the pointless weblog

These cards are for use with the Augmented Reality games on the Nintendo 3DS. They were released in 2011.

You can enlarge them by clicking on them, if you wish. Also playing the games so they look like they are coming out of the monitor is quite good fun, and basically pointless.

If someone with both a 3DS and a new iPad could open these on the iPad and then put that down on their desk and use that as the card to play the AR games on the 3DS, possibly while someone else videos on it on a nearby iPhone,  it would probably be the greatest conjunction of technology ever witnessed. All while a Guardian journalist liveblogs the event.

This pack of cards was given away free with 90 minutes magazine in 1993. 90 minutes ws a weekly football magazine, aimed at the more discerning reader (13 year olds, instead of the 10 year olds that read Shoot). At some point in the mid 90s (probably around 1996 or so) it became desperately laddish in an attempt to fit in with Loaded and FHM. Then it was quitely closed down forever.

One of the most depressing thing about these cards is the reminders it provides of the horrors of the “mystery guest” round on Question of Sport. Poor Peter Beardsley. Poor everyone.

I think they must have come without a box, or else my sister fashioned a box out of card and stuck a Gary Lineker Pro-Set card on the front for no other reason than love.

The inside of the box contains the faded remnants of some ancient pencil sketch one of us must have done just before. It looks like it could be the back of a monstrous ogre, rolls of fat  pushing out on the back of its neck as he looks up at the sky. It probably isn’t that at all, but I want it to be.

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Image Gallery

(click on the images below to view the full card)