There's an entire line of furniture stores in my area called Badcock that also sometimes functions as a sort of thrift store. I bought an old CRT in one some years ago. If only Dick Smith's Wizzard was sold in Badcock...
Dick Smith was just an electronics tycoon. He went off the rails a few years back, or so it would seem, after his electronics enterprise folded. Probably more to him than that, but that's all I know of him after living here almost 40 years. The Wizzard was the death knell for the VTech Creativision. Dick claimed large swathes of the distribution rights (not just in Aus) and was even more vicious towards 3rd parties than Atari or Nintendo ever were, effectively crippling the system to its miniscule 18 official launch titles (one of which is the BASIC cart). Technologically it compared favourably to the 8-bit Atari and even C64 (save sound), and its price was significantly less than either, but poor management killed it.
As an Australian, there was nothing particularly ridiculous about the"Dick Smith Wizzard". Dick Smith was well known and had his own chain of electronics stores, and the console's name was "Wizzard" which seems to me perfectly fine. It was just a rebranded Intellivision, btw.
@@GreenTeaViewer The Intellivision was an earlier system he had nothing to do with. They do obviously share some design cues but the internals are entirely different. *ed: For more clarity, I wasn't saying that the Wizzard beat out the Creativision - that's what he branded the Creativision when he distributed it.
I almost bought one of these last year here in Tokyo but i got distracted wandering around and never went back to the shop. I may get around to buying one one of these days
According to Wikipedia: "Bandai chose the name of the system to highlight its aesthetics and technical capabilities because the swan is recognized as an elegant bird with powerful legs that aid its graceful swimming."
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.
Agreed. I've been trying to collect DS and GBA games, and gave up. Literally anything Final Fantasy is more than $100, and even relatively unknown games are hugely expensive.
yeah. i grew up collecting this stuff and i used to get it out of the literal trash. grabbed ds and wii games when stores were clearing them out. i love my collection, but i could never afford to do it now. i hate the second-hand game market. i try to sell my spares to local trustworthy friends below market cost because these collections are more about enjoying them to me than turning a huge profit.
Being someone who grew up with "retro games" (got an NES for my third birthday) this crap makes my blood boil. It's absolutely disgusting, especially when you find out the speculative bubble going on right now in retro games is being created by the same person who made the coil collector bubble in the 80s.
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines as a fellow cynical leftist (well, communist here), it makes me mad too. this is why i try to give stuff to friends i know won’t resell it (unless they’re in dire financial straits down the line) or if i really need some money, at a fair price for both of us well below the insane resale value that’s going on right now. my friends look for these things to enjoy them. most of my friends emulate anyway, if they didn’t keep the things they had growing up/their parents tossed out or sold all their old console stuff. even with my collection, i want an emulation handheld powerhouse (can’t afford any that run windows so im waiting for an android device that can run gamecube games smoothly) because it’s certainly nice to have it all in one place.
Neat, an oft overlooked system. Don't see enough discussion on this. And hey the B&W version was less of an oops than the OG NeoGeo Pocket and it's whole 10 games. Oh gods, the ozenuts...
It reminds me of a gameboy a little, but also of these cheap "50-in-1" handheld consoles that where intended to keep kids quiet on road trips. As if the two had a baby, that got the latter's vertical screen layout and odd button configureation, but the screen quality and power of the former.
Same. I can kinda see why it was only available in Japan. Releasing it in the west *definitely* would have required a name change, maybe a cosmetic redesign.
The WonderSwan Color/Crystal versions are the "Game Boy Color" we should have had back in 1998/99. After all, it was created by the father of the original Game Boy (Gunpei Yokoi).
I bought my WonderSwan Color and a handful of games for it around 15 years or so ago. The main reason I got it was for its port of Crazy Climber. It's a pretty decent system. It's a shame it wasn't more successful.
Місяць тому
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.
Eh, that ebay price is probably some scalper that's bought it from hardoff, yahoo auctions or mercari for 2000 or 3000 yen. I think a fair few English teachers earning peanuts sell retro games, anime junk etc on ebay as an undeclared side hussle. There are tons of them kicking around.
