The History of Wonderswan – The True Heir to the Game Boy

Gunpei Yokoi

When I hear about Gunpei Yokoi, the first thing that comes to mind is the Game & Watch. Remember that famous story when Yokoi was on a train and saw a clerk playing with his calculator? That's when he got the idea to create a small electronic toy.

Gunpei was like a locomotive, pulling the entire Nintendo company behind him. It was Yokoi who came up with the products that became best-sellers: from the Ultra Hand to the Game Boy console.

That's why it's even more surprising to learn that there was a console that Yokoi developed after leaving Nintendo. I'm talking about the Wonderswan console, which was sold by Bandai.

Yes, the Wonderswan was developed by the same Yokoi who created the Game & Watch, Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, and Virtual Boy. As various media later said, it was because of the last console that Yokoi decided to leave Nintendo.

Yokoi playing Virtual Boy at the SpaceWorld 94 exhibition.

The Virtual Boy was a resounding failure. Over time, Nintendo admitted that poor marketing killed the console. They failed to convey to people that this was a separate product, not a continuation of the Game Boy series.

One way or another, Yokoi decided to leave Nintendo. This was influenced not only by the failure of the Virtual Boy, but also, oddly enough, by Nintendo's popularity.

When your consoles are at the peak of success, the company develops at a maximum pace, development departments expand, and many new people come to work. This means that it is necessary to find appropriate managers for both individual divisions and the entire company as a whole. And who, if not Gunpei Yokoi, the man who essentially created all of Nintendo's main products, should have been constantly promoted higher and higher? But a manager must have completely different qualities than an ordinary employee. And the work of a manager is more about management and developing a general direction for the entire project, rather than developing consoles.

Gunpei Yokoi was burdened by the fact that he could no longer take a direct part in the creation of the console. And so in August 1996, he left Nintendo, and in September 1996, in his hometown of Kyoto, he founded the company "Koto Laboratory".

Koto Laboratory

In fact, the company was called Koto Co., Ltd. And it was founded not only by Gunpei Yokoi, but by a group of people. Some of them left Nintendo with Yokoi. Among them were Yoshihiro Taki, Tomoyoshi Tanaka, and Masafumi Sakashita. Although everywhere it is written that Yokoi was alone.

Initially, Koto collaborated with Hiro Company Ltd. and developed various mini consoles with one game for the latter.

If you look closely, you can see the Koto logo on the pink and red boxes.

And perhaps Yokoi's company would have remained unknown if Bandai managers had not come to them and asked them to create a new "killer" of the Game Boy. It turned out to be quite ironic: the man who developed the Game Boy now had to create the main competitor to this console.

Console Development

In the early 90s, the main competition was between portable consoles: Nintendo Game Boy, Sega Game Gear, and Atari Lynx.

Atari sold about two million consoles. Sega sold ten and a half million units. And Nintendo sold sixty-eight million consoles by 1998. In principle, it is obvious that the Game Boy was out of competition.

That's why Koto worked on a Game Boy killer. However, this mindset greatly misled the developers at Koto. They were too focused on the Nintendo console. If you look at the technical specifications of the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx, you will find that they already had a color screen and even backlighting! But there was also a problem: both consoles were powered by 6 AA batteries, and the playing time was about 5 hours.

Considering that one AA battery cost 50 cents, it turns out that playing on the Game Gear and Lynx cost you $3 for 5 hours of play. At the same time, playing on the Game Boy cost you $2 for 40 hours of play. So the comparison was not in favor of the more powerful consoles. After all, $2 or $24 for 40 hours of play is a big difference.

It's hard to say whether this fact influenced the low sales of the Game Gear and Lynx, or the fact that Nintendo twisted the arms of third-party publishers (so they wouldn't make their games for other consoles). But one fact remains indisputable: the Nintendo Game Boy was out of competition, even though it was the worst console.

It should also be noted that the Sega Game Gear sold for $149.99, the Atari Lynx started at $179.99, and the Nintendo Game Boy was only $89.99. I think this also affected sales.

And so it was September 1996. Gunpei Yokoi had already opened Koto and began developing the Wonderswan.

Gunpei Yokoi, a direct participant and winner of the competition between the Game Boy, Game Gear, and Lynx, concluded that neither a color screen nor backlighting was worth reducing the playing time of the console and increasing its price. Therefore, it was necessary to beat the Game Boy on its own field. But obviously, besides improved battery life and a cheaper price (technology had made a significant leap in 7 years since the release of the Game Boy), it was necessary to come up with some feature that would distinguish the Game Boy from the Wonderswan. And the developers at Koto decided to focus on the console's controls.

