WonderSwan History – Development And Release

Find out all about the history and development of the Bandai WonderSwan in this video! It’s a black and white console with a unique design which allows games to be played both horizontally, and vertically and was released in 1999, exclusive to Japan.

The WonderSwan designed by Koto Laboratory, a company founded by Gunpei Yokoi, the designer of the Game & Watch, and co-creator of Game Boy at Nintendo, alongside Satoru Okada.

Thanks to this collaboration with Gunpei Yokoi, some people like to think of the WonderSwan as the true successor to the Game Boy.

There were two revisions of the console over its short lifetime, with the WonderSwan Color arriving in 2000, and a final model, the SwanCrystal, with a much improved LCD screen in 2002. This model here has an aftermarket front lit screen, but the original SwanCrystal wasn’t lit at all.

The three systems combined sold over 3.5 million units in Japan, and actually had a very impressive lineup of games from companies such as Squaresoft, Namco, Capcom and more!

In a future episode, I’ll cover some of the defining games for the system, but in this episode, we’re’ going to go back to Bandai’s roots and discover the context around the development and release of the WonderSwan, beginning in 1950…

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References:
https://www.vg247.com/exploring-game-boys-true-successor-bandai-wonderswan

NLab articles October 8th [[1998]]
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9810/08/news03.html
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9810/08/news02.html
https://nlab.itmedia.co.jp/games/news/9810/08/news05.html

Bandai History:
https://www.bandai.co.uk/our-history
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/bandai-co-ltd-history/

Early Toys
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/perman-toy-by-bandai-1960s-box-from-google–432978951668460146/
https://www.collectiondx.com/toy_review/1980/gundam_rx78

TV Jack 1000

Image:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/TV_Jack_1000.jpg

Digi Casse:

Tamagochi BBC Archive:

Gunpei Yokoi interview:

http://blog.beforemario.com/2014/04/gunpei-yokois-final-two-games.html

WonderWitch:

#RetroBreak #RetroGaming #WonderSwan