The face of Dick Smith was the electronic store logo for a number of years. He produced various supermarket products in the 2000s like the ones you showed as an effort to compete against Australian brands that had been sold to overseas companies. The best named product being 'dickheads' parodying redhead matches. He is a philanthropist and also has a number of aviation firsts in helicopter and balloon.
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.
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.
As someone who can and does play games in Japanese, the WonderSwan's library still sucks, sadly. Small library, mostly tie-in games for Bandai properties, and pretty much anything worth playing has been ported to a better system, often the GBA. In my opinion, only worth getting if you're collecting for the novelty, or if you're a hardcore fan of one of the series with games exclusive to the system.
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.
I bought one of these in Japan in 2005. It came boxed with a Final Fantasy game I’ve never played because of the language barrier. I’ve always intended to get more games for mine. Looks like I better get in before they go up any more in price.
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.
I live in the UK and I got my WonderSwan Color in early 2016! I found the Korean Digimon bundle, the pack-in game is in English, for £100! Looks like I was right to get it when I did! Even so, after 6 years, I still only own 2 other games: Final Lap 2000 and Wonder Classic.
So I just ended up buying one of these off the back of the video, I managed to get a box crystal like yours with a rechargeable battery for around £50. So they're not to bad, still some of the games are pricey!
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.
The "all profits to charity" label on the peanut butter jar puts me in mind of the Newman's Own brand we have here in the States, founded by actor Paul Newman. A little digging into the man himself suggests he's more like Australia's answer to Warren Buffett.
They made over 100 game for Wonderswan, I wonder what the Japanese thought of it and have they ported any of these games anywhere since it's a Japanese system.
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.
I have a Swan Crystal and a Color. The Crystal definitely had the better screen, and was the go-to until I put the backlit screen in the Color. Although it slashes the battery life, it's just so much better to look at. Unlike the Game Gear, the screen is a proper 1:1 match, hooray. I also put myself on the Flash Masta waiting list and they do come through in the end. So now I can finally play Dicing Knight and Judgement Silversword on the real hardware and break my hands. Here's to you Gunpei.
I picked up a WonderSwan Color in Japan in 2006. Very cheap (though not as cheap as the Saturn I also picked up). I have, I think, one game for it, if I can even find it. Very cool handheld, I prefer it to the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Lynx (neither of which I own).
As a kid we used to have a "Mega Duck" ever heard of that thing? If im not mistaken the full catalog had 8 games or so and i think it came with 3-4 already. Would be interrsting to see whats out there about it
the mega duck was actually very close to the game boy in terms of oomph, it was just very cheaply made. it was so closely modeled after the game boy, in fact, that all 30 games sachen developed for it (some under their label commin) were later ported to nintendo’s handheld and sold in unlicensed multicarts - since sachen was apparently the only company commissioned by timlex international (the company behind the mega duck) to make games for it, there’s only one game that was never ported elsewhere and remains a mega duck exclusive, the rather fun puzzler _the brick wall_, being the only one to have been developed in-house by timlex. actually, most of its games were remarkably high-quality, being among the most polished out of sachen’s library. in brazil and argentina (and possibly elsewhere in south america), it was marketed and sold by joystick manufacturer cougar usa, who rebranded it as “cougar boy” and sold only a subset of its library for unknown reasons. i could go on and on about the mega duck and the other cheap chinese game boy competitors, but this comment is already unnecessarily long enough lmao sorry for the worddump
@@yoymate6316 i appreciate the word dump my friend, very insightful! I remember having a racing game, and i believe a game wich involved hammering stuff. And another game of which i just found the title agaim, black forest tale. Not all of the games were great but I remember it fondly as being a good car backseat console on trips haha. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, i really appreciate it. Have a great day!
@@liveyourdreammedia i’m glad that you enjoyed my rambling, hehe! thanks for the kind words :) i’ll go out on a limb and say that the two games you’re thinking of are probably _street rider_ and _duck adventures_ respectively. if you ever feel like revisiting those times you can easily find rom dumps of the entire library on the internet archive (mame can emulate the mega duck quite well; the only game that doesn’t work is _duck adventures_ but its game boy port can be played on a gb emulator). have a great day too, friend! :)
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.
