WonderSwan Advance

pecka writes "There is an article about a guy who took apart his WonderSwan Color and inserted Gameboy Advance motherboard and screen into the WS case so he can play WS games along with GBA's ones. And yeah, it's in French so you better use Babelfish." I'd call that an impressive hack!

Ignorants

[M3wThr33]

Man... you would think some of you people understand the overseas world of video games. The wonderswan is the brain child and swansong of Gunpei Yokoi, designer of Metroid, Kid Icarus, Game & Watch, the dubious Gameboy and Gameboy Pocket and the Virtual boy. Sadly, after the Virtual Boy he left NCL and went to Bandai to design a handheld called the WonderSwan. Featuring dual joypads serving a similar function as a Lynx's, but could also be additional buttons. It had 16 level grayscale, but held horizontal like a Game Gear. It also had PDA abilites with datebooks and calculators. The main reason it still survives in Japan is the fact their is a color version and it sports the handheld version of Final Fantasy with numerous improvements as background battlegraphics, save ANYWHERE, and the bonus game can be done to give a small amount of money upon completion. I can't recall on the status of the 2 and 3. Unfortunately, Bandai has no plans to bring it here, as Americans are much less prone to accept a new radical handheld device from any company other than the Big N. If you are wondering about the status of the illustrious designer, he passed away a few years ago in a car crash, but his innovation lives on.

Re:Ignorants

[Solid Snake_6]

Ignorance nothing. The big N makes the best handhelds hands down. The reason why other handhelds don't survive is cause they are total crap!!! Well the hardware was superior to the GB, GBP, and GBC......but the games for the other systems plain sucked. However the GBA is the king of portable hardware. The Lynx, Gamegear, Neo Geo Pocket, and NGPC.......games sucked, plain and simple. And I do understand the overseas world of videogames.

Re:Ignorants

[M3wThr33]

:-/ OOOPs! Sorry on my part, I spelled "there" wrong. A little anal retentiveness is in me.

Wonderswan stuff and more

[Maestro443]

Couple things to think about. Wonderswan is a pretty good system, especially if you are fluent in Japanese. The first three Final Fantasy games have been released, many games based on anime series, (ie. Gundam, Macross etc) have been released, and the graphics on the system are quite good. Unfortunatly, you'll have to import this one, as it's never making it over here. There is a handheld NES, I'm not sure who makes it or how much, but if you go to http://www.playthegames.com they sometimes sell them and could tell you more. PLus it's a great store to boot.

When are we gonna see an Amiga Advance?

[jonnydigital]

What I wanna know is, when are we gonna see an Amiga advance? I want my A500 handheld, dammnit! ;)

Huh????

[rtmfm]

What is a WonderSwan??? Are they available in the US?

Re:Huh????

[AndyChrist]

The WonderSwan is an incredibly stupidly named handheld from Bandai. It has remakes of the first few Final Fantasy games on it. This is the only reason anyone would buy one.

The controls are among the worst I have ever experienced. I have only played Mr Driller on one of these things, and the fact that it has no D-pad, only two sets of four sharp-edged, wiggly buttons, makes even that undemanding game a physical pain to play.

There are FIGHTING GAMES available for this system. Don't ask me how anyone is supposed to play them.

Basically, the guy got it bass ackwards. He should be putting the wonderswan guts in the gameboy case. To get away from the horrid controls (granted, the gameboy has fewer buttons...)

Handheld Gaming

[TwistedTR]

It's great to see someone being creative with handheld gaming systems. I remember the post from awhile back of the guy who took an Atari 2600 and fit it down to handheld size. Now can someone come up with something for me to do with this Sega Gamegear or this Atari Lynx that I got sitting around?

GBA games ONLY

[jx100]

The unit can ONLY play GBA games. The guy just chopped up a GBA motherboard and stuffed it into a Wonderswan case.

Re:GBA games ONLY

[Dahan]

From Nintendo, I guess. See the © 2001 Nintendo at the bottom?

