Konami make use of an E-reader peripheral for the DS!

It appears that Konami have another game up their sleeve for the DS: Ultimate Beast Battlers. This is intriguing, as the game seems to have appeared out of nowhere. It appears that the game is similar in concept to Yu-Gi Oh! and other card battling games, due to the fact that you... battle with cards. You know the drill: pick a card, monster appears on the screen and ravages other monster - rinse and repeat. But there's something different about this game.,.

Oh yeah, it's the fact that it's utilising what appears to the E-Card reader: a card scanner which reads digital dot barcodes on cards and transfers them to in-game, in this instance making the monsters from your real-life cards appear on the screen. It's a nice idea, and it's been used before with relative success with games like Pokémon or Animal Crossing, though the device never officially saw light of day in Europe. The only problem is that to get all of the benefits out of this game, you'll probably have to buy the cards too. Finally, judging by the shots, there looks to be a two-player local wireless mode. Here are some screens of the game and the card-reading add-on:

Stay tuned to N-Europe for the latest on Ultimate Beast Battlers for the DS.