Welcome back to another delve into the mostly impenetrable library of the Bandai WonderSwan and its cooler younger sibling the WonderSwan Color. If you're new to this whole circuit, the WonderSwan existed for a brief time around the turn of the millennium as a competitor to the half-step that was the Game Boy Color, and would've done just fine if it wasn't for the dramatic 2001 debut of the Game Boy Advance. That thing "advanced" a lot of rivals to an early grave. Still, Bandai's portable managed to get an impressive 200 (or thereabouts) games out of the door and that's what we're celebrating with this feature. I just need to do a better job of sorting the wheat from the chaff here, and randomly determining half of these selections probably isn't helping.

I have to admit, the tyranny of the Coalition of Randomizers is starting to reach fever pitch with Part Seven's batch of selections. I still managed to wrest dominion over two of them—we have one prime number (#31) and one multiple of seven (#35)—but the other three were... well, games I didn't think I'd have the patience to dive too deep into beyond the requisite ten minute minimum limit. ("Ten minute minimum limit" is a pretty good tongue-twister I just invented, so that's a silver lining to all this.) Even though I might get Hoffa'd in the process and disappear—it could take the Feds a while to find me since the Coalition buries their rats in a random place each time—I'm thinking of ditching this whole arbitrary selection system for when we reach Parts Nine and Ten (due for October and November) if only to hurry through all the remaining WonderSwan games that have piqued my interest. That still means one more episode in September of getting side-swiped by the notoriously slapdash licensed tie-ins Bandai was known for at the time, but then having an excuse to poke my nose into some anime franchise or other isn't exactly outside of my comfort zone given we have Game OVA happening concurrently elsewhere in my blogging. These are certainly some choices I've made.

For now, let's struggle through whatever the randomizer thought would make for a good time and see if anything else is breaking into that upper half of the WonderSwan WonderRanking table found at the end of this and every entry of the feature. Speaking of which, make sure to be all caught up by perusing this list: Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five, and Part Six.

Anyway, here's WonderSwan:

#31: Hataraku Chocobo

"Working Chocobo"

• Developer: Squaresoft
• Publisher: Squaresoft
• Release Date: 2000-09-21
• Inscrutability: None (Translated)
• Selection Process: Chosen (Prime Plus)
• Is This Anime?: No, it's Chocobos.

Field Report: Hataraku Chocobo is a resource-gathering board game thing that's vaguely Settlers of Catan-ish, though less complicated, featuring Final Fantasy's third cutest mascot (as a weird little cave goblin myself, I've a real affinity for Tonberries) which is stylistically similar to the King of the Kweh's wholesome appearance on DS with Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales. Hataraku Chocobo is an aberration on WonderSwan because it came out mere weeks before the debut of the WonderSwan Color on December 9th and so was already programmed with a full color palette despite being sold as a standard black-and-white WonderSwan game. You saw this also with a few Game Boy games that came out close to the GBC's launch, and I think this very site had that conversation during the GBC Daikatana stream about black carts being compatible with both classic GB and GBC (all classic GB games run on GBC too of course, just without color). When the WonderSwan Color debuted all WonderSwan games released from that point on, first- or third-party, were made for the color model so Hataraku Chocobo remains, as far as I'm aware, the only "daywalker" game on there. (I should correct myself here and say there was one other exception: Super Robot Taisen Compact 2 Dai-3-bu: Ginga Kessen-hen was released as a black-and-white game despite releasing after the WSC since it was the third part of a trilogy that carried your data over through each entry via the system's internal memory: it'd be kinda harsh on those B&W WonderSwan SRT fans if they couldn't see that story out.)

Hataraku Chocobo was also Squaresoft's first game for the system as well as the first to be specifically built for the handheld which is why Square took its development in a different direction from the hefty RPGs that made them famous. They'd also later contribute one of the WonderSwan Color's launch games—a remake of the first Final Fantasy, which we've already covered—but this simple and cute strategy game was where they decided to test the waters for a new portable home after their falling out with Nintendo.

