Patent ID: 7963851

Claim:
An entertainment apparatus using cards for obtaining inputs from a plurality of cards on each of which a visually human-identifiable design is printed and performing information processing in accordance with the inputs, comprising: a card photographing part, the card defining a footprint having a first dimension and a second dimension perpendicular to the first dimension, the card photographing part including an area having a dimension equal to the first dimension, a first structure opposing a first side of the area, a second structure opposing a second side of the area, the second side being opposite the first side, the first and second structures acting to fix the card in contact with the area; a photographic device that is configured to photograph the design of the card that is fixed in contact with the area of the card photographing part and to form a photographic pixel data array; a database including a plurality of entries individually corresponding to the plurality of cards, each of the entries including a pair of a card ID and a comparison data array; a card identifier for searching the database for a specific comparison data array based on the photographic pixel data array and obtaining a card ID pairing up with the specific comparison data array; and an information processor for performing the information processing with the card ID obtained by the card identifier as an input, wherein the photographic device includes an image sensor for photographing the design and outputting a photographic signal, a data array former for sampling the photographic signal and forming a data array, and a photographic pixel data array former for re-sampling the data array and forming the photographic pixel data array, wherein the data array formed by the data array former is constituted by a plurality of pixel data, wherein the photographic pixel data array formed by the photographic pixel data array former is constituted by a plurality of photographic pixel data, and wherein the photographic pixel data array former sequentially extracts a predetermined number of pixel data of pixels adjacent to each other in an image represented by the photographic signal from the plurality of pixel data constituting the data array while the extracted pixel data are changed sequentially, and produces a single photographic pixel data based upon the extracted predetermined number of pixel data every time the predetermined number of pixel data is extracted.