At this week’s GAMA trade show in Las Vegas Konami Digital Entertainment will unveil an innovative Barcode Scanner that will be used by Official Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Tournament Stores to enter players into events and compile their rankings.  The Barcode Scanners, which have been in use in Japan for some time, will be utilized in North America for the first time this year.  The current roster of around 300 Official Konami Tournament Stores will be the first to use the Barcode Scanners, which will be provided free of charge.

The barcode system is the key to the tournament rankings system (known as the Konami Card Game Official Tournament Support SYstem or "COSSY") in Konami’s organized play program (see “Konami Brings Back Shonen Jump Championships”).  Konami’s player ID cards contain a barcode that makes registering players for tournament action a simple matter of swiping the card through the scanner.  Once the tournament is over and the results have been confirmed the players’ rankings are updated online automatically.

At GAMA Konami will be demonstrating the use of the Barcode Scanner system, signing up stores for its organized play program, and showing off a host of upcoming products for both the Yu-Gi-Oh! and Blue Dragon TCGs.