After months of hopeless searching i finally managed to get hold of a complete set of series 1&2 of these cards and im glad to say that they were well worth tracking down.
After playing with them all week i have discovered just how much more fun they make super mario advance 4. There are 3 types of cards in the series, course cards, help cards & demo cards.
Demo cards when scanned show mini movies showing you how to do a particular trick like finding the secret white toad house or how to get inf 1ups in a level. Here are a few pics of some demo cards.
The next set of cards are the help cards, these cards instantly give you items or affect the game rules. Using these cards you can get the cape feather from super mario 4 and get the all new boomerang powerup, these items add so much fun to a already excellent game.
However too much use of the help cards can make the game far too easy as you have access to every powerup in the game at a single swipe. There are also switch cards that change the game rules giving interesting effects like doubling the points of every enemy you kill with the added bonus of replacing all the enemies in the levels with harder versions. Or there is another that places grass clumps throught the game allowing you to chuck vegetables at enemies like super mario 2. Some switch cards affect the timer giving you more time to play in a level or halving the size of the power bar allowing you to fly without a big run up. Heres some pics of the help cards.
Finally the last (& the best) cards are the course cards. These beauties contain brand new levels for you to play. The simplest way to describe these levels is like having the worlds of super mario bros 2,3 & 4 collide together the new levels borrow sprites from all these games to make somthing totally new & crazy. These are not just plain old super mario bros 3 levels with a few new sprites these are totally new & original. Also in each level there are hidden advance coins to find and well hidden in most levels there is a E coin as well. Collecting these opens up even more secrets. Heres some pics.
Its a shame that the uk version of super mario advance 4 had the e-reader function removed as it adds so much to the game. Hopefully at some stage i plan on getting one of those GBA memory backup sticks that allow you to backup your GBA game save data. That way anyone who has a japanese copy of super mario advance 4 & wants all the e-reader levels just has to use my backup stick to unlock it all in their copy.
Please excuse me if i seem to be rambling, i just had to tell everybody how cool these are.
After playing with them all week i have discovered just how much more fun they make super mario advance 4. There are 3 types of cards in the series, course cards, help cards & demo cards.
Demo cards when scanned show mini movies showing you how to do a particular trick like finding the secret white toad house or how to get inf 1ups in a level. Here are a few pics of some demo cards.
The next set of cards are the help cards, these cards instantly give you items or affect the game rules. Using these cards you can get the cape feather from super mario 4 and get the all new boomerang powerup, these items add so much fun to a already excellent game.
However too much use of the help cards can make the game far too easy as you have access to every powerup in the game at a single swipe. There are also switch cards that change the game rules giving interesting effects like doubling the points of every enemy you kill with the added bonus of replacing all the enemies in the levels with harder versions. Or there is another that places grass clumps throught the game allowing you to chuck vegetables at enemies like super mario 2. Some switch cards affect the timer giving you more time to play in a level or halving the size of the power bar allowing you to fly without a big run up. Heres some pics of the help cards.
Finally the last (& the best) cards are the course cards. These beauties contain brand new levels for you to play. The simplest way to describe these levels is like having the worlds of super mario bros 2,3 & 4 collide together the new levels borrow sprites from all these games to make somthing totally new & crazy. These are not just plain old super mario bros 3 levels with a few new sprites these are totally new & original. Also in each level there are hidden advance coins to find and well hidden in most levels there is a E coin as well. Collecting these opens up even more secrets. Heres some pics.
Its a shame that the uk version of super mario advance 4 had the e-reader function removed as it adds so much to the game. Hopefully at some stage i plan on getting one of those GBA memory backup sticks that allow you to backup your GBA game save data. That way anyone who has a japanese copy of super mario advance 4 & wants all the e-reader levels just has to use my backup stick to unlock it all in their copy.
Please excuse me if i seem to be rambling, i just had to tell everybody how cool these are.
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