Wonder Swan Color vs Game Boy Color comparison

I have to admit, having owned all three units (mono, color and crystal), the WonderSwan did not particularly capture me. The majority of the library caters to fans of strategy and RPG games (thus very import un-friendly) and more specifically anime-licensed ones since its a Bandai system. IMHO the english friendly titles are not worth the price they ask like Dicing Knight or Judgement Silversword. The feel of the actual console in terms of grip and buttons is by no means the most comfortable and to make things worse, the screen sucks. The crystal is the best but even the ones with darker colors such as early monochrome games can be a pain to see on it. Good luck playing stuff like Terrors, or Daimakaimura. The only thing this shitter had going for it was the ability to create a game for either horizontal or vertical orientation, some games even using both such as Klonoa: Moonlight Museum. And last, but not least of course, is that the WonderSwan outputs generally high-resolution images. Even the monochrome games are extremely detailed for a handheld of their time. Then again, graphics don't make the games, as we veterans say.

I quite enjoy the unit itself,
but as you said it's not very import friendly since most of the games on it are text heavy strategy or RPG games.

From a technical standpoint the unit is pretty impressive too and I just have to post the demo Titan did for it a year or so ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH27BeaIxQ4

Wonderswan Color should be compared to GBA more than GBC. I'd gladly take Final Fantasy on Wonderswan alone, over the entire GBC catalog.

Yeah, the WSC released six months before the GBA. It's two years newer hardware than the GBC and really should not be compared to it. It's obviously much more powerful than the GBC, but releasing so much later you'd expect that. The main problem was that the GBA released so soon afterwards, and the WSC isn't quite as powerful as the GBA.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Yeah, the WSC released six months before the GBA. It's two years newer hardware than the GBC and really should not be compared to it. It's obviously much more powerful than the GBC, but releasing so much later you'd expect that. The main problem was that the GBA released so soon afterwards, and the WSC isn't quite as powerful as the GBA.

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Ah, perhaps so.

BTW my master list of WS games for english-speakers is here:
http://goo.gl/4WX5Km

The miscellaneous questions FAQ (which I need to update, might have some minor inaccuracies) is available here:
http://goo.gl/GIfYPd

The WonderSwan was originally supposed to come out earlier than it did. Gunpei Yokoi died a year and a half earlier.

The WonderSwan was actually supposed to be a Sega system as well. Sega and Bandai were working on a merger deal in 1997, when the system was designed.

Was this thread inspired by my gbc v. NGPC thread?

To add on to my last post, two years is sometimes a generational gap and sometimes it isn't. The WSC was "only" two years after the GBC, but the problem was that that late '90s handheld generation had started so late that the GBA was almost ready, so the in-between WSC was dated almost as soon as it was released. The WSC definitely has some decent power, with nice color and without the NGPC and GBC's 3/4 colors per sprite limit, but it can't quite match the GBA...

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Originally Posted by j_factor

The WonderSwan was originally supposed to come out earlier than it did. Gunpei Yokoi died a year and a half earlier.

The WonderSwan was actually supposed to be a Sega system as well. Sega and Bandai were working on a merger deal in 1997, when the system was designed.

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The WS as a Sega system would be kind of odd... after seven-plus years of color handheld games, Sega'd go to B&W?

If the Sega-Bandai merger had gone through things would definitely have been very different, though, for sure... definitely interesting to imagine how.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The WS as a Sega system would be kind of odd... after seven-plus years of color handheld games, Sega'd go to B&W?

If the Sega-Bandai merger had gone through things would definitely have been very different, though, for sure... definitely interesting to imagine how.

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It is weird. I can't help but wonder if that was part of why the merger fell through. Maybe not. The details of that were never made public.

I do think they should have gone right to the color version of the WonderSwan and not bothered with the monochrome. A Sega-Bandai WonderSwan Color released around the same time as the Game Boy Color (and released internationally) could have been very competitive.