Really, it only plays GBA games. It's just the shell of a Wonderswan. Take a French class, then go read the article :)

Re:GBA games ONLY

[itarget]

You can get it in Japan. It's a GBA game that wasn't (I don't think) released in NA or EU.

Re:GBA games ONLY

[_Bean_]

God I hate people like you. Perhaps you should read the article. Of course if the slashdot editor had done his job the article summary would be correct and we wouldn't have this problem.

Re:GBA games ONLY

[itarget]

He's quite correct, actually. It's just a GBA inside a wonderswan case with some rewiring.

If this is what threw you (not sure what the babelfish translation would look like, but I imagine it would be misleading):

"il a fallut retravailler l'intérieur pour la mise en place des 2 cartes mère"

He means that he had to rework the interior to make room for two motherboards, not cartridges.
In french, cartridge == cartrouche, not carte.
There's just one cartridge port, for gba cartridges, sort of sticking out the back. The wonderswan motherboard's only purpose is to handle the sound and buttons (then passing on the signals to the gba board behind it)

On a side note, it looks like it could be accidentally snapped off if a little too much pressure were applied horizontally across the top of the cartridge (like a slipping finger). That would suck. :-P

The WonderSwan FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/wswan/file/wonders wan_a.txt

For those of us who haven't heard of it before.

Re:The WonderSwan FAQ

[NotAnotherReboot]

http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/wswan/file/wonders wan_a.txt

That's the correct link to the FAQ.

Re:The WonderSwan FAQ

[pallex]

"Bernie Stolar, the guy responsible for the Dreamcast lauch...and other things that Sega Saturn fans know too well (that's another story...) sign on with Mattel for the launch of the Wonder Swan."

Dreamcast, Saturn, Mattel - Wow! With him behind you, it cant be long before this device blows the GBA out of the water. Move over Nintendo! :)

Re:The WonderSwan FAQ

[Nameles]

Erm.... Look at the bottom of all GameFAQs pages. No linking directly to FAQs

Re:The WonderSwan FAQ

[pallex]

They are free to put what they want on their webpages. Surely you arent suggesting that website content somehow becomes a legally binding contract which you are subject to just because you`ve viewed it?

Re:The WonderSwan FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the fucking WWW! You can't tell me what I [trekrpg.net] can [mbnet.fi] and [v-wave.com] can't [angelfire.com] link [oamweb.com] to! [evia.net] People who do that don't understand the way the web works. And if you think they'll prevail in court, THINK AGAIN! [gigalaw.com]

Re:The WonderSwan FAQ

[BeagleBoi]

Ok, due to weird Slashdot formatting shit, try this link : Wonderswan FAQ [gamefaqs.com]

This is a WonderSwan

[CoreyGH]

Here are some pics of the WonderSwan from their japanese website [channel.or.jp] for those wondering what it is. And this [channel.or.jp] is the hompage for the WonderSwan.

Re:This is a WonderSwan

[Jonathan]

What's even more bizzare is that Wizardry:The Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, which more or less invented CRPGs when it was released in 1981 (God, twenty years ago!) for the Apple ][, has been ported to it! (I can't read Japanese, but I followed the Wizardry link)

Re:Cool!

[the_danielsan]

What do you mean by the "cellphone/modem" circuit? The possibility of connecting a cellphone to it?

I've been to Japan [akiba.or.jp] just recently and purchased a GBA. In the manual there were some pictures of how to attach a cellular phone to the GBA. I couldn't read the text, but it's probably for multiplayer games.

I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Spy Hunter]

WonderSwan? WTH?

Do they have a companion home console system named SuperDuck or UberSquirrel?

I can just imagine the games they would make featuring "WonderSwan" and her sidekick "MegaGoose."

