Category:WonderSwan games

The first real challenger Nintendo faced on the handheld market.

The WonderSwan was a tiny 16-bit system developed by Koto Laboratory, led by none other than former Nintendo legend Gunpei Yokoi (who sadly passed away before the system was released). It was produced by toy manufacturer Bandai, best known for their toys and games based on popular licenses. When Nintendo caught wind of the WonderSwan's development, they quickly rushed to develop a new Game Boy with a color display in response. Despite Nintendo's efforts to compete, the WonderSwan would go on to sell over a million units in Japan. A new system with a color screen was released around a year later.

While the system found early success, thanks to anime-based licensed games and support from Square and Sony, it just couldn't keep up with the competition. The explosive rise of the Pokémon franchise further cemented Nintendo's dominance in the handheld market. Coupled with the imminent release of the Game Boy Advance, future Dragon Quest games heading for the Game Boy instead, and the system going unreleased to the Western world (despite a couple games getting English localizations).

It also had one of the worst sound chips ever.