Maybe it's because I'm a workshy sloth but Working Chocobo wasn't really doing anything for me. I'm fond enough of those resource-gathering "4X" strategy games (provided they're not RTS, since I don't have the multitasking ability to handle those) but this game's barebones nature and the random chance factor makes this something I don't think I'll be able to muster enough enthusiasm to really knuckle down and figure out. The typical flow has you assigning chocobos in your ranch to specific jobs—a miner gathers ore, a gatherer can get either wood or water (which the translation calls "aqua", I guess because it sounds fancier for the sake of whichever shmuck is given the job of filling buckets all day), a farmer grows gysahl greens, etc.—and then try to quickly monopolize high-earning spaces around a 3x3 grid before your opponents can. You're looking to be the one who gathers the most resources at the end of a four year cycle, which works out to be four turns, and can recruit new chocobos by wandering around the hub map looking for wild strays in order to increase your workforce. Assigning or catching chocobos uses up some invisible amount of your alloted time per turn so there's only so much you can do before it's your rivals' chance to swan in and take everything remaining of value, and at the end of each turn you can trade some of your more plentiful goods for those you're lacking (gysahl greens especially, as they'll go off quickly if you're trying to stockpile them but you'll always need several to keep your chocobos fed).

While simple enough it's one of those games that's a lot more cutthroat than its cute presentation would suggest. You quickly need to seize on acquisition opportunities before your opponents can and I'm sure there's many hidden layers to exploit in order to stay one step ahead of everyone else on the harvest leaderboard. The first stage, Kapua, gives you several forest-minded chocobo (wouldn't forests be hard to run in? I figured chocobos would be like ostriches and prefer plains) to maximize your wood production and several forest squares to make that easier on you; other stages might require more fighting over finite materials, though if a space offers a decent amount of two different resources you can easily share it as long as you're both assigning chocobos set to gather separate types. It does feel like one of those games that starts deceptively easy and starts ratcheting up the challenge and pressure once you feel like you have the hang of things, but as this isn't really my preferred genre (the occasional exception like Master of Magic aside) this was largely to slake my curiosity since it's a Square game that's unique to the WonderSwan platform. I'll be checking out the third and last of these WS Square originals in due time but even if this one didn't click with me I can at least say that it's a pretty delightful and distinctive (for Square fans especially) game with some evident deeper waters to it. Sorry, deeper "aqua".

Time Spent: 25 minutes.

#32: SD Gundam: Gashapon Senki -Episode One-

"SD Gundam: Record of Gashapon War -Episode One-"

• Developer: Graphic Research
• Publisher: Bandai
• Release Date: 1999-12-29
• Inscrutability: Major
• Selection Process: Random
• Is This Anime?: If it has Gundams, it counts.

Field Report: SD Gundam: Gashapon Senki -Episode One- (there was no -Episode Two-, at least not for WonderSwan) is a turn-based strategy game featuring "super-deformed" (i.e. chibi) characters from the Gundam franchise, specifically the titular robot exosuits which become their own sapient beings in the SD continuity (but not here, though). I couldn't begin to tell you where this might fit in the orthodox Gundam canon besides that the protagonist is the v Gundam (pronounced "nu Gundam": presumably it's made out of nu-metal) which was the Gundam used by recurring series protagonist Amuro Ray in the 1988 movie Mobile Suit Gundam: Char's Counterattack. There, that counts as doing research, right? There were a series of SD Gundam Famicom strategy games called Gachapon Senshi, or Gachapon Soldiers, but they very slightly changed the title this time—Senki means war records, like in Lodoss Senki, and Gashapon is just another pronunciation for the random capsule toy machines Bandai creates—possibly as a means to distance themselves from what was perceived as a Nintendo property, similar to how Namco's Famista (named for the Famicom) baseball games were given other titles on non-Nintendo platforms. That's just me guessing though and the fact that there's a later Nintendo GameCube game called Gashapon Wars does throw some cold water over that theory. Much of what follows will be idle guesswork too: there's not a whole lot out there in English about these interminable Gundam strategy games.

This is our second game from Graphic Research, following after last month's Shaman King: Mirai no Ishi RPG. As stated last time, all six games they worked on for WonderSwan were anime tie-ins: we've seen Shaman King and SD Gundam, and the four others (which I'm hoping we don't encounter) include two One Piece games and two for Soul Hunter.

