There have been a few questions raised about the Barcode Battler, so I thought I'd reply to them here, where it would be a little less off-topic.
The unit was out worldwide in 1993, and raised little popularity outside of Japan.
While the idea of collect & raise was great (and an idea used in franchises such as Pokemon and YuGiOh), it wasn't very well implemented - there were no graphics to speak of, just a screen full of 7-segment displays.
Also, the cards supplied with the unit didn't do very much, but since tinkering with my own Barcode Battler, I have discovered how to make fighters and power-ups of my own which are capable of reducing the opponents stats before battle
What a dirty rotten cheater I am.
Meanwhile, I Japan, the unit was supported by themed cards made by Nintendo (Legend of Zelda, Super Mario World, etc), and other characters from other companies.
There was also connectivity for the Famicom and Super Famicom for various games, but the functionality of the Barcode Battler was reduced to that of a simple barcode reader - the playability was determined by the FC/SFC game cartridge.
Had these been released over here, it may have been more popular.
