I wanted to collect something, something obscure. So, I thought about it for a long while and in the end decided on the Bandai WonderSwan, my collection was going to be whatever I could collect, no expectation, no limit. I wanted to do the Super Cassette Vision but holy moly those games are expensive, you could say that about the WonderSwan, but back when I started collecting it in 2015 it wasn’t so bad in terms of price per game as it is now. So, I started collecting and ended up picking up around 15 original WonderSwan games and 15 WonderSwan Colour games and had a Digimon like original WonderSwan and a red WonderSwan Crystal. It just occurred to me; you might not know what a WS is (I’m going to be using an abbreviation now as I’m already sick of typing WonderSwan), google it and be enlightened. I’ll put below the list of games I had, I say had because I don’t collect anything anymore and ended up selling my collection recently, it did hurt a little bit as I was somewhat sad to see it go but seeing as my mentality towards collecting has shifted over the last year to more of a ‘I’m a hoarder’ mentality, I pretty much outright reject collecting now unless it’s something very minor, for example I had a load of old playing cards kicking about, I ended up chucking them due to the condition they were in but kept 1 joker from each pack and now keep them as bookmarks. It’s a small thing but it makes me happy, got a few books on the go now; Moby Dick, Grimms Fairy Tales, and The Bible if you’d believe it. I’m not religious but I went to a catholic school and always wanted to see what the fuss was about so now I am.
Pretty long tangent I know so let’s get back to the WS. I didn’t really play it that much to be honest, the games I ended up playing the most was Wonder Classic, Side Pocket and One Piece: Grand Battle Swan Colosseum. Wonder Classic is a golf game which is pretty bare bones in terms of a video game, but it worked, and I enjoyed it when I remembered to bring my WS with me on a journey instead of my DS or PSP. Side Pocket is a pool game and is a little more difficult to get used to but once you’ve got the hang of it it’s pretty decent. One Piece: Not typing the whole title out again, is a 2D fighter and by far my favourite game I had, played really well for a handheld One Piece fighter and had a fair amount of playable characters, didn’t get particularly far in the story though as it does become somewhat challenging.
It’s a real shame that the WS didn’t come over to the west, but I can also see why, it had a short life span, and the Game Boy was dominating in both regions, it won the war in the end and the WS fell into obscurity. I just hope that maybe in the future we might get a WonderSwan Mini console or something with some of the many Bandai games released for the system, I think people would like that, because I know I would.
Also the Digimon games that came out on the WS were pretty good, had a go on Anode Tamer and thought it to be decent, Bandai really need to consider doing a Digimon: WonderSwan Collection for modern systems, I’d buy it.
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