The Wonderswan Color color came out in December 9, 2000, more than two years after the Game Boy Color game out in Japan and more than a year after the release of the Neo Geo Pocket Color in Japan and the US. It gained some success, for about two reasons. One: It was cheap, a mere 70$ for a superior specced machine than the Game Boy Color or the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Two: It had Final Fantasy. Square, the makers of Final Fantasy, had a no-Nintendo ban going at the time so they decided to release remakes of Final Fantasy 1, 2, and 4 on the system. These remakes were a hit, and really gave the Wonderswan Color a boost in sales and fame. In fact, the first Final Fantasy was a launch game for the Wonderswan Color, which was a pretty much brilliant move for Bandai. Then Square decided to merge with Enix, who didn't hate Nintendo,and they ended up putting remakes for 1, 2 and 4 on the Game Boy Advance. That was pretty well the final nail in the coffin for the Wonderswan Color. However, the main sign of doom was Nintendo's Game Boy Advance,which made the Wonderswan Color look dated about four months after it came out. Now, lets move into the mixed bag hardware.
The Wonderswan Color is by far even more cheaply built than the original Wonderswan. Let's get the biggest thing out of the way immediately. The screen is one of the worst I have ever seen on a non-knockoff portable console. The resolution is fine, the contrast wheel... works.I have very few positive things to say here. It is a non backlit color screen with a contrast dial. It has a FSTN screen to be specific,but what these means in layman's terms is that it is a cheaper screen than the TFT screen used in the Game Boy Color. This has a couple side effects. The screen is essentially a color version of the original Wonderswan's screen,which shared the same basic tech as the original gameboy and gameboy pocket systems. These are all STN screens which all suffered from some amount of motion blur and all needed a contrast wheel. The Wonderswan Color's screen keeps this motion blur and heavily suffers one other problem. The screen is dark, even in high contrast mode. The screen in any lighting that is remotely dark is nearly impossible to see. Now, all non lit screens can't be seen in darkness, but this is SOMETHING ELSE. You need strong white lighting to get accurate colors and legible text. I am not sure if this caused by the film used in FSTN screens or just the low quality. THe screen's default color is not pea green of yellow, it is black. The fact that his is a color screen makes this much worse, as black and white creates easily seen contrast.Telling greens apart from blues is not always easy ont hsi system. THis is all a shame as the system actually supports far more colors than the Game Boy Color (241 compared to 52 simultaneously). Sadly, if you opt for high contrast mode, the image ends up looking fuzzy as well. Bandai knew full well they messed up big time with the screen, and came up with a remodel called the Swancrystal which only changed the screen of the system to TFT. I do not own it and thus cannot make claims as to its quality,but I assume it is similar to the Game Boy Color's.
Most design decisions carry over from the original, so I'll skip to the other differences.The power toggle is turned into a power button. This is a horrible idea,as the rubber buttons were already terrible and my until cannot power off with the button nine times out of ten. I don't even think this would lower the price of production much, so I am truly baffled about this change. Other than that, it's a bit bigger, and that's nearly it for changes. Luckily, compatibility is carried over for B&W games. Something I forgot to mention about the original is that that system and this one lack a headphone jack, which is somewhat tragic as the speaker is pretty terrible. If you look up emulated footage you can tell the sound chip really isn't that bad, it's just the speaker that underwhelms.
Now, I've clearly been pretty negative so far, but in honesty there are things bout the hardware I do like. The actual shell I really do quite like the design of, compared to the competition is looks less kiddy and more sleek. The cartridges whilst perhaps not the most well protected look really good when they are in the system as they have a large label that shows while in the system. The system has a variety of weird and mostly too expensive accessories, but I can't point to one that was a smash hit that wasn't just a normal console accessory.
As far as the technical specifications such CPU and such,I think the wonderswan benefited not for being ahead of the curve, but for all of its competitors so totally behind the times. The original Wonderswan was probably the true successor to the game boy in a way. It was monochrome and 16 bit, seemingly a reverse evolution from the way nintendo went,with an 8 bit system and color. The NeoGeo Pocket Color had a 16 bit CPU as well, but it was held back by less colors (146 simultaneous) and GBC-esque color limitations on sprites (four color max, so if you needed black and white and transparent, you had space for only one other color). NGPC games looked like gameboy color games with far better performance and a bit better backgrounds, but it looked like a half step. The Wonderswan felt like a full step above the graphics available on the Game Boy Color, it's just a shame you can't see them on the actual device. This is where my opinion comes in: I vastly prefer the NGPC to the Wonderswan Color. The build quality is better, the buttons are better, the screen is better, and there are more games I enjoy playing on it. If you for some reason wanted to get a Wonderswan, and didn't want to shell out for the expensive Swancrystal, I would highly recommend trying out the NGPC first. Perhaps if you knew japan that could tip the scales, but I don't. I should've probably done a NGPC retrospective instead, but hey,that's what I get for making a poll.
Now as a special bit,I NEED to talk about Nintendo's strategies. Nintendo outright wanted to CRUSH all competition. The Game Boy Color was a very sudden announcement, and the system game out mere months after it was revealed.THis was a clear move to preempt the developing systems of SNK and Bandai. SNK pretty well had to release their system to be dead on arrival since the system was already so far in design by the time the Game Boy Color was announced. Bandai's decision to release the wonderswan a full year after the Game Boy color... baffles me. Seriously, they had the time to go back to the drawing board. Perhaps they really wanted to follow Gunpei Yokoi's design perfectly? Of course when the WOnderswan Color came out and technically exceeded the Game Boy Color in all aspects and gained a good market share, they come out with the Game Boy Advance. Now, Bandai had a small advantage at first, their system was much cheaper, but people weren't going to want to buy into a dying system for long when the GBA started getting a good library. The release of the backlit GBA SP really made the Wonderswan Color feel archaic, even their Swan Crystal model. The shift of portables from 8 to 32 bit was really caused by the Wonderswan. Nintendo surely wouldn't have felt the need to kill the GBC if there were no competitors stealing away precious sales.
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