Retro Dot Cards Season One
Had a blast with Retro Dot Cards Series One for the Nintendo e-Reader from retrodotcards.com, created by Matt Greer.
That's right, new games printed on playing cards that can be scanned with a device from ~2002 using your Game Boy Advance or GameCube with Game Boy Player.
I think it's so cool that a dev community exists for these obscure devices, and that Matt has taken it so far as to write a bunch of games, produce them as cards, have them printed and packaged professionally, and sell them.
I have a nicely refurbished Game Boy Advance, but did not have an e-Reader at the time I learned of these, so I took to the e-Bay to find one. It actually took a while, and I had to pay more, to find an English version, as the original Japanese versions are more common. While you can buy Retro Dot Cards that work on any version of the reader (English, Japanese, or English-on-Japanese), if you plan to play other retro cards be aware that you need to match their language and region to your device or they won't work.
The cards and packaging from Retro Dot Cards were high quality and quirky. I enjoyed shuffling through them the first time. I cared less for trying to nicely fan them all out for a photo, above, because I wanted to get to playing them!
Each game (or app) is loaded with one to four "swipes" of a card. For example, Solitaire is a single card that you load by scanning one side, rotating the card 180 degrees, and scanning the other side. Exo Attack comes on two cards, for a total of four swipes through the reader.
The classics, like Solitaire, e-Snake, and Bomb Hunter (minesweeper) are minimalist, but well-made, colorful, and snappy to play. Exo Attack is a shoot-em-up with just one thing to shoot - the same boss with different behaviors - but it's also something of a provocation, with some quirky ship choices available. Speaking of quirky provocations: Franny Answers is like a combo Magic 8-ball and Tamagotchi with a cute and mysterious (or temperamental, or both) dog.
Some other absolute highlights include Scavenger Hunt (an achievements-based meta game!?), Exo Attack's code-based online leaderboards, and the old school instruction booklet online for each game.
The whole thing feels a bit like an invitation, too. To understand more about this old hardware, of course, but maybe also to make more things. Lurking in the footer of the Retro Dot Cards site is a Tools page with many e-Reader resources, including common sprites and backgrounds already present on the e-Reader that you can use in your own games and apps. Matt has also released the source code for e-Reader Solitaire, licensed MIT, and if that's not an invite I don't know what is.