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Spy Hunter]

Oh, that's right. I forgot that Japanese people love the look and sound of English words, but many have no idea what they mean. I learned this from Dave Barry's book "Dave Barry Does Japan" (very funny book, I recommend it) which includes the following actual quotations from T-shirts worn by unsuspecting Japanese citizens:

I am Plump Mary.
We're Bone Nob. We're happy our original dance.
Nurse Mentality
We hope to always have an open
A souvenir goods make us happy anytime. Don't you Think So?
Boneractive Wear

If you head over to www.engrish.com [engrish.com] you can see more examples of this hilarious stuff.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[DNS-and-BIND]

Boy, I thought that kind of racist Japan-bashing went out with Tojo and Yamamoto. Evidently not.

Ooh! Victor Mature alert.

[pallex]

Its not racist because you arent laughing at them on grounds of race; you`re doing it because then t-shirt is funny.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[SilentChris]

Oh come on. You don't think the Japanese make fun of Americans when they come over and try to say "Sayonara"? :)

I think this stuff is hilarious. Mojo Dojo from Powerpuff Girls is another example.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Suppafly]

Mojo Dojo from Powerpuff Girls is another example

its actually Mojo JoJo and its not at all japanese.. he has an indian style turban on his head for crying out loud..

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[KNicolson]

Oh come on. You don't think the Japanese make fun of Americans when they come over and try to say "Sayonara"? :)

In fact, they do so on prime-time TV! Sunday evenings, 7pm, there's a variety show (Sanma's Super-Mechanical Television, as it gets translated in the English press) with a segment where they interview random foreigners and get them to tell a funny story in Japanese - they used to do the segment with Japanese trying to speak English, but the laughing at foreigners part seems to have replaced it completely.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Jonathan]

It isn't bashing. Go to Japan some time and see for yourself. Granted, Westerners sound like idiots trying to say even basic Japanese things like "Domo Arigato", but at least they don't wear t-shirts with more or less random collections of Japanese words on them.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[whimmel]

I'm pretty sure that the characters girls get tattooed on their lower backs are a big joke on them.

I'm sure they say something like "Upstairs Downstairs" or "If you can read this, use a lubricant"

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't? I see people wearing shirts and hats and having tattoos of random Kanji/chinese characters all the time.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Imperial Tacohead]

They're not always random. Some makers of that kind of clothing apparently have a rather disturbing sense of humor. Walking through Berkeley with a half-Japanese friend of mine one day, she started giggling for no apparent reason. I asked her why, and she said that a passing white girl's t-shirt said "whore" on the front. On the one hand, I didn't think it was funny, but on the other hand, you get what you deserve in a case like that.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[British]

Wait, did it say "Whore" in English or Japanese? If it was in Japanese, that's hilarious since she(shirt wearer) probably doesn't know what it means.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Kinetix303]

Maybe she knew that it said whore? You should have slipped her a bill and waited to see what would happen.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[G-funk]

As funny as this seems to us, it's often a correct translation. In many asian cultures, advertisements and whatnot are very likely to say "Buy our chips and be maximum lucky and prosperous", and it's perfectly normal there, just like the sad crap we have here, but when it's translated to english and read by a westerner it looks stupid.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[iamblades]

Yeah, its really just a culture gap, but you might as well get a good laugh from it...

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[factor-C]

You don't understand what you're talking about. The Japanese grammatical structure is quite different from that of English. What you see on their clothes are English words written in Japanese grammatical structure. A Japanese person that knows the literal definition of the English words will know exactly what it means. In English, we say: Bob has long hair. In Japanese (literally translated to English) they would say: Long hair Bob has. It gets a lot wierder than that as you get into more complex sentence structure.

Basically those sayings are translated for a Japanese person that understands the literal definition of the words but uses Japanese grammatical structure. Knowing this, it may still seem strange, but then again we often associate nuances to words that are not part of their literal definition, so we may deem their choice of words inappropriate when they are in fact in keeping with the literal definition.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[G-funk]

No, it's not a correct translation. Translation requires you to take the meaning from a sentence in one language, and write something with the same meaning in the target language. Direct translations are only half the job, as All Your Base admirably shows.

