WonderSwan / Color
WonderSwan / Color Specifications
The WonderSwan is a handheld console made by Bandai and released in Japan in March 1999. It was designed by Koto, the company founded by Gunpei Yokoi after he left Nintendo, where he had created the Game & Watch and the Game Boy.
It was cheap, ran for around 30 hours on a single AA battery and could be held both horizontally and vertically, with games designed for either way. The WonderSwan Color followed in December 2000, and the SwanCrystal, with a better screen, in 2002.
Bandai won strong support from Square, who released remakes of the first Final Fantasy games for the WonderSwan Color, and it had plenty of anime licences such as Digimon, Gundam and One Piece. At its peak it took a notable share of the Japanese handheld market, but the Game Boy Advance overtook it, and Bandai stopped making it in 2003. It was never released outside Japan.
Mednafen, ares and Mesen all emulate the WonderSwan and WonderSwan Color accurately, so any of them is a good way to play its games today.
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WonderSwan Emulators
ares is an open source multi-system emulator focused on accuracy and preservation, covering the NES, SNES, N64, Sega consoles and more. The successor to higan.
Mednafen is an open source multi-system emulator, controlled from the command line, known for accurate Sega Saturn and PlayStation emulation.
Mesen is an open source multi-system emulator for the NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and more, with a built-in debugger, for Windows, Linux and macOS.
