AUGUST 2003

August 3rd 2003:

A new entry has been added to the log of the Game & Watch Design Contest.
The news items for July have been moved to the News Archive section. As I mentionned last week, I don't really expect much news will pop up this month, so this might be a good time to review the news archive for the past few months, just to refresh your memory as to what we can expect in September, October, and beyond. ;-)

August 9th 2003:

According to EB Games, the next series of Pokémon-e trading cards (Pokémon-e EX Sandstorm) will be released on September 17th, and will contain 108 cards. There will be two new starter decks (as usual) named "Caravan" and "Oasis". This info has been added to the Future Releases section.
As you may have noticed, the URL of this site has been rerouted from generation.net to colba.net, which is my new ISP. You might want to update your bookmarks. :-)
Demon_fox brought to my attention that the "Lady Astrid" Battle-e promo e-Card has a misprint. There is mention of this on Nintendo's official e-Reader site, and the same information is also found in a recent issue of Nintendo Power:
I added this piece of information to the "Lady Astrid" entry in the e-Card Catalog.
A new entry has been added to the log of the Game & Watch Design Contest.

August 16th 2003:

Did I say there wasn't going to be any news to report this month? Silly me... ;-P The major news is that Nintendo has officially announced the release dates for the Pokémon Battle-e, Super Mario Advance 4 and Game & Watch series! According to a recent Pocket IGN article, both the Battle-e and SMA4 series will be released on October 20th, and the Game & Watch series will be released on November 17th. It's still two/three months away from now, but it's nice to FINALLY have some official release dates for these highly anticipated series of e-Cards! Naturally, the Future Releases section has been updated with this information.
The Pocket IGN article mentionned above also reports that Nintendo will start offering a special bundle this fall: With the purchase of an old-style (non-SP) Game Boy Advance, you will get a free e-Reader! Considering you need two GBAs and a Link Cable to take advantage of the upcoming Pokémon Battle-e and SMA4 e-Cards, this deal makes a lot of sense!
Another small piece of news concerns the Pokémon-e EX Sandstorm series: EB-Games.com says that the series will be released on November 2nd 2003. Click here and here to see for yourself. Considering the release dates of the other e-Card series announced above, this particular piece of news should not be taken too seriously, until an official confirmation is made by Nintendo.
Nintendo has started running two new promotional offers on their official e-Reader site. The first is a "buy-one-get-one-free" deal for Animal Crossing-e packs. The second is a price reduction on certain NES e-Card packs. Are these online-only offers, or is it applicable to packs sold in retail stores? The site doesn't say, so I'll try to get more info from Nintendo...

UPDATE: I've just received a reply from a Nintendo representative (on a Saturday? Whoa!) which stated: "The e-Card promotion that you asked about are available at all participating retailers that carry these cards, not the Nintendo Online Store."
A new entry has been added to the log of the Game & Watch Design Contest.

UPDATE: The same participant submitted another entry today. Talk about being driven to win! ;-)

August 22nd 2003:

You may have heard the news earlier this week that the e-Reader was not going to be released in Europe after all, but rest assured this information is not entirely accurate. Apparently, the release date has simply been pushed back to 2004. When I learn more, I'll let you all know.
This is not really related to the e-Reader, but if you have read some of the texts in Pixelboy's Diary, you may recall that I sent a letter to Activision some months ago, to voice the suggestion that the company should release their old Atari 2600 games on e-Cards. Well, the games will be coming to GBA in November 2003, but in regular GBA cart format instead of e-Card format. It's great news either way, and I'll be sure to buy this Atari 2600 compilation as soon as I spot it in stores! Click here, here and here if you want to find out more about it. :-)

August 30th 2003:

Wow, it's been a while since I added a new entry to the e-Card Catalog! Apparently, Nintendo has a new Pokémon League thing going, which I don't know much about, but I do know that the "Season One" league kit contains a new promotional e-Card, "Cumbusken (009)", for which I added an entry in the catalog. I'm not sure when I'll be able to add the scan of this card to the catalog, but you can see what it looks like by following this link.
During the first couple of week-ends of September, there will be official pre-release events for Pokémon-e EX Sandstorm in both the US and Canada. There's no information about this on pokemon-tcg.com yet, but if you want to know more about these events, I invite you to stop by the PokéGym Forum. It's really the best place to keep up with Pokémon-related events, although you have to get used to the lingo which is sometimes a bit obscure to those who are not used to it. Please note that the official release for EX Sandstorm is still on track for the second half of September, according to the latest issue of Nintendo Power (Issue #172, page 100).
The GBA/e-Reader bundle (which I mentioned two weeks ago) will have its own packaging. You can see what it looks like by reading this recent Pocket IGN article. The bundle will be available in stores next October.
A friendly reminder: You have one month left to submit your entry to the Game & Watch Design Contest. The contest ends on September 30th, and the winners will be announced on October 6th, which will mark the one-year anniversary of this web site! :-)