At the end of 1996, the first patent for the Wonderswan console was registered. The main idea of the console was the ability to play it both horizontally and vertically.

The developers at Koto thought for a long time about how to arrange the buttons so that it would be both beautiful and convenient.

As can be seen from the patents, they tried various button arrangements, but in the end, they came to the version that remained in the final version of the console.

And then something terrible happened for all Koto employees. On October 4, 1997, Yokoi was involved in a car accident and died in the hospital.

Now it is no longer possible to determine how much of the Wonderswan is Yokoi's work, but it can be said with certainty that he laid the initial direction of development. And other Koto employees continued it.

After Yokoi's death, Yoshihiro Taki became the head of Koto. By the way, he still works at Koto, but as a regular developer.

I would also like to mention Kazuhiro Kubota. He is currently the director of Koto, but at that time he was not even an employee of the company, but worked at NEC. This company was the largest chip manufacturer in Japan in the 1990s and was interested in developing the Wonderswan and installing its chips there. Kubota was the NEC representative responsible for assisting Koto.

And then, in 2001, Kubota simply moved to work at Koto. Although his wife discouraged him from doing so.

Kazuhiro Kubota (NEC employee who became director of Koto).

If you look inside the Wonderswan, you will find a 16-bit NEC V30 MZ with a very "impressive" frequency of 3.072 MHz. So NEC did achieve something. They lost an employee, but got a huge contract for processor production.

By the way, Kubota himself said that when he was working on the prototype, he was also thinking about installing a touch screen in the console. Even such a prototype was made, but it did not go into production.

The console was equipped with a black-and-white screen capable of displaying 8 shades of gray (unlike the four shades of the classic Game Boy). The console was powered by just one AA battery, and it lasted almost 40 hours!

In fact, the technical specifications of the console were impressive. It was supposed to be much better than the classic Game Boy. I can't help but think that the Wonderswan is the true heir to the Game Boy line.

There is only one problem. If the Wonderswan had been released in 1996, its only competitor would have been the Game Boy Pocket. And the comparison between them would not have been in favor of the Nintendo console. The Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx had already completely failed by that time. So there was no point in comparing them.

But the Wonderswan was released in 1999, and by that time its competitors were the Game Boy Light, Game Boy Color, and even SNK realized that they needed to shift the balance from energy saving to other bonuses and immediately after the NEO GEO Pocket released the NEO GEO Pocket Color. But even though all the competitors had color screens, the Wonderswan did not get lost.

Console Release

In an interview, Kazuhiro Kubota said that the idea to create a Game Boy killer did not belong to Gunpei Yokoi. At a business meeting, Makoto Yamashina proposed to Yokoi to develop a new console that could compete with the Game Boy. However, when Makoto was asked about that meeting, he said that it never happened. He clarified that one of his deputies had communicated with Koto.

It's hard to say when the relationship between these two companies began, but in the end, the rights to the Wonderswan console belonged to Bandai.

The first presentation of the console took place at the autumn Tokyo Game Show 1998. It was held from September 9 to 11, 1998.

Bandai organized a large booth there and showed consoles in different colors.

And Yamashina, the director of Bandai, presented the Wonderswan console at the conference.

On November 21, 1998, Bandai released a press release stating that the Wonderswan would be released in March 1999. The starting price would be 4800 yen.

And on March 4, 1999, the console was released. Bandai organized large celebratory events. One of these places was the Akihabara district (something like the Mitinsky market, with a lot of electronics stores).

Bandai gave participants various commemorative prizes. You could participate in Gunpey competitions, where the winner received a Wonderswan console guide.

In July 1999, Wonderswan sales exceeded 1 million units!

Apparently, this inspired Bandai, as they decided to participate in the TGS 1999 Autumn exhibition.

They prepared a huge number of different accessories for the Wonderswan: the Me-xia digital camera, a phone adapter, and a wireless (IR) adapter to connect the Wonderswan to the PlayStation.

And even a mechanical beetle!

Epilogue

Did Yokoi succeed in creating a Game Boy killer? Absolutely! The Wonderswan is so much better than the Game Boy that there's no point in comparing individual parameters. But who needs a Game Boy killer in 1999 when Nintendo released an entire line of consoles: Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light, and Game Boy Color? Even SNK realized that they needed to release a color console.

This concludes the first part of the article on the history of the Wonderswan console. Bandai got off to a great start, selling over 1 million consoles in just 5 months. Major game publishers began to pay attention to the Wonderswan. Could anything go wrong? We'll find out in the next part.

Continue reading in the article: The History of Wonderswan – The True Heir to the Game Boy. Part 2.