The WonderSwan launched on Ma and was available in nine casing colors: pearl white, skeleton green, silver metallic, skeleton pink, blue metallic, skeleton blue, skeleton black, camouflage, and gold. It is also compatible with the PocketStation (right) for select Bandai games.
The WonderWave accessory is an infrared communicator that could transfer data between two WonderSwans. The company promised a 30-hour battery life, a low retail price, and a launch lineup of roughly fifty games. Bandai chose the name of the system to highlight its aesthetics and technical capabilities because the swan is recognized as an elegant bird with powerful legs that aid its graceful swimming. The WonderSwan was officially unveiled in Tokyo on October 8, 1998. Yokoi was involved in development of the new handheld, but died in 1997 in a car accident before it was released. It was then that Bandai approached Yokoi to create the WonderSwan to compete with the Game Boy. After the failure of the Virtual Boy, however, he left the company in 1996 in order to create his own engineering firm, Koto Laboratory. Įngineer Gunpei Yokoi is known for creating the Game Boy handheld system at Nintendo. As a result, Bandai entered the market without outside support. Bandai president Makoto Yamashina took responsibility for failing to gain the support of his company for the merger. Bandai's board of directors decided to oppose the merger less than a week after approving it, and Sega in turn decided to accept Bandai's actions at an emergency board meeting later that day. in 1997, the merger was called off suddenly. Despite plans for Bandai to merge with Sega to form Sega Bandai Ltd. However, the company's greatest success in electronic games, was the Tamagotchi virtual pet first released in 1996. In 1982, the company released the Intellivision in Japan, and in 1985 it became one of the first third-party licensees on the Family Computer. In the 1970s, Bandai manufactured both LCD games based on television programs and dedicated consoles. Retrospective feedback praises the potential of the WonderSwan despite its low sales and its brief time holding its own against Nintendo in the marketplace.įounded in 1950 by Naoharu Yamashina, Bandai was originally a manufacturer of toy cars and plastic models, but became a major player in the toy industry through the licensing of popular anime characters beginning with Tetsuwan Atomu in 1963.
Overall, the WonderSwan in all its variations combined to sell an estimated 3.5 million units and managed to obtain as much as 8% of the Japanese handheld video game console market before being marginalized by Nintendo's Game Boy Advance. The WonderSwan is playable both vertically and horizontally, and features a unique library of games, including numerous first-party titles based on licensed anime properties, as well as significant third-party support from developers such as Squaresoft, Namco, Capcom and Banpresto. Later improvements took advantage of quality upgrades to the handheld's screen and added color. Powered by a 16-bit central processing unit, the WonderSwan took advantage of a low price point and long battery life in comparison to its competition, Nintendo's Game Boy Color and SNK's Neo Geo Pocket Color. During its lifespan, no variation of the WonderSwan was released outside of Japan.
Released in 1999 in the fifth generation of video game consoles, the WonderSwan and its two later models, the WonderSwan Color and SwanCrystal were officially supported until being discontinued by Bandai in 2003. It was developed by Gunpei Yokoi's company Koto Laboratory and Bandai, and was the last piece of hardware Yokoi developed before his death in 1997. The WonderSwan (ワンダースワン) is a handheld game console released in Japan by Bandai.
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