I know what it means, and that's what it is. The translation is "buy our product and you will have good luck" which is the intended meaning, but sounds silly to us because it's (probably) illegal to advertise that sort of thing in the western world, so we've never heard it.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[OO7david]

Well, I guess someone was still angry from Nintendo that you had to shoot the ducks. I'll bet he's even more pissed now that his last bastion of bird recognition has been melded with his old enemy. This hacked system is the bastardization of all that guy stood for.

I'm ashamed at the guy who did the hack; the exNinendo guy is probably jumping out a window now.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[Yodalf]

No no... not "SuperDuck", but "Mighty Duck" instead. Reminds me of a certain hockey team (or is it baseball?) ...

Anyway. Stupid names.

Re:I hope that sounds better in Japanese

[bewtain]

Maybe. Darkwing duck was pretty big.

names

[telstar]

The Wonder Swan has almost as bad a name as Game Cube or Dreamcast. I mean, I realize that the name of the thing probably sounds like Klink Klank Klong in the native tongue, but Wonder Swan? Come on...

Re:names

[Lunastorm]

Let's face it, most, if not all names of anything (esepecially GNU) are stupid.

Human translation of the first few paragraphs

[itarget]

The Wonderswan Advance is a unique machine made with two consoles; the WSC and the GBA.

It possesses two motherbards. One for connecting the controls of the original wonderswan, and the second as the heart of the unit running the games.

These 2 boards were soldered onto each other with about 40 solder points. Normally I would have soldered at least 50 points, but techncal problems prevented me from doing so.

The front face of the wonderswan, as you can see in the pictures, is blue-grey while the back face is transparent. You'll notice that a number of modifications were made to the unit to fit the motherboard of the GBA. The cartridge port as well as a number of components required me to enlarge the cartridge slot and make a number of holes to ensure that everything would fit properly. The final product isn't exactly of the best workmanship, though I must say that I didn't have the steadiest of hands while making it. I'm quite satisfied with the result, however; especially seeing as it's only a prototype.
Back on the front of the console, you'll notice in the photos that the power, start and sound buttons are missing. Why? It's simply because I had make room for the GBA's screen, which is much thicker than the wonderswan's original screen. I moved the start and sound buttons to the top left directional pad's Y1 and Y2 buttons, while attaching the GBA's L&R button to the remaining two between them. Playability suffers in some games like F-Zero due to the awkward position of the L&R buttons. The game remains playable nonetheless, and I can tell you it's pretty funny seeing F-Zero running on a wonderswan!

Concerning the plastic viewing window for the wonderswan's screen: I was afraid of losing a lot of the viewing area on the GBA's screen, but as it turns out, I didn't lose any from the sides and only lost three lines on the top and bottom.

As you know, there's a black border surrounding the screen on the GBA to counter the effect of shadows falling on the screen from along the edges of the screen cavity. The wonderswan doesn't have this. The problem with these shadows is that it becomes hard to tell where the screen ends... but unfortunately a black border wasn't put in the wonderswan to save on screen real-estate. I think I'll add a black border; I'll lose a few more pixels but the shadows will have less of an effect and it'll improve esthetics.

The unit only lasts a maximum of 7 hours, which is less than either of the original consoles, and that it uses two 1.5v AAA batteries.

The weight of the unit right now is about the same as a GBC. As I said above, the wonderswan advance is very compact, even though the cartridge sticks out the back 4-5mm.

(He then goes on to tell how he did it, and why. The short of the why is that he loves the WSC hardware but not bandai's poor support of the system)

cue the *COOL CARTOON SUPERHERO MUSIC*

[Nathdot]

*In A Deep Movie-Ad-Guy Voice-Over*:

"By day he is an unassuming nerdy haxor boy.

But by night he becomes:

NULLMAN! MASTER OF WARRANTY VOIDAGE!!!"

:)

how about an NES handheld?

[jchristopher]

This is not exactly on topic, but I had to throw it in here because it's just so damn cool. Here is a link [lik-sang.com] to a company selling a handheld that plays the original 8bit famicom/NES games. I can play all my games again! (NES consoles long since broken). Crazy thing is it actually takes the full NES cartridge.

