10 Rare Versions Of Video Games You Didn't Know Exist

Nintendo’s party franchise has become famous for testing friendships, seeing players compete across a board within a set number of turns to earn the most stars and coins. Fighting each other across minigames, it began back in 1998 on N64 and most recently came to Switch in 2018 as Super Mario Party.

It’s seen a variety of entries these last two decades but one often overlooked game is Mario Party-e on Game Boy Advance. Released in 2003, it was the first handheld game in the franchise and made use of Nintendo’s e-Reader add-on for GBA, only releasing across North America and Japan.

Containing an LED scanner that read "e-Reader cards", cards with specially encoded data printed on them, these cards were used to unlock secret items, levels and additional features, quite like Amiibo in some ways. It came with 64 cards and a playboard but instead of chasing stars, the main objective was to be the first player with three Superstar items (Mario’s hat, clothes and shoes).

A quirky spin-off, it reviewed well but the restrictive format left it widely forgotten in comparison to 2005's Mario Party Advance, which ditched the e-Reader for more traditional gameplay.