The History of Wonderswan – The True Heir to Game Boy. Part 2.

Bandai and Mattel

On July 21, 1999, Bandai announced the formation of an international alliance between Bandai and Mattel.

Let's talk about Mattel. Even if you haven't heard of this company, you definitely know its toys: slimy slime (which we called "lizun"), Hot Wheels cars, and the board game Uno. Mattel made and continues to make many different and interesting toys - even the famous Barbie dolls are also theirs.

What were Bandai famous for? Besides owning brands like Gundam, Naruto, Power Rangers, and Digimon, at that time Bandai released a toy that literally captivated children all over the world - Tamagotchi.

These two companies agreed to exchange 5% of their shares and launch sales of their products in new territories.

Bandai was supposed to sell Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars in Japan. And Mattel was supposed to distribute Bandai's products in the US and South America. In particular, to sell Wonderswan consoles.

But something went wrong, and these plans did not come to fruition. The Wonderswan console never made it to the international market.

Wonderswan Problems

It's hard to say why the alliance between Bandai and Mattel fell apart. For example, Takashi Oya, an analyst at Deutsche Securities, wrote that Mattel is not the best partner for Bandai when it comes to expanding business in the US market. Yes, in terms of toys, Mattel had a very strong position, but from the point of view of competition in the portable console market, it would have been wiser to work with Sony Computer Entertainment, as the latter was closely competing with and even sometimes beating Nintendo.

But I think the main problem was with the console itself. Or rather, not even with the console, but with external circumstances.

First, the concept of the "Game Boy killer" was already outdated by 1999. The classic Game Boy DMG-01 was released in 1989, that is, 10 years before the appearance of Wonderswan. But in those 10 years, progress did not stand still, and portable consoles were constantly being released. Even if we don't take into account various knock-offs like Watara and Game.com, there were a lot of cool and interesting consoles: Sega Game Gear, Atari Lynx, Atari Lynx 2, and NEC TurboExpress.

And that's not to mention that Nintendo itself had already released the Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Light, and upon learning that SNK and Bandai were making their consoles, started developing the "Wonderswan and Neo Geo Pocket killer" - the Game Boy Color.

Second, the maximum cheapness of the device is cool, but not in this particular case. On one hand, 4800 Japanese yen is 1.8 times cheaper than the Game Boy Color (8900 yen), but on the other hand, the psychological ceiling set by Nintendo was around ten thousand yen. Anything below that price was acceptable. And the hyper-low price could even deter buyers.

Overall, it's a situation where you come to buy a color TV, and you're offered a black-and-white novelty that is supposedly better than all previous TV models. And you look at the seller like an idiot because everyone has already switched to color TVs.

All this led to Bandai asking Koto Laboratory to develop a color version of the console.

Wonderswan Color

The developers at Koto Laboratory didn't bother too much. They took the Wonderswan and added a color screen that could display up to 241 colors out of 4096 simultaneously. The processor remained the same NEC V30 MZ, but the amount of RAM was increased from 128 to 512 kilobytes.

In principle, such limited changes are quite understandable. It was necessary to maintain backward compatibility with Wonderswan games, and that's hard to do if you make significant changes to the console.

The console itself became slightly larger. This happened because the screen was increased from 2.49 to 2.8 inches.

In terms of usability, there were also minor changes. All buttons now had labels (X1-X4, Y1-Y4), and the power button was moved to the front panel.

On August 30, 2000, Bandai held a press conference in Tokyo announcing the upcoming release of the WonderSwan Color.

At the conference, you could see a stand with Wonderswan Color in different body colors.

Here, one event occurred that kept Wonderswan afloat for some time. Square announced that they would release a series of Final Fantasy games for Wonderswan.

Bandai President Takeo Takasu (right) and Square President Hisashi Suzuki (left).

Why was this extremely important?

If you look at the list of publishers and developers for Game Boy Color, you can see so many famous companies that it's staggering: Capcom, Game Freak, Konami, Namco, Taito, 3DO, Acclaim Entertainment, Activision, Electronic Arts, Enix, Epoch, Hasbro, Interplay, Mattel Interactive, THQ, Ubisoft, Virgin Interactive.

What could Bandai respond with? Almost nothing. On Wonderswan, there were: 2 games from Taito, 3 games from Namco, and 1 game from Konami. Obviously, this list of star names looked quite pale compared to Nintendo.

And then Square announced a major collaboration with Bandai, launching the Final Fantasy series on Wonderswan Color. A limited edition of the console was even made, which was supposed to be sold right at the start of Wonderswan Color sales.

Sales Start

On December 9, 2000, sales of the Wonderswan began. The line to enter the LaOX store in Akihabara started forming as early as December 8. By 2 a.m., about 20 people were already in front of the store. And by 8:40 a.m., there were already about 130 people in line.

Posters in the store stated that they couldn't produce enough consoles for the sales start, so the limited edition Wonderswan Color Final Fantasy would only be available for pre-order.

Inside the store, there were stands where you could play and get acquainted with the console. The Wonderswan Color was sold for 6800 yen, which was a third cheaper than the Game Boy Color.

Soon, the first lucky ones who managed to buy the console started appearing.

Results

It seemed like this was the moment to push Nintendo off the pedestal of portable consoles. Bandai managed to attract a major game publisher - Square, which brought a global hit - Final Fantasy - to the console. The consoles were selling like hotcakes in stores. What went wrong?

Let's look at three dry numbers. The Wonderswan Color (including Crystal) sold 1.24 million units over its entire sales period. Meanwhile, the Game Boy Advance sold 612,000 units in its first week of sales in Japan. And in America, also in the first week, it sold about half a million units. That is, the Game Boy Advance sold as many units in a week as the Wonderswan did in its entire lifetime.

Analysts note various reasons for the console's failure: that it simply wasn't needed, that it didn't make it to the American market. Some believe that the problem with the console was the inability to directly connect headphones, as well as the lack of a power adapter port (to play directly from an outlet).

I want to say that the console was simply late. I think that if the sequential release of the Wonderswan consoles had been shifted at least a couple of years earlier, their fate would have been completely different.

Above, I wrote that the Wonderswan Color was announced on August 30, 2000. But just three days before that, at the Space World 2000 exhibition, Nintendo announced the 32-bit Game Boy Advance, which also had support for Game Boy and Game Boy Color games.

It turns out that Bandai was always in the role of catching up.

Also, in my opinion, another important reason for the failure was the deal with Mattel, which ended up going nowhere. Who knows how history would have turned if Bandai had managed to enter the American market. Maybe then other game publishers would have followed?

Epilogue

The story of the Wonderswan doesn't end here. Bandai would later release the Wonderswan Crystal - a console with a TFT LCD screen.

But this would no longer affect the sales of the Wonderswan.

Over time, Square would return to Nintendo, and the sales of the Wonderswan would completely stop.

Bandai would merge with Namco and become a global leader in toy sales. So they would be fine.

The Wonderswan console would be remembered as the last creation of Gunpei Yokoi, which made Nintendo sweat.