The Bandai WonderSwan: The Japanese Powerhouse

The Original Bandai WonderSwan

I remember back in the late 90’s, reading an article in the Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) magazine about a Japanese handheld being developed by Gunpei Yokoi – who’s the father of the Nintendo Game Boy. Gunpei left Nintendo after the Virtual Boy debacle and formed his own engineering company, Koto Laboratory. Bandai, wanting to enter the video game handheld hardware market after the tremendous success of their Tamagotchi virtual pet, approached Gunpei Yokoi and his company in order to create a new handheld. The Bandai WonderSwan was to be a good, low cost handheld system that ran on just one AA battery.

My Personal Favorite: The Nintendo GameBoy Advance SP Model AGS-101

My GBA SP AGS-101 with the brighter screen

Let me start off by saying that this particular model of the GBA is the BEST way to play all kinds of GameBoy games in existence – even the old black and white, and the color cartridges. It will play the best GBA games no problem, and play all the Gameboy games you can think of in the best way possible... Well, I say that because this particular model of the Gameboy Advance has a backlight…

GameBoy in color! The Nintendo GameBoy Color

The Nintendo Game Boy Color

Another one of my childhood favorites, the Nintendo GameBoy Color. It is a pretty good gaming handheld with a faster 8-bit processor and more importantly, a color screen. I have to say, it’s a huge step up from the “pea green soup” graphics of the original GameBoy. It also had gotten an upgrade in its screen, from passive matrix LCD to a crisper active matrix LCD which gives the games a sharper look with none of the blurring seen in previous GameBoy machines.

The Iconic King of Gaming Handhelds: The Original Nintendo GameBoy

The original Nintendo GameBoy

Ah, the original Nintendo GameBoy… The first in the line of GameBoy handheld video game systems released by Nintendo. It’s basically the granddaddy of the handheld gaming world. When it was first released on 1989, it was bundled with the game Tetris and it was an instant hit. Upon its release in the United States, it sold its entire shipment of one million units within a few weeks. It subsequently became a worldwide phenomenon.