The Wonderswan is really cool!

(This doesn't sell things or make a good product.)

I wish Bandai made an attempt to bring the Wonderswan Color over. Would it have done well? No, probably not. Though, maybe it could’ve gotten sales bundling anime games in blister packs alongside the last NeoGeo Pocket Colors. I got a blue Wonderswan Color and immediately put a backlit screen mod. For anyone who remembers the original GBA screen in the original context where it seemed slightly less absurd but still leaving people wanting a backlight to have a reflective non-backlit screen, the Wonderswan Color LCD is even worse. The Game Boy Color is pretty easy to see in a lot of lamp light situations, the Game Boy Advance needs something like a CFL lamp. NGPC isn’t too bad, but I think the GBC is still slightly better. I’ve not been in a rush to mod my NGPC one. I had trouble in the sun with the WSC. It was more usable, but it was also useless under lamplight. Or room light. It also ghosts. I think the Wonderswan Crystal improves that, but it’s harder to get for a good price now. I had forgotten how the gameboy LCDs were, so I refreshed my memory recently. I even tried a video light, colors get interesting when trying different lights. There is a very slight ghosting on DSi and DS, but it’s not as bad as say… playing in an emulator on a monitor or TV. GBC, GBA have basically zero ghosting. Though my GBA has some weird interference sometimes as its issue. The original GBA SP has a frontlight in the way, but it does kinda work like the original GBA when it’s off. Just, that light part kinda makes it weird to look through. The backlit kit I installed into the Wonderswan Color looks great, though perhaps more modern than expected. Perfectly fine though. It’s the only screen mod I’ve done without second thought.

    There’s now a MiSTER core for the Wonderswan (Color), but the button layout on the Swans are kind of the appeal. It makes skimming the library easier, but the controls are still funny in certain games. Held in ‘landscape’ positioning, the top left and bottom left corners have split directional pads. Yeah. Two d-pads. Bottom right has two action buttons. Some games work in portrait mode, so holding the system vertically like that gives a directional input and four action buttons. I feel as though if the system didn’t ghost a ton, we could’ve gotten more arcade games and vertical shooters. Maybe the original black/white model didn’t ghost? I think in B/W or greyscale the LCD type would’ve still ghosted, though maybe it was Gameboy levels. Anyway, there are games that change the orientation. There’s a status bar on the right edge (top in portrait) that displays which way the software expects the system to be held. (There’s also sound level indicators and a few other things I don’t quite remember.) Emulation works well, but there’s a physicality and portability to it that makes me wish I could just hand it to people. Its design language has both swooshes and a little bit of blobject. Gunpei Yokoi’s firm worked on it, and the last project he worked on before passing. It takes one (1) AA/LR6 Battery. Just one.

Software is important but in some of these portables the object itself is so important. This is probably on the same level as the Nintendo 64 Controller optical stick compared against emulation on a modern thumbstick. Sure, it works most of the time. But it doesn’t feel right. Playing the Rainbow Islands: Putty’s Party game is such a treat in portrait. Rainbow Islands is a Bubble Bobble game and is a vertically oriented platformer, perfect for the wonderswan. A golf game also uses the portrait mode and feels natural. These games need to get on switch somehow. FlipGrip Switch is the closest physical emulation we have for portrait mode games. Bandai feel like making a collection? Square Enix? Could we trick SE into translating the Wonderswan ports of Final Fantasy IV just to sell another nostalgia product? The library isn’t as accessible as one would hope. Luckily a few of the anime tie-in games, for One Piece and such, are action titles like platformers, brawlers, and fighters. I think it has a dating sim or two, also. Looking at the release timeline shows how dire it could’ve been for Bandai to burn cash trying to bring it here, but gosh they could’ve put it in quite a few hands. Digimon, One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, Gundam, Medabots, and other anime could have made it sell well as a budget system that could’ve done okay. I don’t now actually, I think that stuff got popular a little later in the west. 

Maybe Square was big enough that it would’ve been amazing, it’s just… Yeah I keep on looking at things. The Namco and Taito stuff sure look fun, but even I could see this not faring well. No way this was a simultaneous release internationally. FFTA was 2003, and I believe Square maybe had a game on GBA before that. The last games for WSC have 2002 and 2003 release dates. Square was merging and repairing the relationship it had with Nintendo, as were other Japanese 3rd party that didn’t do much during the N64. The GBA was too popular. Way too big. I do not see any of those publishers pushing forward with a localization for NA. Or even full EFIGS for EU. If I made a kiosk for the WonderSwan Crystal, it would need speakers and the headphone adapter. The built-in speaker is rancid. Yes, it got a NanaOn-Sha game. Yes, it had a homebrew devkit that actually produced games and tools. If Bandai who still published their own DVDs and handled a lot of North American stuff directly made a Kiosk even at E3 2002 for a late bargain bin launch it wouldn’t compare well to anything on the GBA. Even that dark LCD in the original GBA was better. The sound that gets whined about is leagues better than the Wonderswan’s. It would be Costco getting half of the stock, putting it in oversized blister packs that will make people bleed when carving it open. The shambling corpses of the brands GameStop was absorbing at the time would sell modest sized vacuum form blister packs. Suncoast would have it next to Dragon Half anime DVDs that would survive as new old stock in 2022. I still wish it could’ve come out here, but the consequences of that wish would probably make something drastic like have Namco be one of the first Japanese publishers Microsoft buys. Now that I’ve typed that it’s going to happen anyway, huh?