Pinata fans reverse-engineer barcodes

By Tom Bramwell Published 10 May, 2010

Hot Choclodocus action!

Enterprising heroes from the brilliant PinataIsland.info community have managed to reverse-engineer the Pinata Vision barcode system used in Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise.

Developer Rare had been steadily distributing Pinata Vision cards online since the game launched in late 2008, allowing fans of the game to spawn their favourite pinata into Trouble in Paradise using the Xbox Live Vision camera.

But when Rare ran out of cards to distribute, the community barcode project took over and has since managed to produce a card that spawns one of the rarest pinata: the mighty Choclodocus.

Under normal circumstances you can only tempt the Choclodocus into your garden by gathering bones and gems and following other steps. Not any more! Good work, enterprising heroes.

Check out the PinataIsland.info forum for more details.

Viva Pinata is the best game ever made. Apart from Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise, which is the best game ever made. You make a garden and then lure awesome animals into it and get them to mate and slaughter each other.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000. Follow him on Twitter.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (14) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • RodHull #1 2 years ago

    Whilst any news about the truly wonderful Viva Piñata can only be welcomed lovingly, this has been around for months. There's even an iPhone app for downloading and displaying the cards

  • menage #2 2 years ago

    Does this work without a camera in any way?

  • Tomo #3 2 years ago

    I ought to play VP one day :/

  • Retroid #4 2 years ago

    Well, I hadn't heard of this!

    /Fetches that-thing-I-only-use-to-change-my-profile-pic

  • ziggy_played_guitar #5 2 years ago

    ahahah! Awesome! Took me so many hours to get that weirdo. Good job.

  • metalangel #6 2 years ago

    The Chocolodocus is easy to get... now the Roario (which won't even visit unless you have four Zumbugs and four Doenuts, which means you have to keep bringing more in as the Roario visits in order to eat them) is a pain. As are the stupid sours. And Professor Fucking Pester, who would have singlehandedly ruined the game were it not for the ability to glitch him outside your garden (with a wall by the Tower Of Sour)

  • Doctor_What #7 2 years ago

    VP:TIP made my ex cry. Weeds took over her garden and she didn't have the hand-eye skill to destroy them all before they had killed half of her pinatas.

  • Quint2020 #8 2 years ago

    I hate that Rare have made awesome games like the Viva Pinata titles and the awesome and ridiculously underrated B&K: N&B and they never sell, it's a crying shame.

  • RobotRocker #9 2 years ago

    I hate that Rare have made awesome games like the Viva Pinata titles and the awesome and ridiculously underrated B&K: N&B and they never sell, it's a crying shame.

    Its because the general public are jerks. VP is tough at times but its one of the most rewarding games ever but no one wants to raise pinatas when they can be always Oscar Mike and killing things.

    Though how brilliance like VP fails but utter trash like Farmville becomes popular within the public I will never know. MS and Rare might have missed a trick by not porting the DS version to Facebook.

  • Sunyavadin #10 2 years ago

    In other news: Modern Warfare 2 is expected to sell well, and MS are considering dropping support for third party memory cards.

  • Belnini #11 2 years ago

    @Quint2020 I think they made a movie tie-in back in the day that sold a few copies...

  • RodHull #12 2 years ago

    @Doctor_what

    Is that why you dumped her? Her appalling virtual gardening skills?

  • Machetazo #13 2 years ago

    ? The Barcode Battler: Gone but not forgotten, I guess.

  • Preztail #14 2 years ago

    When the Hell are we getting a new Viva Pinata Game sod Natal this is what we want