[creeperton]

.

[JCE3000GT]

Holy crap, how is that possible? 

[Lilinda]

It included an IR sensor, obviously, and likely a CPU or microcontroller as well.

[What Defines A Monster?]

Holy crap, how is that possible?

It was a Game Boy Color title, according to the website.

Which makes sense, because the GBC had a built in IR port. It was barely used- mostly for Pokémon, if I do recall.

[FAST6191]

Yeah the GBC has an IR port, there was even a fairly popular (as in I saw it in actual brick and mortar game shops) unofficial addon in the smartcom
http://gbatemp.net/pix/32303/gbaremotesmartcom.jpg

Technical links because why not
http://nocash.emubase.de/pandocs.htm#cgbregisters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUvFGTxZBG8

[Jorpho]

I remember reading about this game in Nintendo Power way back in the day.  The 3DS also has an IR port, so in theory we could see the likes of this again.

I think the DS Pokemon carts also had IR functionality of some sort.

[FAST6191]

Yeah the DS carts that came with the "pokewalker"* had it, they stuck it on the save bus (which in practice was more or less standard SPI) and put a selection chip for it. This made save dumping harder for some old tools.

*a little pedometer that you transferred a pokemon to and it got EXP as you walked around.

[KingMike]

I remember reading about that back in the day in Nintendo Power. It sounded cooler than the actual game.

Then again there were the Austin Powers GBC "games" that had nothing but those extras, leaving me confused. So someone made an AP parody of Windows 95 for GBC and then decided it was worth selling as a retail product? With two versions?

[Jorpho]

Yeah the DS carts that came with the "pokewalker"* had it, they stuck it on the save bus (which in practice was more or less standard SPI) and put a selection chip for it. This made save dumping harder for some old tools.

*a little pedometer that you transferred a pokemon to and it got EXP as you walked around.

The weird thing is that there's no obvious IR window anywhere on the cart.  The same goes for the Gen V games, which could apparently communicate with each other.