This one's a little more Advance Wars-esque than I imagined: you have a hero unit, which is the extraordinarily powerful v Gundam, but everything else is a generic Gundam which you can produce at factory spaces scattered around the map. You and the opponent start with two of these occupied factories each (or at least that's the case for the first stage) plus a smattering of extant units, and the first objective is to quickly capture all the neutral bases around you: most will just produce money that you'll need to buy the higher-end units, but a precious few are the other factories that you must protect from your opponent's incursions. One limitation is that you can only have as many of these manufactured units as you do factories: once a unit's built and out on the map, that factory is done until its unit needs to be replaced. This means that you can't simply fill the map with your own guys once you've taken the majority of the bases and in Advance Wars would normally just sit there generating money and troops endlessly until your opponent is overwhelmed, and you also cannot consider your weaker starting units as expendable because you'll always be strictly limited by how many you can have active at once: it's better to have those weaklings running around capturing bases while your stronger types lead the vanguard and keep the opponent from gaining too much ground. Like I said though, it's mostly the standard Advance Wars tactical loop that's familiar enough to fans of that franchise: commandeer, congregate, conquer.

Where the game differs most is when two units meet: rather than play out the fight automatically with results based on who has the higher numbers, the player takes an active role in a little real-time top-down action scenario where you attack your opponent with whatever weapon loadouts you have equipped. The v Gundam had a dual-laser and its little energy sword there, the former having a finite supply of ammo, and I think the idea is that you want to retreat occasionally to a safe venue for repairs and ammo resupplying. Also, either you or your opponent will be harrassed by one of those Haro ball robot guys throughout. Since this was the first stage, the v Gundam trounced absolutely everything the enemy threw at it but I lost most of my generic units because the combat was a bit tough and chaotic to adjust to at first. Clearly some Gundam are best kept away from the frontlines unless absolutely necessary. Honestly, I didn't dislike what the game was doing here but I figure if I'm going to play some Advance Wars it'd be actual Advance Wars, rather than a tie-in for an enormous multimedia franchise I know little about in a language I know even less about. Still, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to suffer too much with a Gundam game.

Time Spent: 15 minutes.

#33: Inuyasha: Kagome no Sengoku Nikki

"Inuyasha: Kagome's Sengoku Diary"

• Developer: Bandai
• Publisher: Bandai
• Release Date: 2001-11-02
• Inscrutability: Major
• Selection Process: Random
• Is This Anime?: Yep, it's the return of dogboy.

Field Report: Inuyasha: Kagome no Sengoku Nikki is an RPG based on the Inuyasha franchise about a friendly warrior dog-person yokai who meets a modern schoolgirl whom was transported backwards through time and the two work together to gather some sort of crystal whoosit and save Sengoku-era (16th century) Japan. We looked at a different Inuyasha game in the very first edition of Anyway, Here's WonderSwan, Inuyasha Fuuun Emaki, so that blog will have more details about the Sunrise TV show and the Rumiko Takahashi manga both the show and this game are based on. In terms of release order, this was the first Inuyasha game to hit the WonderSwan (the second being Fuuun Emaki) and is also the very first video game based on the license. A PlayStation RPG simply titled Inuyasha was released the following month, and shortly after the other two WonderSwan games we saw Inuyasha: A Feudal Fairy Tale: a PS1 fighter that was the first game in the series to see an English localization.

Kagome no Sengoku Nikki was a first-party game developed in-house by Bandai rather than one of their many intermediaries, at least as far as the internet is aware, which was the case with about a dozen other WonderSwan games. Just because it's a first-party game though does not guarantee a high degree of quality. This is still Bandai we're talking about here.

Oh... wha- huh? I have to say, this is one of the more aggressively enigmatic games I've seen so far. I stated it was an RPG, since that's what I read from checking out the game on the usual sites, but it's really more of a visual novel adventure game that has the occasional (and sometimes results-predetermined) RPG battle tossed in for flavor. I've seen it be described in some places as a "fureai adventure" game, fureai meaning to have an emotional connection, but I've no real clue what that means except there's probably enough games like this to warrant a collective descriptor (almost sounds to me like a strand game). Kagome no Sengoku Nikki appears to be broken up into vignettes where you play out scenes from the manga/show and a simulation aspect where you control Kagome in modern Japan as she takes a breather and goes over everything she's been through. As for what I managed to accomplish, I spent five minutes clicking through dialogue as Kagome travels backwards through time and witnesses Inuyasha take on some kind of spider-woman, then we got in a fight with a lizardman that was pretty easy, then we moved across a world map, and then we ended up fighting some pretty boy with dark powers that I couldn't see any way to defeat. At that point Kagome jumps down a mystical well and wakes up back in her bedroom, and we briefly have a menu of commands that don't seem to work before Kagome goes back to sleep and I'm unable to do anything more. I think I must've told the game I was done for the day and it essentially shut itself down. As fine a point to end on as any I suppose.

