Near the end of GameBoy Advance's lifecycle, Nintendo created a device that would load classic NES games or 3rd party software by scanning the barcodes of multiple specialized e-cards to download the necessary data into the handhelds temporary memory to load the game as a whole. This device was considered a failed attempt at a niche crowd of retrogamers who had already moved to the Nintendo DS.
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Because the GBA interface connector was poorly placed, only the original GBA was able to use this device unless you removed the connector manually, which I did with ease. This connector was only used to connect the e-reader to Gamecubes to scan special cards for certain games to unlock exclusive content in games like Animal Crossing or first party titles.
They only ported small sized NES games to card format because even small games required the user to scan 8 cards, and each card had a barcode on each side, so it took a decent amount of time to load or change games. Once the game was loaded, you could pull the e-reader out and the game would continue to work with nothing in the game slot.
Nintendo made a physical Mario Party board game. Some of the cards had barcodes for minigames that you would intermittently play if your turn called for it. Most of the cards were for the board game itself, only 20 of them had minigames, and 4 players or teams could play at a time. It sold even worse then the e-reader itself and is considered super uncommon.
Overall, it was an interesting attempt at a different way of giving content to consumers, but it failed as the technology could only evolve so far before it hit a ceiling. Games could only be so big, and the tedious task of scanning all 8 cards just for a basic game of Mario is hard to justify at the best of times. This is almost the complete e-reader collection, Nintendo didn't have much faith in it even when it was released.
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