The WonderSwan is a very interesting Japanese-exclusive handheld, manufactured by Bandai (toy manufacturer of Gundam fame) in 1999. It was developed by Gunpei Yokoi (of Game Boy fame / Virtual Boy infamy) before his untimely death in 1997.
(The late Mr. Yokoi was a wizard at creating gaming handhelds – first the Game and Watch followed by the Game Boy)
The WonderSwan has (and continues to have) two major advantages over similar handhelds: very long battery life (40 hours for the black and white version with a single AA battery) and a cheap price-point (even today the black and white models are less than $20).
This handheld resembles a Game and Watch. You can easily imagine pulling it out of a coat pocket to play while waiting for a ride or in line. And given Mr. Yokoi’s involvement, that makes perfect sense. The console had a 4-year run and at one point had 8% of the handheld market share in Japan. Unfortunately, as stated, it was never released outside of Japan.
The first thing you may notice is the control scheme with two sets of four buttons each. Based on the game, you will play the handheld in one of two directions and one of the four-button sets will be your directions while either the two-button set or other four-button set are your action buttons.
Playing games in the vertical (or tate) mode is a very neat feature. Some games (like Klonoa and Rockman) will change orientation at various points in the game for level-design purposes.
Let’s look at the system’s technical specs. The WonderSwan’s CPU runs at roughly 3 mhz (compared to the 4mhz Game Boy and the 1.79 NES) – which may explain some of its excellent battery life. The video ram on the WonderSwan is a whopping 512 kB (which seems like complete overkill compared to 2 kb on NES, 8 kb on Game Boy, and 96 kb on GBA).
The Game Boy Advance (which came out in 2001) blew away the competing WonderSwan with its roughly 17 mhz CPU. It was also employing 16-bit-styled titles instead of the 8-bit-style of WonderSwan.
Bandai initially put the console out sheepishly, though at a very competitive price-point. While it was a technical success in Japan at it’s peak (about 8% of market share), it failed to hold sales as the new generation of handhelds came out. The Wonderswan was defeated by competing Neo Geo Pocket and Game Boy Advance sales (even though it was still competitively priced). Eventually Nintendo’s GBA also forced SNK’s offering out of the market as well.
(The release of the GBA heralded the WonderSwan’s decline).
There are three main variations of this handheld: the original monochromatic model, the color model, and the SwanCrystal model. Each of these came in a variety of colors and each has their own advantages/disadvantages.
(The quick evolution from black and white, to color, to the sharper-pixel Crystal).
(The original black and white carts have a dark or smoke shell while the color and crystal games come in a clear shell.)
The original model has a very long battery life and non-color games look just fine on it (though with a degree of motion blur like with the Game Boy). If you’re interest is in monochrome games for the handheld, this is probably the model to shoot for – as those games have better visibility on the monochrome screens than on the more-expensive Color models.
(The original WonderSwan is great for the classic titles like Space Invaders.)
(The standard WonderSwan Colors came in 5 shades. Some middle titles are backwards compatible, but most Color games – with clear cases – require the Color system to play. This is very reminiscent of Game Boy / Game Boy Color games during their transition phase.)
The WonderSwan Color model has a darker-contrast screen that’s often harder to see outside of playing under a lamp. This version, of course, offers color for games that support it and is moderately-reasonable in price (compared to the SwanCrystal).
(Wonderswan Color screen isn’t bad, but you really need proper room lighting to see it. The Crystal screen – right – is easier to see and much sharper.)
The later SwanCrystal model comes with an improved screen (sharper, without as much ghosting, and easier to see than the previous color model), but doesn’t have the battery life that the others did (it’s still 15 hours with a single AA, so in my opinion that’s great). It’s unfortunately expensive compared to the other models – as it came out at the end of the system’s life.
For an English-speaker, the game selection is really a mixed bag. The bulk of the titles released for this handheld are JRPGs or involve a level of expertise in Japanese that make the game menus difficult or the game unplayable. For example, there are three Final Fantasy games (I, II, and IV) that were released for WonderSwan (in color), but only in Japanese. There are certainly less English-friendly games available than on other Japan-centric systems of the time – like the Neo Geo Pocket (NGP). While there are several Gundam games (as you would expect with this being owned by Bandai), only one or two of them are really enjoyable to non-English-speakers).
(A special edition WonderSwan Color came with Final Fantasy.)
And, due to collector interest, often the English-playable games aren’t really cheap (well at least not compared to GBA or NGP titles). But that’s not to say there aren’t great games and ports to this system if you can find them. The English-friendly releases available do make the system worth owning – though perhaps not for the budget-minded. Such games include Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museum, Rockman & Forte, and Mr. Driller.
The obvious issue here is that most of these games (or franchises) also saw great releases on the GBA and are far more accessible (both price-wise and rarity-wise) to gamers on it. The Rockman & Forte and Mr. Driller on GBA are just simply better versions as well. I guess the true value with WonderSwan is the overall experience. Everyone I know that’s owned one of these really loves it. This is such a unique little handheld (and with such a short lifespan) that the shallow English-friendly gaming library can be forgiven to an extent.
(While the gimmick of playing Klonoa in two orientations is certainly nifty, it’s far more accessible as a GBA title.)
There are certainly WonderSwan games like Gunpey (named for Gunpei Yokoi) and Buffer’s Evolution that don’t really have a presence on other handhelds (or not until much later generations like the Nintendo DS). So this adds more appeal to the appeal for collectors and retro-gaming enthusiasts.
Despite the lack of CPU-horsepower, there are also a few fighters on the system like Guilty Gear (Petit and Petit 2) and Pocket Fighter (which didn’t come out on GBA or NGP). These are actually decent, surprisingly enough.
A WonderSwan development kit (WonderWitch) was produced and sold to Japanese residents with coding contests held to have winning titles produced officially. Programmers could write code in C++ and push to the development cart (there also apparently connectivity to the PlayStation 2).
(The WonderWitch development kit)
One result of this kit was the shooter game Judgement Silversword seeing an official release by the kit company, Qute. This is an excellent game (which, uniquely for it’s genre, can be played in the tate screen orientation on a handheld) but is quite rare and subsequently pricey these days. Hopefully this handheld will see some sort of flash cart at some point so that the games will be more available.
The WonderSwan isn’t for everyone, but if you love old-school games and are a collector you should try to get one. It’s an elegant, if not outdated, handheld with an interesting history and some really fun games. It’s also a system that can easily travel with you and with an excellent battery life.
Now for shameful self-promotion:
I sell hand-made (or modded) items (like back-lit custom Game Boys) here (etsy).
And I also sell extra used games and manuals I pick up here (ebid) and here (ebay).
Also, please follow me on Twitter and Instagram (@UrzasRage) for pics and announcements.
Proceeds from my shops either go back into my collection as game purchases (so that I have more to write about), for more game-chasing, or are given to gaming-related charities.