Popularity
The Barcode Battler was very popular in Japan—the idea of experimenting with and collecting barcodes to find out what they would equate to in the gaming world fired the imaginations of many people.
Outside of Japan it was a massive flop: it was hyped up, and sold in shops alongside the Game Boy, and the Game Gear, to which it bore some superficial similarities. Ultimately, the Game Boy and Game Gear proved to be more popular in Europe and the United States, probably due to the wider number of game cartridges available for these systems. By comparison, the gameplay of the Barcode Battler was repetitive, featured no graphics, sound effects or controls, and it was quickly forgotten by the general gaming public.
However, the recent release of devices such as Nintendo's e-Reader, as well as barcode games in arcades in the UK such as Dinosaur King and Love and Berry has shown that there is now an interest in the market. The Barcode Battler grew in popularity in Japan so much that special edition cards were created. The special edition cards were characters from Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, and many others. These cards had their own barcodes and unique stats and powers. Nintendo-licensed special edition cards were produced for both the Mario series, and the The Legend of Zelda series. Other special edition versions were commissioned by Falcom (for Lord Monarch/Dragon Slayer) and NTV (for the Doraemon series).
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Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
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