Ever heard about the WonderSwan? Its my favorite handheld! 




Presenting the WonderSwan, WonderSwan Color, and Swan Crystal! (photo form Wikipedia). I know what you're thinking. What a weird name! What a weird design! But the WonderSwan was made with real care, its no knock-off! Once you learn more about it, you wont think its such a silly handheld.


HISTORY AND SPECS
The WonderSwan was actually made by the same person who made the original Gameboy and Virtual Boy, Gunpey Yokoi. He originally left Nintendo after the failure of the VirtualBoy (we all forgot about that) to create his own company called Koto Laboratory.

His company partnered with Bandai (after the failure of Bandai and Sega merger, but no one remembers) to create the Wonderswan. Now for the important stuff: The reason why it was named after the bird was because the Swan above water shows an elegant bird but below has powerful legs to help it swim. It was a symbol of what the WonderSwan is, powerful and beautiful. When you think about it like that, the name fits perfectly. Unfortunately Gunpey Yokoi died before he can even see his work be released (and some fans even use the sad pun of it being his Swan song). Sadness aside, lets now talk about the design.

All WonderSwan versions run one just one-single AA battery. But they were able to play for about 20 hours. As for the design, you probably already guessed the oddity, it has a second D-pad on the top-left hand corner. You see the best thing about this handheld is that some games were designed to be played vertically. To be honest, i don't think it was the "best" design but i do think it works well for those games. This was probably unintended but it works even better for games meant to be played horizontally and use the additional D-pad. Games like Dicing Knight Period definitely use this.

The original WonderSwan was monochrome in 1999 device which was released around the Gameboy color in 1998. Why did they do this? Gunpei Yokoi did this based from past experience with the Gameboy. Gameboy was popular despite it being monochrome while the Game Gear (from Sega, that again, no one remembers) wasn't doing so well. The WonderSwan is still superior to the original Gameboy in terms of graphics. The original Gameboy had only 4 shades of grey. The WonderSwan had 8 shades of grey. And a lot of WonderSwan games used most of the shades.



An example of the 8-shades being used. Far more detail. The WonderSwan was able to have visual novels. This one is Ring Infinity.


But despite all that work, the WonderSwan wasn't gaining much success. Color Handhelds were highly successful. So Bandai/Koto Laboratory would work on a new iteration, this time with color. But this time, it wasn't going to just improve 1-up the Gameboy color by adding a few colors, The WonderSwan Color completely blow it out of the park. You see for Japan, before Gameboy Advance there was WonderSwan color. That's right! The WonderSwan Color was actually at the level of the GBA, if not better and it came before the GBA. Let me give an example:

Final Fantasy I released for both Gameboy Advance and Wonderswan Color.

WonderSwan Color:


Gameboy Advance:


Gameboy Advance has more detailed water (which the WSC is fully capable of too) but the WonderSwan Color is far more vibrant in color. As an addition, the Visual novels were even more stunning.



Terrors 2, for WonderSwan color (and compatible with the original WonderSwan).

Unfortunately, the biggest issue with WonderSwan is the screens. They were inferior when it came to any form of gaming (personal experience with both WonderSwan and Color). The Heavy heavy detail of the visual novels look stunning when i play it in an emulator, but i see only a fraction of it on the actual screen. The same goes for the color version. I don't think it was "that' bad as some youtube reviewers make it out though.

Rose Colored Gaming actually made custom WonderSwan colors with back-lit screens and custom color. Unfortunately, they are out of stock (and doubt they will ever restock). So the lucky few who found them and took advantage of the sale, i say "Damn you!" (kidding).



But that didn't stop the WonderSwan series. An updated Color version using better screen was made. This one was called SwanCrystal. A good name, but unfortunately i haven't been able to play for myself to test out. The SwanCrystal still didn't have a backlit screen, but i hear that it helps marginally.

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

The WonderSwan continues to be even more intersting through Hardware and Software accessories. (Warning, most accessories use the term Wonder a lot. Be prepared to be annoyed how tedious the names get) The first object is a simple one. Instead of a Link Cable, players can connect wirelessly through an add-on accessory called WonderWave. This existed before the GBA, so its still worthy of a mention.

The next accessory also uses the Wonderwave, but it is the most interesting thing that Bandai has ever came up with. The WonderBorg. It was a beetle like robot, that you can actually program and control with a WonderSwan. It came with a special cartridge that helps you control it and more software to program it through your computer. If Bandai/Koto focused their selling point on this. I'm positive that the WonderSwan would've been more successful. But sadly they didn't take full advantage of this.




Note: The one with blaster may not be real. I havent seen a wonderborg with such an item. but if it was real, it wold make it even more appealing.

What could be better than that? Well, lets see a programming kit called WonderWitch (i wasn't joking about the names). This kit helped you make your own game! You would get a cartridge of your own and write the name of the game. Like a mix-tape. They even made competitions for it for those who wanted to make WonderSwan games. Winners would get their game reworked and published. The two most famous games that came from these competitions were Dicing Knight (Period) and Judgement Silversword (Rebith Edition). The paranthesis is part of the name when it got published.

And speaking of which, i haven't talked about the large variety of games. The WonderSwan has a large amount of games. Some were games that already existed and were ported over. For some reason the WonderSwan had a significant ammount of Horror games. Ring Infinity, Two games based on Junji Ito's Uzumaki (1 visual novel, 1 simulator) Clock Tower for WonderSwan, TERRORS and TERRORS2 (that i can think of at the top of my head.

If you look up WonderSwan, don't let people fool you into thinking its a weeaboo/hipster console. Some of these reviews will make you believe the best games from WonderSwan ported to GBA. And that's not true. There was some pretty great games that are still exclusive to this day. Dicing Knight Period, Judgement Silversword (ok this one isn't. But still hard to find), Dark Eyes: Battle Gate, Saga (better version of the Gameboy Final Fantasy Legend), Romancing Saga (a game we never got in the west), SD Gundam games.



Unfortunately, thats where the series died. in 2003, Bandai/Koto discontinued. But its still an amazing console that accomplished alot more than what we can say about other Handhelds.

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