When i heard about both the neogeo pocket color and wonderswam color, i was really blown away because back then i tout that they were just as powerful as both the snes & sega genesis,but man i was sooo wrong ,haha but still i couldn’t understand how they could fit 16bit technology into suck pocket sized device, Also the name dick smith wizzard reminds me of someone who wants to troll people haha.
Dick Smith Electronics stores all had his face on them. It was the company logo. First computer I ever used was my uncle's Dick Smith VZ-200, a rebranded VTech Laser 200. The demo tape also drew his face.
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,😟
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.
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 ...
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
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).
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.
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.
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!
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?
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 😆
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.
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...
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice the Dick Smith Wizzard is also named Creativision, which was a console made by Vtech which now makes electronics for babies... literal babies. Pre-school children's stuff. It was a nifty enough console, but never got much of a foothold in the market.
Man, the WonderSwans graphics, even if it was just black and white... wonder if it would have been in any way economically / technologically feasible for Nintendo to make the OG Game Boy that capable or if the advancement of technology / costs of technology was what made WonderSwan possible in 99 versus the GB's release in 89.
Well, the WonderSwan did what the GB did, just a decade later, i.e. using inexpensive, older tech to make an affordable, power efficient machine. So yeah, a 1989 WS should have been technically feasible, but it would have been expensive and power hungry. Check out the Atari Lynx, for example.
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.
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. ☺
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?
Retro games are getting out of hand. I payed $80 for Sega CD Snatcher and thought that was slightly pricey. $1500 on average on eBay at the moment. I don't know if anyone is actually paying that, but still...
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.
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.
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.
There's an entire line of furniture stores in my area called Badcock that also sometimes functions as a sort of thrift store. I bought an old CRT in one some years ago. If only Dick Smith's Wizzard was sold in Badcock...
at least it's not named bigcock furniture.
I have a Goodcock
@@CRCR0201 nicecock
Dick Smith was just an electronics tycoon. He went off the rails a few years back, or so it would seem, after his electronics enterprise folded. Probably more to him than that, but that's all I know of him after living here almost 40 years.
The Wizzard was the death knell for the VTech Creativision. Dick claimed large swathes of the distribution rights (not just in Aus) and was even more vicious towards 3rd parties than Atari or Nintendo ever were, effectively crippling the system to its miniscule 18 official launch titles (one of which is the BASIC cart). Technologically it compared favourably to the 8-bit Atari and even C64 (save sound), and its price was significantly less than either, but poor management killed it.
He's like Alan Sugar, but far less successful.
As an Australian, there was nothing particularly ridiculous about the"Dick Smith Wizzard". Dick Smith was well known and had his own chain of electronics stores, and the console's name was "Wizzard" which seems to me perfectly fine. It was just a rebranded Intellivision, btw.
@@GreenTeaViewer The Intellivision was an earlier system he had nothing to do with. They do obviously share some design cues but the internals are entirely different.
*ed: For more clarity, I wasn't saying that the Wizzard beat out the Creativision - that's what he branded the Creativision when he distributed it.
@@GreenTeaViewer, are you Dick Smith in disguise?
I almost bought one of these last year here in Tokyo but i got distracted wandering around and never went back to the shop. I may get around to buying one one of these days
According to Wikipedia:
"Bandai chose the name of the system to highlight its aesthetics and technical capabilities because the swan is recognized as an elegant bird with powerful legs that aid its graceful swimming."
Y-y-y-es. Powerful legs are the first things we associate with a gaming console.
@@volo870 I usually associate gaming consoles with Jaguars. ;-)
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.
The retro games market was invaded by speculators trying to print money. Everything adjacent suffers right now.
And this is the cause of what I call "collector tax".
Agreed. I've been trying to collect DS and GBA games, and gave up. Literally anything Final Fantasy is more than $100, and even relatively unknown games are hugely expensive.
yeah. i grew up collecting this stuff and i used to get it out of the literal trash. grabbed ds and wii games when stores were clearing them out. i love my collection, but i could never afford to do it now. i hate the second-hand game market. i try to sell my spares to local trustworthy friends below market cost because these collections are more about enjoying them to me than turning a huge profit.
