WonderSwan
He died on a highway in October 1997. His last machine reached the shelves in March 1999 — and he never saw it there.
After leaving Nintendo in 1996, Gunpei Yokoi founded a company called Koto with several people from his old team. Bandai came to them with a commission that was close to absurd: build a handheld that could take on the Game Boy — the machine Yokoi himself had designed.
What they built ran for about forty hours on a single AA battery, at a time when rival handhelds wanted two to four cells and gave you less. It could be held upright or sideways, screen and buttons both built to work either way. It cost ¥4,800.
On October 4, 1997, on the Hokuriku Expressway in Ishikawa Prefecture, Yokoi stepped out of a car to deal with the aftermath of a traffic accident and was struck by another vehicle. He was fifty-six.
WonderSwan went on sale on March 4, 1999 — a year and five months later. It took as much as 8% of the Japanese handheld market before the Game Boy Advance arrived in 2001 and took the ground back. Two more versions followed. Bandai ended the line in 2003.
Roughly 3.5 million of them, across three models, reached other people's hands. None of them ever passed through his hands.
WonderSwan — at a glance
- Released
- March 4, 1999 (Japan only)
- Launch price
- ¥4,800
- CPU
- NEC V30 MZ, 3.072MHz
- Display
- 224×144 — FSTN monochrome (1999) · FSTN colour (2000) · TFT colour on SwanCrystal (2002)
- Power
- A single AA battery
- Battery life
- About 40 hours (mono) · about 20 (Color) · about 15 (SwanCrystal) — manufacturer figures
- Orientation
- Playable held either horizontally or vertically
- Units sold
- About 3.5 million across all three models
- Discontinued
- 2003, following the Bandai–Namco merger
- Region
- Japan only — never officially released abroad
Better picture, shorter life
Each generation bought a clearer screen with the one thing the WonderSwan was famous for.
WonderSwan
Monochrome FSTN screen. The longest battery life of the three — about 40 hours from one AA cell.
WonderSwan Color
Colour FSTN screen (241 colours on-screen). Battery life halves to about 20 hours. Sold 270,632 units in under a month.
SwanCrystal
TFT screen — the clearest of the three. Battery life falls again, to about 15 hours.
What actually happened
WonderSwan was developed by Koto — the company Gunpei Yokoi founded with former colleagues after leaving Nintendo in August 1996 — under commission from Bandai. The original monochrome model launched in Japan on March 4, 1999 at ¥4,800, followed by WonderSwan Color on December 9, 2000 (¥6,800) and SwanCrystal on July 12, 2002 (¥7,800). All three ran on an NEC V30 MZ processor.
Each generation traded battery life for a better picture: roughly 40 hours from a single AA cell on the original, about 20 on the Color, about 15 on the SwanCrystal. The console was sold only in Japan; no version was ever officially released abroad.
It reached as much as 8% of the Japanese handheld market at its peak, a share that fell away after Nintendo launched the Game Boy Advance in March 2001. Combined sales across all three models are generally reported at around 3.5 million units. Bandai ended the line in 2003, around the company's merger with Namco.
One battery, forty hours
One AA battery, forty hours. Where rivals reached for more power, the WonderSwan reached for less — the clearest surviving expression of Yokoi's belief that mature, cheap, well-understood technology, used with imagination, beats new technology used without it.
Five things about the WonderSwan
- The original WonderSwan ran for roughly 40 hours on one AA battery — about double what most handhelds of 1999 managed on several.
- It could be held upright or sideways. The buttons and the screen were both designed to work in either orientation.
- WonderSwan Color reportedly sold 270,632 units in under a month after its launch in December 2000.
- No version of the WonderSwan was ever officially sold outside Japan. Its games are, as a rule, in Japanese.
- Each new model traded battery life for a sharper screen — 40 hours, then 20, then 15 — as the display moved from monochrome FSTN to colour FSTN to TFT.
The man behind it
- Gunpei Yokoi — the engineer who made the Game Boy and the D-pad
- Yokoi's Last Morning
- A Quiet Light
- Virtual Boy — the failure that carries his name
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