Without knowing the material or the language, there's only so much I can extrapolate from all this. Like a few other manga/anime-based licensed games I'm aware of—I know Dragon Ball does this a lot—it's more about reliving the canon story in a mildly interactive format than the developers putting themselves through the challenge of creating a wholly original narrative within that setting that stacks up against the quality of the source material (if they can't just hire them for the story themselves, of course). I'll say that graphically the game looks sharp enough, with some decent sprites and plenty of static cutaways that look like they were pulled right from the pages of the manga. Man, though... as redundant as it might be to say this about an anime featuring a dog-person: holy moly was there a whole bunch of yapping.

Time Spent: 10 minutes.

#34: Kyousouba Ikusei Simulation: Keiba

"Racehorse Training Simulation: Horseracing"

• Developer: Bec
• Publisher: Bec
• Release Date: 1999-11-18
• Inscrutability: Exceptional
• Selection Process: Random
• Is This Anime?: You might be thinking of Uma Musume.

Field Report: Kyousouba Ikusei Simulation: Keiba, sometimes simply known as Keiba, is... well, a horseracing simulator. I suppose I'm adding redundancy to redundancy by stating that after the translation above. But yeah, it's a horseracing simulation game. These were absolutely everywhere on the Famicom and Super Famicom, with their most common aim being to instruct its players on proper gambling strategies far more frequently than they were about navigating the financial challenges of raising and racing your own champion gee-gees.

You might see the name "Bec" and think, "oh hey, at least it's not Bandai again". So, Bec is actually an acronym, BEC, and stands for Bandai Entertainment Company. Womp-womp. It actually started as a joint venture between Bandai and Human Entertainment, the latter producing many weird and wonderful oddities during their tenure (as well as a lot of less-wonderful F1 racing sims), but it became wholly Bandai's after Human went bankrupt in November 1999. That just so happens to be the month this game came out, either making it the first fully-Bandai BEC game or potentially the last game any Human Entertainment staff worked on before they dispersed to the four winds. Went out on a banger at least. This is actually our second BEC-developed game—they did SD Gundam Eiyuuden: Musha Densetsu, also from AHW Part 1—and they developed at least four others, including a pachinko game. I think I'm good after this; no reason to keep them at my BEC and call.

I mean... what was I even expecting here? It's thankfully the type of horseracing sim that's more about the actual ranch management aspect than it is about teaching impressionable kids how to lose their paychecks at the track but that also meant it had more Japanese menus than a sushi restaurant. After naming my ranch ("Cool") and my first horse ("Thurman", or "Furuman" at least) I set about trying to set up a race by clicking through the training scenarios until one came up. However, I either needed to train the horse a sufficient amount before I could enter it or I just suck at reading calendars. A lot of anime portraits with stoney expressions in this; it's almost like they're aware that they're in a boring racehorse development sim and doing the best to put on a brave face. What I will say in this game's favor is that the sim format is better suited for portables than you'd think: even if it struggles to depict all the horses running at once, it's still mostly menus and you don't need a big fancy TV screen for those. I do wonder what kind of ojiisan was walking around Nagoya or somewhere in 1999 holding a WonderSwan in his pocket with his favorite horseracing sim permanently plugged into the slot, but it's a powerfully nostalgic mental image nonetheless.

Fortunately for all involved, there's also a second horseracing sim for WonderSwan. Fingers crossed, everybody.

Time Spent: 10 minutes.

#35: Golden Axe

• Developer: Bandai
• Publisher: Bandai
• Release Date: 2002-02-28
• Inscrutability: Minor
• Selection Process: Chosen (Lucky 7s)
• Is This Anime?: Not yet, but Comedy Central is working on it.

Field Report: Sega's fantasy brawler Golden Axe hit the WonderSwan Color fairly late into the lifespan of the console and despite the smaller screen real estate does a fair enough job capturing the aesthetic of the arcade original. First released in 1989 and quickly ported to Sega's fledgling 16-bit system the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Golden Axe eventually found its way onto a great many consoles and home computers throughout the early 1990s. The game follows three warriors—the swordsman Ax Battler (one of those ironic names), the flame-wielding Amazon Tyris Flare (one of those non-ironic names), and the surly dwarf Gilius Thunderhead (one of those ionospheric names)—as they take the fight to the oppressive warlord Death Adder who wields the titular mystical Golden Axe, avenging various family members in the process. It's also still somehow two-player: I guess the WonderSwan link cable was a thing? I admit, I picked this one because I was deathly curious and therefore adder good enough reason to include it on the list of WonderSwan games to check out before this feature was done. It's also yet another choice where it's an action game I won't have to stress too much about not being able to read: I'm familiar enough with how the game goes and it's not like the opening crawl or reading on-screen instructions are integral to appreciating its barbaric charms.