Being someone who grew up with "retro games" (got an NES for my third birthday) this crap makes my blood boil. It's absolutely disgusting, especially when you find out the speculative bubble going on right now in retro games is being created by the same person who made the coil collector bubble in the 80s.
@@HaveYouTriedGuillotines as a fellow cynical leftist (well, communist here), it makes me mad too. this is why i try to give stuff to friends i know won’t resell it (unless they’re in dire financial straits down the line) or if i really need some money, at a fair price for both of us well below the insane resale value that’s going on right now. my friends look for these things to enjoy them. most of my friends emulate anyway, if they didn’t keep the things they had growing up/their parents tossed out or sold all their old console stuff. even with my collection, i want an emulation handheld powerhouse (can’t afford any that run windows so im waiting for an android device that can run gamecube games smoothly) because it’s certainly nice to have it all in one place.
Neat, an oft overlooked system. Don't see enough discussion on this. And hey the B&W version was less of an oops than the OG NeoGeo Pocket and it's whole 10 games.
Oh gods, the ozenuts...
It reminds me of a gameboy a little, but also of these cheap "50-in-1" handheld consoles that where intended to keep kids quiet on road trips. As if the two had a baby, that got the latter's vertical screen layout and odd button configureation, but the screen quality and power of the former.
Same. I can kinda see why it was only available in Japan. Releasing it in the west *definitely* would have required a name change, maybe a cosmetic redesign.
@@adamjensen8702 oh yeah. Because I have no idea what market this thing would really fill here.
Fascinating. Wonderswan has always been a footnote so it’s interesting to have a good look at it
Love My SwanCrystal,With Digimon Tamers Battle Spirit Ver.1.5!I Set Incredible Extreme Mode Records:1600 Impmon,1100 ExGuilmon,1000 Guilmon,1000 Gabumon,900 Patamon,900 Gatomon!😁
The WonderSwan Color/Crystal versions are the "Game Boy Color" we should have had back in 1998/99.
After all, it was created by the father of the original Game Boy (Gunpei Yokoi).
That may be in fact an upgrade for me back than. I never felt the need for a color from my classic
The technology for the WSC was nearly there in 1989: 8086 based processor and a color STN display. Power consumption and cost were the big problems.
Imagine a Wonderswan Advance
Gunpei Yokoi also designed the GameBoy Color before he left Nintendo.
“Non fungible con tricks” is the best name I’ve ever heard for the bloody things.
I thought he said “contracts” but your version is more accurate lol
I bought my WonderSwan Color and a handful of games for it around 15 years or so ago. The main reason I got it was for its port of Crazy Climber. It's a pretty decent system. It's a shame it wasn't more successful.
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.
Eh, that ebay price is probably some scalper that's bought it from hardoff, yahoo auctions or mercari for 2000 or 3000 yen. I think a fair few English teachers earning peanuts sell retro games, anime junk etc on ebay as an undeclared side hussle. There are tons of them kicking around.
The face of Dick Smith was the electronic store logo for a number of years. He produced various supermarket products in the 2000s like the ones you showed as an effort to compete against Australian brands that had been sold to overseas companies. The best named product being 'dickheads' parodying redhead matches. He is a philanthropist and also has a number of aviation firsts in helicopter and balloon.
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.
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.
As someone who can and does play games in Japanese, the WonderSwan's library still sucks, sadly. Small library, mostly tie-in games for Bandai properties, and pretty much anything worth playing has been ported to a better system, often the GBA. In my opinion, only worth getting if you're collecting for the novelty, or if you're a hardcore fan of one of the series with games exclusive to the system.
"Rainbow Islands"
On a black and white console. Awesome.
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.
I bought one of these in Japan in 2005. It came boxed with a Final Fantasy game I’ve never played because of the language barrier. I’ve always intended to get more games for mine. Looks like I better get in before they go up any more in price.
Thank god i hot this for free as a christmas present with some games a few years ago!
it took me years to finally get myself a Flashmasta WS flash cart. totally worth it.
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.
I live in the UK and I got my WonderSwan Color in early 2016! I found the Korean Digimon bundle, the pack-in game is in English, for £100! Looks like I was right to get it when I did! Even so, after 6 years, I still only own 2 other games: Final Lap 2000 and Wonder Classic.
So I just ended up buying one of these off the back of the video, I managed to get a box crystal like yours with a rechargeable battery for around £50. So they're not to bad, still some of the games are pricey!
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.
The "all profits to charity" label on the peanut butter jar puts me in mind of the Newman's Own brand we have here in the States, founded by actor Paul Newman. A little digging into the man himself suggests he's more like Australia's answer to Warren Buffett.
They made over 100 game for Wonderswan, I wonder what the Japanese thought of it and have they ported any of these games anywhere since it's a Japanese system.
You not keeping it together at the end was incredible 🤣🤣
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.
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I have a Swan Crystal and a Color. The Crystal definitely had the better screen, and was the go-to until I put the backlit screen in the Color. Although it slashes the battery life, it's just so much better to look at. Unlike the Game Gear, the screen is a proper 1:1 match, hooray.
I also put myself on the Flash Masta waiting list and they do come through in the end. So now I can finally play Dicing Knight and Judgement Silversword on the real hardware and break my hands. Here's to you Gunpei.
I bought a BW wonderswan 7/8 years ago for $80 on eBay. In near perfect condition. Hrmm
More recent sales may have also been pushed by the Evangelion 3.0+1.0 movie, which features a Definitely Legally Not A WonderSwan device.
I picked up a WonderSwan Color in Japan in 2006. Very cheap (though not as cheap as the Saturn I also picked up). I have, I think, one game for it, if I can even find it. Very cool handheld, I prefer it to the Neo Geo Pocket Color and the Lynx (neither of which I own).
The demand for it increased because the last Evangelion movie had Asuka playing with a red Wonderswan, beating a game for the 100th time
As a kid we used to have a "Mega Duck" ever heard of that thing? If im not mistaken the full catalog had 8 games or so and i think it came with 3-4 already. Would be interrsting to see whats out there about it
the mega duck was actually very close to the game boy in terms of oomph, it was just very cheaply made. it was so closely modeled after the game boy, in fact, that all 30 games sachen developed for it (some under their label commin) were later ported to nintendo’s handheld and sold in unlicensed multicarts - since sachen was apparently the only company commissioned by timlex international (the company behind the mega duck) to make games for it, there’s only one game that was never ported elsewhere and remains a mega duck exclusive, the rather fun puzzler _the brick wall_, being the only one to have been developed in-house by timlex. actually, most of its games were remarkably high-quality, being among the most polished out of sachen’s library.
in brazil and argentina (and possibly elsewhere in south america), it was marketed and sold by joystick manufacturer cougar usa, who rebranded it as “cougar boy” and sold only a subset of its library for unknown reasons.
i could go on and on about the mega duck and the other cheap chinese game boy competitors, but this comment is already unnecessarily long enough lmao sorry for the worddump
@@yoymate6316 i appreciate the word dump my friend, very insightful! I remember having a racing game, and i believe a game wich involved hammering stuff. And another game of which i just found the title agaim, black forest tale. Not all of the games were great but I remember it fondly as being a good car backseat console on trips haha. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, i really appreciate it. Have a great day!
@@liveyourdreammedia i’m glad that you enjoyed my rambling, hehe! thanks for the kind words :)
i’ll go out on a limb and say that the two games you’re thinking of are probably _street rider_ and _duck adventures_ respectively. if you ever feel like revisiting those times you can easily find rom dumps of the entire library on the internet archive (mame can emulate the mega duck quite well; the only game that doesn’t work is _duck adventures_ but its game boy port can be played on a gb emulator). have a great day too, friend! :)
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.
When i heard about both the neogeo pocket color and wonderswam color, i was really blown away because back then i tout that they were just as powerful as both the snes & sega genesis,but man i was sooo wrong ,haha but still i couldn’t understand how they could fit 16bit technology into suck pocket sized device,
Also the name dick smith wizzard reminds me of someone who wants to troll people haha.
