The Bandai Wonderswan

These things cost nothing. They're flooded on the market and nobody wants them. 100 pound is mental, ebay's another world.

Edit: "gun pay". Fantastic!

I remember when I saw this system in game mags and wondered what happened with the western release. I still wonder how that fell through, it seems like a potential but something happened there.

Non fungible Con tricks😂🤣

Nintendo has Pokemon

It needs to have a metal crank on the side

Wow, your forced Dick Smith laughter is like 20 years too late...

I think wonder swan is one of the most beautiful names ever
prettiest handheld by far

Wonder Swans were once sold in a department store in Yorkshire called Boyes. They sold both the Wonder Swan and Neo Geo Pocket (can't remember if it was the colour), around the same time, very cheaply.
It had to be around the year 99/00.

I was following developments in Japan at the time and was really into the Neo Geo Pocket, so I viewed the Wonderswan as a bit of the enemy(to the NGP, but in a friendly way), but I always thought it was a neat device. Multiple times since its release, I considered picking up the Wonderswan, even when it was still the black and white model on sale. It was partly for the novelty, because how many people would have a Wonderswan in the US in 1999? The sticking point was always how many playable games in English that appealed to me. It was very much a platform targeted to the Japanese market. While the system was impressively inexpensive even for importation, without more than a couple of games I was interested in, I always ended up deciding it was better to spend that money on a NGP or Dreamcast game. But I have always appreciated the "withered technology" philosophy behind the portable systems of the time, and the Wonderswan may have been the most impressive example of that in the pre-GBA period. The Swan was so well thought out with respectable hardware, low price, and power efficiency running on one battery.

Poor plebs stick to emulation... Sadge

it took me years to finally get myself a Flashmasta WS flash cart. totally worth it.

There's absolutely no reason for Wonderswans to have become this expensive other than the same thing that has wrecked every other aspect of the retro collecting hobby. Greed. Spend five minutes in Japan and you'll see how ridiculously common these are. They are also being bought up en masse to mod them with the new IPS screens. Japanese sellers have cottoned on to this and upped the prices and the usual gullible idiots have affirmed them and created the now much maligned pricecharting standard.

I hate the "supply and demand" argument because it ignores what's really going on with the cynical speculators who have ruined our hobby.

I bought a BW wonderswan 7/8 years ago for $80 on eBay. In near perfect condition. Hrmm

I remember emulating this thing when I was a kid in the early 2000s was the only way I could play any version of guilty gear and I was obsessed with it for a time

This isn’t worth 40$

A lot of people are complaing, so I will too. I remember learning about this thing in 2020. After seeing how cheap it was ($15-$20) I thought it would be great for introducing people to modding consoles. However, I wanted a crystal for cheap, or one with the box for some reason (I forgot the reason), so I didnt buy any. I then forgot about it until this video.
Also in 2020, I remember trying to get a wonderburg ( wonderswan rc car) on yahoo auction jp, but somwone bidded 50 dollars for it. How many people want a wonderburg?

There's an Evangelion game for the Wonderswan? Ok, now I need one.

I bought a color and a backlight screen mod for half the price of what the crystal goes for these days. That’s the best way to go if you intend to buy one of these these days.

The rainbow island game is pretty neat and very very cute, it actually has some bits of voice acting and is quite enjoyable despite the lower amount of islands.
Sadly the games that don't require japanese knowledge on wonderswan can skyrocket in price.

Always wanted to program them but didn't have the monies to import one in the states. My sister wanted the neo geo pocket. We read the game mags and wished to have every game lol. Now we're game developers 😆

Gunpei has a NDS port. I had the physical cart. That version had this “music creation tool” that could only make 1 measure of music, which comes out to like 1.7 seconds. It only has 16 time-steps when you need 24 time-steps to recreate the Nokia Waltz ringtone.

Having an x86 processor doesn't make it "technically a PC". That's like claiming the Sega Master System is "technically a ZX Spectrum" because they both have a Z80 or that the Amiga is "technically a Macintosh" because they both use the Motorola 68000...

It has? Lol hell I bought mine just a couple years ago & they were pretty cheap. I even got a Crystal model for just 100 or so. How much are the Crystals going for now?

These actually aren't all that obscure in Japan. It was a fairly popular system over there. Not super successful like anything Nintendo put out but still not all that rare over there. It of course never came here so yeah, make of that what you will.

Honestly, these systems were just BEGGING to be front or backlit even when they were first coming out. I really don't get why they didn't take the Indiglo approach like Nintendo did with their Gameboy Light. It doesn't use much power & works perfectly fine. The Wonderswan really could have used such a thing, or at LEAST the Crystal model. Hard to believe that even the premium Crystal model has no light. I've been wanting to mod mine with a front or backlight just so it's visible to actually play the damn thing. Even for an unlit screen these things are incredibly hard to see.

WOW! That racing game looks amazing! Has freaking sprite scaling for crying out loud! Lol it actually makes me wonder if it would somehow be possible to load an old version of MS-DOS on to the thing.... Would LOVE to see that happen!

There are actually DIY headphone adapter designs out there these days for this. A lot better than paying 100 bucks for the real one since they're so rare.

Wonderswan does what Nintendidn't.

