Another portable gaming machine? Well, yes, but it won’t be competing with the DS or the PSP. The Bandai ‘Card Commun’ units are simple $30 units that play games based on branded swipe cards (kind of like the Game Boy’s eReader) and can sync data together by connecting to units, making the Card Commun not unlike a “Pok mon and Tamagotchi combined.” Apparently they are super popular, too; the Card Commun was the hot item during Japan’s recent Golden Week shopping spree. No word if or when it will be available in the States, but since Bandai pushes quite a lot of their cartoon properties here, too, a localized version isn’t out of the question.
Read [WirelessWatchJapan]
Update: Reader Ben Wong sent this explanation of Bandai’s bizzare concept:
The toy is related to a very popular Japanese Animation Futari wa Pretty Cure .
In the series 2 ten-year-old girls use a similar device to change into super hero to battle monsters. The device is actually a living creature from another dimension which can only exist in our world in the form of a cell phone (got to admit Bandai is great with marketing toys). By the way, those cards will either give those girls special ability or provide living essentials (food, sleep, education etc.) to the Cell phone creature .