Sega's nowhere to be seen here—I'm guessing they were still a little sore about the Game Gear crashing and burning—but they did give Bandai permission to create their own bespoke WonderSwan version of Golden Axe. For the record, no other Sega games made it to the platform as far as I can tell. Maybe they were still betting on the Sega Nomad conquering the portable market where the Game Gear couldn't.

This version of Golden Axe turned out to be way more intense than I bargained for. Enemies are far more aggressive and their hitboxes far more elusive than in the arcade or Genesis versions I'm used to, and they will instantly take any mounts from you if they knock you off rather than dither a little bit to give you a chance to slap them away. You still have advanced tech like the sprinting shoulder check or the cool "turn and slash" attack to catch foes on either side but they're on you almost instantly wherever you go and will wipe your health bar in seconds if they catch you in a pincer attack. I initially thought that they only spawned two enemies at a time due to a hardware limitation: when I finally met a group of three I realized it wasn't so much a tech thing but that they were just holding back because of how tough these guys are to handle en masse. Didn't help that I never found the button to use magic—it could be that I didn't have the entire WonderSwan pad configured, but nothing seemed to work. I recall the other versions of Golden Axe having some awkward hitboxes too, but they're practically microscopic in this. It was like I was fighting the cast of Touhou (only way beefier).

After this and Makaimura from last month I'm left wondering if Bandai went out of their way to find notoriously tough games to adapt to WonderSwan in order to establish some kind of edgy "this ain't your grandma's portable game console; no ~boys~ here, only MEN" promotional push which I feel the Neo Geo Pocket was probably in a better position to pull off with all its anime fighters. Regardless, when they weren't tearing me to pieces those little sprites were kinda cute. The music wasn't bad either.

Time Spent: 20 minutes (after a game over on Stage 3).

Current Ranking

(* = Don't need fluent Japanese to enjoy this and/or it has a fan translation.)

1. O-Chan no Oekaki Logic (Ep 4)*
2. Rockman & Forte: Mirai kara no Chousensha (Ep 5)*
3. Kaze no Klonoa: Moonlight Museum (Ep 3)*
4. Final Fantasy (Ep 4)*
5. Rainbow Islands: Putty's Party (Ep 4)*
6. Flash Koibito-Kun (Ep 1)*
7. Magical Drop for WonderSwan (Ep 1)*
8. Hataraku Chocobo (Ep 7)*
9. Wizardry Scenario 1: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (Ep 6)*
10. Slither Link (Ep 5)*
11. Gunpey (Ep 2)*
12. Judgement Silversword -Rebirth Edition- (Ep 1)*
13. Makaimura for WonderSwan (Ep 6)*
14. Golden Axe (Ep 7)*
15. Side Pocket for WonderSwan (Ep 5)*
16. Final Lap Special (Ep 2)*
17. Densha de Go! (Ep 2)
18. Gomoku Narabe & Reversi Touryuumon (Ep 3)*
19. Kurupara! (Ep 6)*
20. Guilty Gear Petit (Ep 3)*
21. Hanjuku Hero: Aa, Sekaiyo Hanjukunare...! (Ep 5)
22. Blue Wing Blitz (Ep 3)
23. Beatmania for WonderSwan (Ep 4)*
24. SD Gundam: Gashapon Senki -Episode One- (Ep 7)
25. Super Robot Taisen Compact for WonderSwan Color (Ep 3)
26. Inuyasha: Fuuun Emaki (Ep 1)
27. Chou Denki Card Battle: Youfu Makai (Ep 5)
28. Meitantei Conan: Nishi No Meitantei Saidai No Kiki!? (Ep 2)
29. Shaman King: Mirai e no Ishi (Ep 6)
30. Shin Nihon Pro Wrestling: Toukon Retsuden (Ep 4)
31. Inuyasha: Kagome no Sengoku Nikki (Ep 7)
32. Sangokushi II (Ep 6)
33. Kyousouba Ikusei Simulation: Keiba (Ep 7)
34. Metakomi Therapy: Nee Kiite! (Ep 2)
35. SD Gundam Eiyuuden: Musha Densetsu (Ep 1)