|
|
|
History
Bandai was founded on July 5, 1950, by Naoharu Yamashina in Asakusa, in Tokyo’s Taitō ward, under the name Bandai-ya (萬代屋). The name comes from the Chinese expression bandai fueki, meaning “eternally unchanging”. The company started as a small toy distributor, selling celluloid dolls, metal toys and rubber swimming rings. Its first original product, the Rhythm Ball, a beach ball with a bell inside, came out the same year.
In 1955, Bandai-ya introduced the toy industry’s first quality-guarantee system and expanded into metal model cars. The company was renamed Bandai in July 1961 and began selling abroad, opening an office in New York.
The real breakthrough came in the 1960s and 1970s with character toys. After the success of its Astro Boy figures in 1963, Bandai had major hits through its subsidiary Popy, including the Kamen Rider transformation belt (1971) and the die-cast “Chogokin” Mazinger Z robots (1974). In 1980, Bandai launched its Gundam plastic model kits (“Gunpla”), which became one of its signature products.
During the same period, Bandai entered electronic games. In 1977, it started selling simple TV games under the TV Jack name, including the TV Jack Add-On 5000. In December 1979, it released the Super Vision 8000, one of the first Japanese consoles to use interchangeable cartridges. Bandai also made LCD and LSI handheld games, and it imported or distributed several foreign consoles in Japan, including the Mattel Intellivision (1982), the Emerson Arcadia and the GCE Vectrex. In 1985, it became one of the first major third-party publishers for the Nintendo Famicom. Games based on its own licences sold very well. Kinnikuman: Muscle Tag Match, for example, sold over one million copies.
As the video game market matured, Bandai tried to return as a console maker in 1994 with the Playdia. The Playdia was not a total failure, but it did not bring in much money and was soon abandoned in favour of the Apple Bandai Pippin in 1996. The Pippin was a commercial disaster.
After these failures, Bandai’s future looked uncertain, but its executives thought they had found a way out. On January 23, 1997, Sega Enterprises and Bandai announced a merger worth about $1 billion, through an exchange of shares. It would have created “Sega Bandai Ltd.”, a major Japanese entertainment company with combined yearly revenue of about ¥600 billion (around $6 billion). The merger was planned for October 1, 1997. Bandai president Makoto Yamashina was to become president of the new company, Sega president Hayao Nakayama would be vice-chairman in charge of strategy, and Isao Okawa, chairman of CSK and Sega’s main shareholder, would be chairman. The new company would have had three main divisions: game hardware, multimedia and networks, and toys.
Both companies had good reasons to merge. Sega was a distant third in the home console market, behind Sony’s PlayStation and a recovering Nintendo, and was facing inventory write-downs, especially in the United States. Bandai, Japan’s largest toy maker, known for Power Rangers and Sailor Moon merchandise, had seen its big hits fade and was expecting a large loss, partly because of the Pippin. The idea was to combine Sega’s hardware, arcade and technology know-how with Bandai’s character licences, marketing and younger customers. Nakayama even predicted that the new company could become the world’s second-largest entertainment group after Disney.
Inside Bandai, however, opposition grew quickly. About 80% of Bandai’s middle managers expressed serious concerns about a culture clash and a loss of identity. Bandai was seen as a friendly, “family-like” company, while Sega was seen as rigid and corporate. Petitions and angry letters circulated inside the company.
Then Bandai found its saviour: the Tamagotchi. This small virtual pet, launched in Japan on November 23, 1996, became a huge worldwide hit, selling millions of units in a few months. By spring 1997, Bandai no longer looked like a company that urgently needed a partner. Its fortunes had turned around, while Sega’s problems continued. In May 1997, less than a week after approving it, Bandai’s board cancelled the merger, and Makoto Yamashina took responsibility for the failure. Bandai then started looking for a new way into video games, and found it in Gunpei Yokoi.
Gunpei Yokoi, the legendary Nintendo engineer behind the Game & Watch and the Game Boy, left Nintendo in 1996, shortly after the commercial failure of the Virtual Boy. Many people believed he had been pushed out because of that failure. However, in a November 1996 interview with the magazine Bungeishunjū, Yokoi explained that he had long planned to become independent at age 55, to have more freedom for his ideas. After finishing the Game Boy Pocket as a parting gift in July 1996, he officially resigned on August 15, 1996, after 31 years at Nintendo, shortly before turning 55. He then founded his own company, Koto Laboratory.
Bandai asked Yokoi to design an affordable, efficient handheld that could challenge Nintendo’s dominance of the portable market. Yokoi led the early design work, but he died in a car accident on October 4, 1997, before the system was finished. Koto Laboratory continued development with Bandai, and the console was named WonderSwan. Bandai chose the swan because it is an elegant bird that also has powerful legs for swimming, an image of the console’s style and power.
Release
Bandai unveiled the WonderSwan in Tokyo on October 8, 1998, and launched it in Japan on March 4, 1999, at the very aggressive price of ¥4,800. It had a 16-bit NEC V30 MZ processor, a reflective FSTN screen showing 8 shades of grey, and could be held either horizontally or vertically. Its battery life was excellent: about 30 hours on a single AA battery.
