Lock

Although the E-reader itself does not have a region lock, meaning, for example, a Japanese E-reader will work on an American console, the cards themselves have a region lock. So cards from a Japanese E-reader will not work on an American E-reader and vice versa.

Hidden Feature

If you press in the E-reader's start menu, you will see a list of the creators of this device:

Clearing E-reader Memory

To clear the E-reader's saved data, you need to hold + when turning on the console.

And you will enter the E-reader Data Manager menu, where you will be offered to erase all saved data. Select Yes and the erasing process will begin.

The deletion process will proceed with this screen:

And after deleting the data, the console will reboot itself!