Dick Smith Electronics stores all had his face on them. It was the company logo. First computer I ever used was my uncle's Dick Smith VZ-200, a rebranded VTech Laser 200. The demo tape also drew his face.
Lol I think the Mega Duck has that name beat. Must have been one awesome Duck who they named that system after :)
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,😟
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.
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 ...
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
6:09 ...I couldn't help thinking of an angry hornet when I heard this sound. 😵
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).
"Dick Smith's OzEnuts" sounds like a product from a Tim & Eric sketch.
Great video! I thought this was made by a big channel but this only has 10k views!
There was LITERALLY zip zero zilch NADA, no game-play footy In that advert!! LoL😅🤣😂
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.
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.
A fat like worth for the DICK Smith stuff at the end alone!😆
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!
I think wonder swan is one of the most beautiful names ever
prettiest handheld by far
And here I thought the #1 console would be the Welback Mega Duck, AKA the Cougar Boy...
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?
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 😆
Cracking video on a system most of us never heard of let alone seen.
There's an Evangelion game for the Wonderswan? Ok, now I need one.
That would do it!
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.
For a bit more Dick Smith inventiveness, be sure to see his take on the "Red Heads" brand of matches: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickheads_(brand)
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...
Dick Smith is my hero
Gameboy Color has 10 sprites per line
Wonderswan does what Nintendidn't.
Eagle-eyed viewers will notice the Dick Smith Wizzard is also named Creativision, which was a console made by Vtech which now makes electronics for babies... literal babies. Pre-school children's stuff. It was a nifty enough console, but never got much of a foothold in the market.
Man, the WonderSwans graphics, even if it was just black and white... wonder if it would have been in any way economically / technologically feasible for Nintendo to make the OG Game Boy that capable or if the advancement of technology / costs of technology was what made WonderSwan possible in 99 versus the GB's release in 89.
Well, the WonderSwan did what the GB did, just a decade later, i.e. using inexpensive, older tech to make an affordable, power efficient machine. So yeah, a 1989 WS should have been technically feasible, but it would have been expensive and power hungry. Check out the Atari Lynx, for example.
0:16 Whats the first one?
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.
Here in New Zealand, Dick's head would often be between Dick and Smith in the logo...
I'll let you figure out what we used to call the shop 😂
I thought it was called the Wonderswan because Gunpei Yokoi knew it would be his swan song...
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. ☺
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?
Retro games are getting out of hand. I payed $80 for Sega CD Snatcher and thought that was slightly pricey. $1500 on average on eBay at the moment. I don't know if anyone is actually paying that, but still...
That racing game is 👀🤯🤯🤯🤯
We need an opensource remake of this system. As close as possible.
This console shot up in price before I had the cash to get one and that sucks lol
What is the first most ridiculously named console of all time?
The Mega Duck?
What's the game at 5:39??
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.
How often should I expect to see or use a fan translation?
Around 10 out of 200ish games between both iterations. Very few indeed as expected for a Japan only console.
Last I checked these were $40 used on ebay
Even the -Gabe Gear- Steam Deck cannot tip to the Dick Smith Wizzard.
Proud owner of a wonderswan and got it for $50
Interesting how some games play sideways.
I used to hate getting things like this for Christmas like wtf just buy me a game boy
It needs to have a metal crank on the side
I had the black and white one years ago
Great, now I'm going to have to hurry to build my Dick Smith Wizzard collection before the price shoots up.
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.
That's what happens. Doesn't get better the older you get.
I love me some Dick Smith's Ozenuts.
I shouldn't have said that...
I've got the original, the color, and a WonderBorg
I remember them being like $10 about 4 years ago
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.
Imagine if this was more popular how the Asian knock off names would've one upped it.
This broadcast was brought to you by DICK SMITH"S OZENUTS.
Damn i wish i had one
Nintendo has Pokemon
This is a very cool system.
The console are not yet so expensive but the games became crazy expensive, only 9bscure japan games are cheap.