Barcode Battler

"That thing is about as much fun as being trapped in a lift. A burning lift...with a corpse."

- Stuart Ashen

The Barcode Battler is a portable game console released by Epoch in 1991. As the name describes, it is a game based on player cards with barcodes. It can be played with 2 players or a single player. While it somehow became very popular in Japan and some Scandinavian countries, it was a failure in other countries.

Upon starting the game, players must swipe a card representing a character. Then they can swipe a card for powerups or villans to battle against. Each card has different stats for energy, attack, and defense. Aside from included cards, players may also swipe any barcode from anything such as household products, and different barcodes will have different stats determined by its algorithm.

Why It Flopped

 * 1) It has barely any graphics. Instead, it has a segmented LCD that can only display numbers.
 * 2) The sound only consists of beeps.
 * 3) There isn't much interaction or controls other than selecting characters and pushing the buttons to battle.
 * 4) There isn't really a strategy to win. Outcomes of battles are mostly determined by a simple random algorithm.
 * 5) As a result, the gameplay is repetitive and luck-based.
 * 6) While you can experiment with using foreign barcodes, you will need to upscale or downscale the barcode to fit in the card reader.
 * 7) The barcodes of the heroes are significantly weaker than the villain barcodes, and a single game would typically end in the villain's favor.
 * 8) Despite very little gameplay, the console drains the batteries pretty quickly.

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