If you spend as much time at video game swaps and conventions as I do then you’re eventually going to find some interesting stuff. One of my most impressive finds was a handheld video game console, the WonderSwan Color. Now I bet you've never heard of the WonderSwan before and that's because the WonderSwan only came out in Japan. Because of that mostly all of its games were in Japanese so unless you know the language it’s really hard to play some of the games. But what was interesting about the WonderSwan was its history.
The WonderSwan was developed by Gunpei Yokoi, the man responsible for Nintendo’s successful Game Boy and the far less successful Virtual Boy. After the failure of the Virtual Boy Gunpei left Nintendo to form a new company called Koto. Through Bandai they would release the WonderSwan. Tragically though Gunpei died in 1997, two years before he could see the launch of the WonderSwan in 1999. Originally the WonderSwan was a monochrome device displaying eight shades of grey and black. But after a year the WonderSwan Color was released. There was also a third model that was introduced in 2002 shortly before the handheld was discontinued in 2003 and that model had a slightly better screen. However none of the WonderSwans released were backlit so it's always a little bit of a pain to view the screen.
The console has a set of 13 buttons all on the face of the system. Ten of the buttons are larger and plastic with designs very similar to what we've seen on the Xbox 360 controllers. The other three buttons are soft rubber. They are the console’s power button, start button and sound button. The sound button has four different settings of loud, medium, soft and silent, kind of a different way to go about volume on your console. While you might have some kind of fear of accidentally pressing the power button in the middle of a heated gaming session it's actually flush against the face of the unit — very hard to push it by accident. What's neat though is the strange placement of the buttons. While a lot of the games were designed to be played in landscape mode there were a few games that could be played in portrait mode. Either way you hold it the console and placement of buttons feel great in the hands. It's a cool design showing off some of the brilliance of the handheld’s creators.
Another neat and bizarre feature is when you press the start and power button at the same time the console brings up a menu that lets you insert your name, sex, birth date and blood type. There's also an options menu to change the contrast and volume but it's the information it asks you to insert at the beginning that's strangest to me. Seriously, why do they need your blood type? Once you've put in all that info the launch screen for the handheld will have your name below the Bandai logo every time you start up the system. Unlike other devices that would use a plastic piece to cover the battery tray the WonderSwan had a removeable, plastic battery pack. You inserted your AA battery into the battery pack and that would then slide into the back of the handheld. If you ever lost this piece then the WonderSwan simply became a paperweight. While the original WonderSwan could last anywhere from 30 to 40 hours, the model that I have lasts about 20 hours on a single AA battery.
The graphics are very close to what the SNES and Game Boy Advance could produce. It's a 16-bit handheld and some of the games show it off better than others. In the bundle I picked up I got a few neat titles like Space Battleship Yamato, an Inuyasha game, Chaos Gear and a Gundam game called Kidou Senshi Gundam Volume 1 Side 7. This game is actually very colorful and has some great animations but because of my inability to understand Japanese I have no real idea what's going on. There was however one game that I got that was pretty much in full English, a puzzle game called Gunpey. Gunpey was originally designed by Tetsuya Mizuguchi and he's the guy behind Rez, Space Channel 5 and Lumines. Apparently the game is named after Gunpei Yokoi as a tribute to him. While this game can be found on other handhelds now like the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, the original is still a pretty fun game to play and it's the best example of portrait gameplay of all the games I own. There is another game I got for the WonderSwan and it's probably the main reason why the WonderSwan had any amount of success in Japan, Final Fantasy. While Nintendo and SquareSoft were not on speaking terms SquareSoft ported over the original Final Fantasy one, two and four to the WonderSwan. Each game featured improved graphics and controls making them a must-own for any fan of the series in Japan at the time. I really wish I could play the copy of Final Fantasy I have but because I can't read a word of Japanese the bulk of the game is lost on me.
Something I wanted to make note of was that the game cartridges for this system are really poorly designed. Unlike almost any other cartridge based console or handheld, like the NES or a Game Boy, the WonderSwan cards have exposed connectors. Having them exposed is a little dangerous because it increases the chance of damaging them however all the games I have worked just fine and they're pretty old. But I could just be lucky. The WonderSwan is a pretty cool handheld and, although it's pretty hard to find outside of Japan, if you can find yourself a unit and a bunch of games pick it up. There's a lot of really cool titles on it that are pretty impressive for the day. My personal favorite is Gunpey and if you can find Gunpey it is mostly in English so you can actually play it. And it's a pretty cool puzzle game very reminiscent of Tetris. But if you can understand Japanese there is a whole world of games that are unique to the platform that you can try out. This is an awesome system and it's totally worth your time if you can find it.
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