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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!
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.
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.
The unit can ONLY play GBA games. The guy just chopped up a GBA motherboard and stuffed it into a Wonderswan case.
Here are some pics of the WonderSwan from their japanese website for those wondering what it is. And this is the hompage for the WonderSwan.
That's the correct link to the FAQ.
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."
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
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)
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
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.