The new WonderSwan Color has shipped in Japan on for a price of 6800 yen, or just about 65 dollars. There are five units available: Crystal Blue, Crystal Black, Crystal orange, Pearl Blue, and Pearl Pink, all shown below.
The unit itself is an upgraded version of the WonderSwan released exclusively in Japan in 1999. It's slightly larger than the original system, but retains all of the functionality as well as adding color functions. The unit has a tiny bit larger reflective LCD screen (no backlight), and it's very efficient with battery consumption: on one AA battery, the unit will last up to 20 hours.
The unit can display up to 241 colors on-screen at once, and have as many as 28 sprites per line. Compared to the Game Boy Color's 56 color and 10 sprites per line limitation, the WonderSwan is easily the more powerful system. However, the Game Boy Advance is more powerful than the Bandai system with its 32-bit processor and sprite-scaling capabilities.
WonderSwan Color |
Reflection (non-backlit) TFT Color liquid crystal |
2.1 inch diagonal |
224x144 pixels |
241 out of 4096 colors |
3.072 MHz 16-bit |
512K VRAM/WRAM (shared) |
Speaker (mono) /Headphone (stereo) |
Two players. |
One AA battery |
AA batteries: 20 hours |
12.80 cm x 7.43 cm x 24.3 cm |
About 3.35 oz |
6,800 yen |
December 30, 2000 (Japan) |
Bandai plans to have the WonderSwan link up to the PlayStation 2 using the USB port, and had the interface on display at the company's press conference. The company plans to have downloadable WonderSwan Color games through the PlayStation 2 (and USB-enabled PCs) using this interface. By mid-2001 we should see the first game to employ this console-to-handheld link capability in a game.
Of course, the WonderSwan Color will continue to use the recently-launched WonderGate cell-phone interface that allows gamers from all over Japan to dial-up and play multiplayer WonderSwan games. All that's needed is a communications peripheral and a J-Phone compatible cellphone...as well as payment for the service.
The system hasn't been announced for US or European release, but when it hits Japan at the end of this year there will be a whole lot of titles to get excited about. Check out the list that was revealed:
Game Releases for WonderSwan Color | |
Releasing in December: | Releasing in Early 2001: |
Bandai
Kaga Tek Bec Omega Square
Bandai
| Square Sammy |
-- Craig Harris