Wow! The Color games look FAR more advanced than the Monochrome ones. Just goes to show what an increase in RAM can do for a system when RAM is lacking. You can see this in many systems from the past, one being the GBC itself, and the PC Engine & it's CD accessory & the added memory that came w it. The Super CD games look significantly better than anything that was on HuCard.

Lol I think the Mega Duck has that name beat. Must have been one awesome Duck who they named that system after :)

Prices multiplied by 10 in less than 3-4 years has no justification. They are still not rare, and still not that collected. As always it is not supply and demand, just supply hoarding the stocks and pushing prices higher, even if it means not selling them for months or years. A polite word is speculation, but the reality it describes is money obsessed people shitting on everyone else, while dressing up as connoisseurs and specialists.

Man I wish I got into this system a few years ago. I got one recently with the IPS/backlight mod..but man the games (especially the English friendly ones) are ungodly expensive now. I’d love a flash cart but the guy who does them doesn’t have any in stock..and hasn’t for a while. Golden Axe is like $250.

Even considering the lack Of backlight, collors and the speakers ... The way they where ... Using Just ONE battery and playing for 40 hours ... Thats absolutelly amazing!

This System was incredibly powerful (maybe not so much in the Sound department but ... Well, we'd Go through this on NES, Atari 2600 ... This was not a "no-go" for us).

The design Also is pure genious - perfectly playable for letf and right handed people, Also letting play on Tate mode or horizontal.

There was absolutelly no way Of competing with GBA and ... To be Fair, Anything Nintendo release because Of their IPs and background but ... For god's sake, this console should left a broader legacy ... So many good ideas inside ... So Sad It lasted so little ...

There was LITERALLY zip zero zilch NADA, no game-play footy In that advert!! LoL😅🤣😂

That racing game is 👀🤯🤯🤯🤯

I bought a secondhand but in a really good condition WonderSwan Color with a black translucent shell this month for around $59.00 and it came with a game cartridge (SD Gundam G Generation: Gather Beat).

What is the first most ridiculously named console of all time?
The Mega Duck?

Proud owner of a wonderswan and got it for $50

A fantastic bargain at the price when it was on sale... of course I have a little pocket emulator thing that can run everything from gameboy to Sega Dreamcast these days so... yeah, I'll be alright. ☺

Damn just imagine if gompai yokoi did NOT leaved nintendo,maybe he brought the wonderswam color under nintendo’s brand name on the market and i am absolutely sure that if that’s was the case,then many snes games would,ve been ported to the wonderswam color with similar quality graphics & sounds,and even if the wonderswam lacked certain capabilities of the snes,they could,ve do many things and fake thngs trought software instead to get around those limitations,just imagine ports like supermarioworld,donkeykong country,mario kart supermario allstars,zelda and street fighter 2 etc,,, on it,am sure it would,ve sold like hot cakes not only that but then we would,ve already had a snes experience in our hands back in 1998 or 1999,and the gba would,ve been never made and released at all,
Yes the gba was more powerful BUT it were eventually those games for it, if neither nintendo nor thirth party’s did ported their snes games to the gba,then the gba sales would,ve slowly became to an halt because of peoples gotting disappointed,the 32bit and wide screen of the gba was actually almost a gimmick as it simply had no 3D hardware and nintendo never ported a N64 game to it,altrough they did ported yoshi story to it as a demo only as a triggering point to let people also expect N64 games for it,but nope,😟

Damn i wish i had one

Thank you for making this video, I really enjoyed it. The WonderSwan name I like to think came about due to the console being Gunpei Yokoi's swan song. The library on this system is better than most people would think and many titles have received english patches. Thanks for raising awareness of this cool and quirky gameboy competitor.

Magazines like Game Informer had the power to make or break this console. I can't remember a single game for this console that was highly praised. Nor do I recall a comparison of the same game on this console vs other consoles. Starting in late 99' most of my video game purchases were based on Game Informer reviews. I use to read every single issue for six years or so. I blame them for the failure of this console.

Furthermore, I've always wondered why the handheld gaming market has usually been a monopoly, perhaps with the exception of the PSP and Game Gear. The Vita, Nomad, and Lynx all flopped. The various iterations of Neo Geo handhelds never took off either. The Game Boy sold 120 million devices. Surely there would have been a strong market incentive to have a piece of that.

Microsoft has the peculiar distinction of shying away from handheld devices of all kinds. Amazon or Tesla would be wise to enter the handheld gaming market. Amazon already makes tablets. The most important thing in video games is to sell hardware for cheaper than their competitors. Amazon has been doing that for 12 years. Tesla can apply their cutting-edge battery technology to phones. All three companies have deep pockets.

Unlike Atari and Sega, the three aforementioned tech companies don't have to worry about going bankrupt. Amazon went 15 years without making a profit. Tesla also went many years without making a profit. A lot more people would want to get a Prime membership if it had good games. Tesla would benefit from having more applications for their batteries. They're already making a smart phone.

Interesting how some games play sideways.

the swan crystal variant should have been the turning point for the console itself. a stronger line up of games would have helped the swan get a foothold in the western markets. packaging for the games would have been similar to the game gear, the DS and the PS vita in terms of size.

I really love this console, the design, the size, the controls, the battery life, it’s amazing. 40 hours with just one AA battery for the monochrome model, 20 hours for the color and 15 for the crystal, those were really a portable console.

Great!