Barcode Battler (black)

Barcode Battler (called Barcode Battler II in Japan) was a black game console released by Epoch in 1992, and distributed internationally the year after. It was the sequel to the original, white Barcode Battler a Japanese only release and followed on from the success it had since its release the year before. Following the sucess of the first console in Japan its sequel (looking very similar to the original but black with purple buttons instead of white with black buttons) called Barcode Battler II was released in 1992, and was marketed around the world as "Barcode Battler" the next year. The concept was the same, with three game modes: a multiplayer one-on-one duel mode (C0) corresponding to B2, C1 to COM and C2 to B1, but with added features.

Additional features
The black Barcode Battler had similar gameplay to the original white console, but included new additional features.

Heroes and Enemies could now be either Warriors or Wizards, with a whole system of Magic added for the latter. The maximum HP (Hit Points) were essentially doubled and SP (Survival Points) could be used during a battle to heal damage.

The console also featured connectivity via an output port to other consoles, including the Famicom (Japanese NES) and Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) as well as the other Barcode Battler consoles mentioned below.

To take advantage of the new features the Barcode Battler II had new decoding methods which were less predictable than the original and better suited to international barcode standards.

Editions
Released first in Japan as the Barcode Battler II, it was distributed internationally as Barcode Battler, mainly by Tomy in Europe (with Giochi Preziosi in Italy being the exception) and Irwin in North America, who made the only slight alterations to the barcodes on the cards. All the other international versions were simply rebranded by Tomy (even the Italian version was the same as the other European editions) and translated into the appropriate language. The console itself was only different in the LCD display screen characters and printed markings.
 * Barcode Battler II (Japan)
 * Barcode Battler English Edition (UK)
 * Barcode Battler Deutsch Version (Germany)
 * Barcode Battler (German-UK import)
 * Barcode Battler Nederlands Versie (Netherlands)
 * Barcode Battler Edition française (France)
 * Barcode Battler Versión española (Spain)
 * Barcode Battler (Giochi Preziosi) (Italy)
 * Barcode Battler (Irwin) (USA)
 * Barcode Battler (Irwin bilingual) (Canada)