In 1999, Bandai – no doubt tempted by the oodles of cash Nintendo were raking in via their Gameboy – released their own handheld system called the Wonderswan. It was notably designed by legendary hardware engineer Gunpei Yokoi (who created the Gameboy and many other Nintendo products) and was less expensive, more powerful and had longer battery life than the Gameboy. Bandai leveraged their contacts within the anime industry to deliver a wealth of licensed games unique to the system. It was quite a success in Japan in the first couple of years, obtaining almost 10% of the portable market. Then along came the Gameboy Advance, which killed the Wonderswan almost immediately, and despite two updates in as many years, the Wonderswan was discontinued in 2003. It was never released outside of Japan.
I bought mine in Japan in 2004 for Y3600, or about $31. This was the final iteration of the system, called the SwanCrystal. It boasted better battery life and a colour screen compared to the original version, but is reverse compatible with all Wonderswan games. Mine came with two games and I bought 7 more at a total cost of an additional $45 (approximately). Here are the games I bought that day:
I bought it in Akihabara, on the first or second day of the trip at a branch of ‘Super Potato’ if memory serves me correctly. Of the games shown above, only Final Fantasy IV (Y1900) and Front Mission (Y1800) cost much at all – Densha de Go! was an incredible Y80 (about $0.70)!
I still have fond memories of playing the system in the inn at night during that very trip to Japan. In those days, this was extremely advanced handheld technology.
The system uses a single AA battery and has a (non backlit) 224×144 resolution colour LCD screen. It’s very reflective, which made taking photographs difficult. As you can see the cartridge-to-system ratio is enormous, and the cartridges for the WS are not just big compared to itself, but amongst the biggest handheld system cartridges I’ve ever seen. The pool game (Sidepocket) was made before the colour version came out and is B&W only. Here’s a shot of the graphics:
The Wonderswan feels more like a toy than it’s competitors, but delivers in the gameplay department. The screen refresh is much better than it was on the gameboy, and the graphics and sound are still impressive today. I forget the battery life but it was surprisingly long for a single AA, and I very much enjoyed playing the FF games on this system long before ports came out for the Gameboy Advance. As you can see, it took me over 28 hours to reach the end of Final Fantasy IV:
The game is of course all in Japanese (as would be virtually every game for the system) but I had played it multiple times before so that didn’t bother me. Here’s a photo of the fight against Bahamut:
Note the unusual controls of the system, specifically the two d-pads on the left. This was so the games could be played either vertically or horizontally, or even by two people at once. No game I have supports vertical (or 2P) mode so I don’t know what it’s like, but the small size of the system would make holding it vertically uncomfortable for an adult.
As with most retro game systems, and despite being at best a footnote and at worst unknown, the WS seems to be appreciating in value these days. A boxed SwanCrystal can be picked up for about $80+ on ebay, although apparently mine is one of the less common colours (‘blue violet’) and may cost twice that. Games range in price from a few dollars up to over $1000. And yes, that’s no mistype: go and search ebay for ‘Judgement Silversword’ to see what I mean. I just checked ebay for the ‘value’ of my games and found most of the WS Colour ones to be going for about $20-30 each (boxed).
However to me my most prized game is actually this one:
It’s an adventure-type game based on the Uzumaki manga by Junjo Ito. It’s B&W since it was for the basic WS, and virtually unplayable for me due to the language barrier, but I’m a big fan of the manga so I couldn’t resist buying the game ‘for the collection’ when I saw it a few years after I’d bought the WS during a later Japanese trip. Here’s a screenshot:
This game was also the reason for the one-and-only Wikipedia edit I ever made. But that’s another blog entry…
