What games can you play?
Without a doubt, the weakness of the console was its library, which mostly consists of anime licensed games. Because it was developed by Bandai, the handheld had access to a wide selection of shonen manga that were popular at the time like Inuyasha, Hunter X Hunter, Shaman King, Digimon, and Gundam. The WonderSwan played docking bay to a whole lotta Gundam games.
It was good business practice selling popular anime in game form to kids at the time, but in retrospect, while digging for lost gems or any sort of relevant game, you’re going to have to plow through a whole lot of crud first.
Most of these games are awful cash grabs aimed at kids that even fans might have a hard time enjoying. Much of the WonderSwan’s library would be better off being buried in the sand, which is actually what I did! I bought a few anime games for about $.80 each, took them to the beach where I do my retro gaming hike, played them, hated each and every one of them, dug a hole, and left them there in the sand to hopefully to roast away until the end of time. No lie. Many of these games are just that plain bad.
Luckily, a few decent titles managed to leak out over the years.
Without question, the best partnership to emerge during this time period was with Square, before the merger with Enix and after the bad break-up with Nintendo. Squaresoft wanted to make portable games but didn’t want to work with Nintendo on the Game Boy Advance, meaning the WonderSwan Color scored a whole lot of classic ports and remakes.
These Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II, Final Fantasy IV, and Front Mission remakes have all been released in the West on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS by now, making the remake of the first SaGa game, known to us as Final Fantasy Legends, the only one that importers might want to hunt down.
The only original game to come out of Squaresoft from this deal was called Blue Wing Blitz, its first portable strategy game even before Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and it was created by controversial designer, and one of my favorites, Akitoshi Kawazu of SaGa fame. I really want to give this one a more serious try, but the language barrier is a little too high to fully enjoy all that this game has to offer. I bought it cheap at least, so I have an obscure addition to my Squaresoft collection.
Nope, my main focus was the Final Fantasy remake, the first modern one to ever be produced. Final Fantasy is a nice, simple game that doesn’t rely too much on text, so the language barrier can fly right out the window. I know it like the back of my hand anyway. This version looks and sounds great. Even playing in Japanese, I was able to lose myself in the 16-bit graphics with little difficulty, and the soundtrack had lot of charm thanks to the simple capabilities of the WonderSwan.
I like Final Fantasy Origins’ arranged soundtrack a lot, but this just hit that perfect blend between old-school chiptunes and a modern arrangements.
This port can be bought in the States as Final Fantasy:Dawn of Souls for the Game Boy Advance, and it’s my favorite version.
Another game I picked up and enjoyed during this time was Gunpey, named after the fabled designer himself. The WonderSwan has the ability to be played both horizontally and vertically, meaning some games need to be rotated to play, and Gunpey is a simple puzzle game which takes advantage of the vertical mode. Simply make connected lines that extend from one side of the screen to another by swapping tiles and get points. Not really deep, but it is addictive in a way that Tetris was.
Gunpey is available to Americans through the PSP if you want to check that out, but much of the charm also comes from the original’s black and white character art. This version has a lot more soul.
The final game I played was Rhyme Rider Kerorican, a wonderful little rhythm game that stands as one of the few unlicensed titles on the platform. It was developed by the one and only NanaOn-sha, the team behind Parappa the Rapper, UmJammer Lammy and so many classic rhythm games, giving it a bit more legitimacy and legacy than the average WonderSwan Color title.
Sadly, it was also crippled by an oversight of the hardware, which I will get to in a minute.
One final game I am still on the hunt for is Klonoa: Moonlight Museum, the first handheld and second overall game in Namco’s beloved cult-classic platforming series. Its sequels, Empire of Dreams and Dream Champ Tournament, would eventually come to the States as Game Boy Advance games, but this is the only one that is in black and white and the only which supports both vertical and horizontal gameplay, greatly shaking up the variety of platforming puzzles. It’s a little pricey in Japan these days, but hardly out of range like the console’s two most valuable games.
Two more I know I will never find but I find fascinating are Dicing Knight, an action RPG roguelike, and Judgement Silversword, a vertical shooter played in the vertical mode. Both are fan made games from a time when Bandai tried to inspire some creativity among the fanbase to boost sales, and both sell for about $1,000 these days.
Yup, not going to look for them.
So, no. Sadly, most of the WonderSwan’s best games are ports that can be bought on different consoles in America or are too expensive to even consider. Is it worth four or five games to import a console that will set you back about $30? Meh, you could make worse decisions. I’d say yes, but don’t expect much beyond the initial shock of owning this forgotten piece of gaming history.
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