Same place has all sorts of shit imported from Asia - LCDs for your car for DVDs or Playstations, mod chips, all sorts of weird cellular stuff, etc. I don't work there or anything, just thought it was cool.

Re:how about an NES handheld?

[the_danielsan]

In fact, there is a NES-Emulator for the GBA! Check this out: http://www.nolag.com/code/gbdev/pocketnes/ [nolag.com]

In order to play games, you need a ROM-writer [lik-sang.com] from lik-sang [lik-sang.com]

Lik-Sang is cool

[SaiyajinTrunks]

Since this is already off-topic...

I got a PS2 box from Lik-Sang. You plug your monitor and speakers into it, then plug it into your PS2, sound card and video card and you can flip your monitor between computer and PS2! It was $40 bucks and was not packaged very well (two of the units were crammed into nothing more than a bubble-envelope) but they survived the trip from Hong Kong ^_^. Both units kinda went on the fritz the first time I played with them, but now they work perfect (?!??).

Only thing with it is the colors are a little washed out (and the picture is a little blurry if you use the included VGA cable) but I like playing in 640x480. I have wished for a way to play PS2 on my Sony G400 since I got it! Since I have the G-series Sony monitor, I have an extra input and can just toggle between Debian and my PS2 from the front of the monitor itself, damn it's neat. Works great with mp3s too; PC pumps out the tunes via the rear channels and PS2 can be heard (if you want) through the front speakers! Of course it isn't all that technically impressive, it is conveneient as hell; gotta fsck that 40gig or waiting for mozilla to finish compiling? Flip to input-2 and play some PS2 or watch a DVD!

My favorite thing is the quote that is (literally) on all 6 faces of the box: "This product will situate you in the enjoyment as in dreamland." I guess dreamland _is_ slightly blurry, so it's accurate! I wonder what nutty little phrase they came up for the GameAxe?

Disclaimer:I don't work for Lik-Sang or anything, but I was quite nervous about ordering from them the first time. I just thought my testimonial may serve to reduce the paranoia of potenial customers. With so much cool shit, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was a scam, but I ordered anyway after reading things from a couple of professional game developers about them getting their GameBoy ROM flashers and dev kits from Lik-Sang.

rot13 [e-mail] if you care, but if you say something I don't like or spam me, I'll sue you for breaking my cap'n crunch code-ring encryption! :P

Re:how about an NES handheld?

[Zigg]

Heh, check it out, 20.63% off if you buy 5.

I think I'll hold out for 20.64%, personally.

Re:how about an NES handheld?

[jchristopher]

Time Doctor, how about a URL for the procedure you just described? Sounds cool but is it do-able by your average joe?

Re:how about an NES handheld?

[N.]

This can't be done, the NES and gameboy are completely different systems. (Different CPU, memory, screen, and everything else.) The SEGA Master System and Game Gear on the other hand, they are basically the same system with different screen sizes.

English interview.

[KingSchlong]

I thought someone might be interested in this [eagb.net] interview (in English) with the guys who made the Wonderswan Advance. It contains a couple of extra titbits of information.

Re:English interview.

[KingSchlong]

"titbits" ?

Yes, titbits [m-w.com].

I can't imagine the point of doing this.

[rschwa]

I can't imagine the point of doing this. Cramming a GBA into an original gameboy might be amusing. That handheld 2600 is cool.
This, on the other hand, is like saying "well, with a lot of effort and some patience with the dremel, I put the motherboard from this Dell into this Compaq case. excuse the big holes and stuff, I'm not really that good at this."

Anybody else reading Slashdot less and less?

Re:I can't imagine the point of doing this.

[itarget]

Since it's smaller it probably actually fits in a front pant pocket without causing a painful crotch injury when sitting down, unlike the full-size GBA. :-P

Cool idea!

[ioman1]

This is really a cool idea. The funny thing is that I thought Wonderswan was only sold in Japan? I would love to read the sotry if it was translated in english!

Re:uh

[AndyChrist]

French, German, and Spanish translators are fairly mature. The results almost invariably come out understandable, and sometimes look like a real person had written them.