WONDER SWAN COLOR DETAILS EXPOSED TO UNCARING PUBLIC

The Wonder Swan Color, basically unchanged from its predecessor

As promised yesterday, Bandai had a press conference today at 2pm (Japan time, so don't feel strange if you're reading it before 2pm today) to announce the new Wonder Swan Color (the official name). Like the Game Boy Color, there is very little to surprise owners of the original handheld, but here're the specs anyway:

• The general layout is the same. There're 13 keys (two "pads", Start, A, B, Power and Sound) and the system can be vertically or horizontally oriented, depending on the game. It runs on one AA battery for 20 hours.
• The LCD panel, at about 2.8 inches, is slightly larger than the black and white Swan. 241 colors can be shown at the same time out of a 4096-color palette.
• Over on hardware, the WSC uses a 16-bit processor running at a whopping 3MHz, with 64KB of RAM to support it. It's fully compatible with the older Swan.

The price of the Wonder Swan Color, coming out in December, is slated at 6800 yen ($65), a full 2000 yen more expensive than the earlier version. Colors available at launch include clear blue (photo), orange and black, as well as solid blue and pink.

So far there're only three games announced for the WSC - and, as expected, they're all Final Fantasy games. Although the Dragon Quests from the NES era have been re-released on lots of consoles, this'll mark the first time the three Final Fantasy games released on Famicom (the Japanese NES) will get ported. Final Fantasy I is going on sale at December; the other two sometime in the future.

MORNING UPDATE
At the press conference yesterday, Square's president, Hisashi Suzuki, had this to say about the WSC: "Beginning with the FF series, we will supply, as a third party, our other million sellers, including the Seiken and Saga series. Considering the system's network capabilities, we are thinking of a link between it and our PlayOnline service. There are many things we can think of, including downloading software from PlayOnline to the Wonder Swan."

And as for the software it'll be making: "Ten years ago Gunpei Yokoi, the father of the Wonder Swan, helped us out tremendously. We are determined to return the favor by releasing software of Pokemon caliber and sales." FF1 will be available both separately and in a special-edition pack-in with the Swan for 9999 yen. Food for thought there, although I doubt WSC is going to approach anything like the GBC's numbers. Maybe if it was a thousand yen cheaper. Here's a picture of FF1.

Bandai also showed at the press conference an adapter allowing the use of flash memory cards, like those used in digital cameras. This adapter has a USB port in it, which suggests connection possibilities with the PS2 and portable phones.

And finally, a total of 21 games besides the FF series were announced. Nothing especially ground-breaking in the title list; Gunpey EX and Rhyme Rider Kerorican (a music action game from Masaya Matsuura, the Parappa guy) are launch titles, and others, including a couple SD Gundam games and Digimon, already have B+W versions out. Prices range from 3980 to 4800 yen ($37-45). A video is available of the proceedings.

My comments from yesterday still apply, essentially. Take out the unique exterior design (which I like quite a lot, actually - Gunpei Yokoi, RIP) and you've got yourself a Neo Geo Pocket Color. With last week's Game Boy Advance announcements, and the fact that 6800 yen isn't that cheap, most gamers probably won't bother. Bandai has succeeded so far in carving out a profitable niche in the handheld market, and it looks like they'll continue to just sort of coast along in the marketplace, relying on Square or Namco to dish out the occasional game for flash. If Nintendo dropped GB Color prices right now, the WSC's existence would barely even be necessary, unfortunately.

By the way, I just realized that the Wonder Borg might just turn into the Nintendo R.O.B. of the 21st century.

OTHER BITS

• Dragon Quest VII has sold out again. The consumer market has now chainsawed through a total of 2.1 million copies as of the 28th. Enix will release 1.1 million more through September 2nd, bringing the potential sales total to 3.2 million. Not bad at all, especially considering how hard the game's getting whinged by journos and Japanese web board rats.
• Sega's looking for beta testers. You have to be in Japan, though [thpbbbt]. Bug hunting for six and a half hours each day, at 800 yen an hour (750 for the first two months), working in the most expensive city in the world to live in, is not my idea of ideal part-time work. It's Sega of Japan, too, so it's not like beta testers can suddenly become game designers when project heads get fired or anything.

Look out for more updates later today...

-fenegi