Nintendo’s Game Boy Color had come out five months earlier, but Bandai chose a black-and-white screen on purpose to keep the price low and the battery life long. Bandai remembered that the original Game Boy had beaten its colour rivals, the Game Gear and the Atari Lynx, thanks to its battery life and its games. The WonderSwan was aimed at teenagers and young adults with a stylish image, between Nintendo’s child-friendly Game Boy and SNK’s hardcore Neo Geo Pocket.
The strategy worked at first. The console sold 600,000 units in its first two months, and its low price and unique design helped it gain a foothold against the Game Boy Color. Bandai supported it with games based on its own licences, such as Digimon and Gundam, while Namco, Capcom, Taito and Banpresto also released games. Square’s Chocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon, released at launch, became the best-selling WonderSwan game. Bandai had finally found its place in video games.
Demise
Despite good sales and strong software support in its early years, the WonderSwan stayed far behind the Game Boy Color. The WonderSwan was more powerful than the Game Boy Color, but it had one big weakness: its black-and-white screen. Bandai fixed that weakness on December 9, 2000, with the release of the WonderSwan Color, which could still play all the original WonderSwan games. By then, the original model had sold 1.55 million units.
Technical Specifications
- CPU: NEC V30 MZ (16-bit, 80186 equivalent) at 3.072 MHz
- RAM: 16 KB
- Display: 2.49-inch reflective FSTN LCD, 224 × 144 pixels, 8 shades of grey (out of 16)
- Sprites: 128 on screen, 32 per line
- Sound: 4-channel wavetable (one channel can play PCM samples); stereo through the optional headphone adapter
- Battery: 1 × AA (about 30 hours), or optional rechargeable battery (about 12 hours)
- Controls: D-pad (X buttons) and Y buttons for dual orientation (horizontal or vertical), A and B buttons, Start
- Media: ROM cartridges (up to 128 Mbit)
- Internal memory: Stores the player’s name, birth date, gender and blood type, used by some games
- Size: 74.3 × 121 × 24.3 mm
- Weight: About 93 g without battery, 110 g with battery
Consoles
The WonderSwan was released on March 4, 1999, in seven colours:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Skeleton Green | Skeleton Black | Skeleton Blue | |||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Skeleton Pink | Metallic Blue¹ | Pearl White¹ | |||
 |
|
 |
 |
||
| Silver Metallic |
|||||
¹ The Blue Metallic and Pearl White models were discontinued on July 22, 1999, to make room for the Summer Edition models.
Summer Edition
Bandai chose the colours of the two-tone Summer Edition through an online survey, asking fans for the three most refreshing summer colours. The three winners were released on July 22, 1999, also to celebrate one million WonderSwan units sold.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Sherbet Melon | Soda Blue | Frozen Mint | |||
Exclusive
Jusco (Japan United Stores Company) is one of the largest supermarket chains in Japan. Over the years, it has sold several exclusive console colours, mostly for Nintendo systems, such as the Jusco 30th Anniversary Nintendo 64, the Game Boy Jusco Atomic Purple, the Game Boy Jusco Clear and the Game Boy Advance Mario & Luigi edition. The WonderSwan also got its own Jusco exclusive: the Jusco Purple. Two other rare colours were never sold in stores: a Camouflage model, given away by the magazine CoroCoro Comic, and a Gold model, given as an event prize.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Gold | Jusco Purple | CoroCoro Comic | |||
Limited Edition
Bandai released several limited editions during the WonderSwan’s life. Although they were called limited editions, they were widely available. The later ones are a little rarer: the WonderSwan Color was already on the way, so people who did not yet own a WonderSwan had little reason to buy the black-and-white model.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
| Tare Panda no Gunpey December 9, 1999 (¥7,600) Serial : SWJ-BAN 02 |
Zeon March 23, 2000 (¥6,800) Serial: SWJ-77A009 |
Chocobo Fushigi No Dungeon March 23, 2000 (¥6,800) SWJ-77A00A |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Digimon Adventure – Anode Tamer March 23, 2000 (¥5,980) Serial: SWJ-77A007 |
Mobile Suit Gundam MSVS: Earth Federation March 23, 2000 (¥6,800) Serial: SWJ-77A008 |
Digital Monsters Ver. WonderSwan November 11, 1999 (¥6,800) SWJ-77A002 |
|||
Bundle
Bandai also released a few bundles. These are not really limited editions, since each one is simply a Skeleton Blue console packaged with a game. The only bundle with a different console colour is the WonderSwan Handy Sonar bundle, which comes with a Skeleton Black console.
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
|
| Handy Sonar May 13, 1999 (¥14,600) |
Kaze no Klonoa Moonlight Museum November 11, 1999 (¥6,800) Serial: SWJ-77A003 |
Gunpey November 11, 1999 (¥5,600) Serial: SWJ-77A001 |
|||
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Meitantei Conan: Majutsushi no Chousenjou! | SD Gundam Emotional Jam Bundle November 11, 1999 (¥6,800) Serial: SWJ-77A003 |
Nobunaga no Yabou November 16, 1999 (¥9,999) Serial: SWJ-KEX003 |
|||
 |
|
||||
| Wonder Stadium ’99 | |||||
WonderSwan Reference
WonderSwan Peripheral
Bandai have released (and planned to released) a good number of peripheral for the WonderSwan series: