This little handheld made a surprising small little dent in the Japanese handheld market dominated by Nintendo. I think that this is only because of the exclusive merchandise of the Final Fantasy RPG series that Bandi had at the time on the Wonderswan color. They also had their own Gundam, One Piece, and Digimon series of games that has their fan base. The SwanCrystal later came out as an improved Wonderswan color. It had a better LCD screen.
      Holding it in your hands you will quickly notice that, next to the "original" GBA, this little portable is smaller, slim, trim, sleek, and light weight. It really fits snug and comfortable in my hands. There is only a bulge at the bottom backside where the battery resides. There is no headphone jack. You have to purchase a separate attachment that plugs into a place right below the speaker on the right side of the system to use headphones. There is only one small speaker of the same quality as a GBA system. The system is a very nice quality built unit. I have seen it in a lot of colors. This household has three colors consisting of pinkish red, blue clear, and black smoke clear housing. I really like the way the game cart almost seamlessly blends in with the system's housing. Nothing sticks out. I also like the nice plastic sleeve that comes with each game, which is used for storing the game cart.

    The games are all in Japanese. I have only one that is in English. I have no idea why. It is a double cart containing two Digimon games. It was called Veedraman Verson. And the games on the cart are Anode Tamer and Cathode Tamer.   The system and games were never released outside of Japan. Even so there are a lot of the games that are very playable by someone like me who knows only two words in Japanese. All of the fighting games are playable like Guilty Gear Petite 1 & 2, Pocket Fighter, (Which has been the only handheld that has had this game.) and One Piece Swan Colosseum. Puzzle games like Puyo Puyo and Bust-A-Move need no Japanese knowledge. I have some side scrolling action games that can be played like Buffers Evolution, SD Gundam Operation UC, and Gundam Seed. The Gundam Seed game has some story element to it and it feels like you are missing something when you are playing. I feel that this does take away from the gaming experience in this game, which I feel is a great shooter action game. But if you have seen the movie you can guess what is going on. Most of the Digimon games are fighters, some are RPGs. I would rather play the Digimon games on this system than play the ported ones on the GBA. They are that much better, I guess because they were made for this system.
           I do have Final Fantasy 2, but again this game is not playable by someone like me. Japanese is a must know when playing a game like this. I did download  a translated version of the game one time and tried playing it on the computer as I played it on the Swancrystal while simultaneously playing it on the GBA. Yeah, I know what you are thinking, weird. But I did learn something by doing this, the English version is dumbed down for our western culture. It is more kid friendly? There seem to be elements of the story that added to the whole story line experience in the original. Now for something really sad that makes one want to cry. This system was loaded down with RPG games. If only they had taken an interest to market it in English speaking countries. I finally got a hold of Klonoa: Moonlight Museum, an action platform game. It is very rare and expensive at times whenever I see it available. There is a platform game that I have that is a side scroller called Lime Rider Keroikan. It is one of those "press the button to the beat" sort-of games, kind of like Dance Dance Revolution for your finder tips. Only it controls your characters jumps as the game scrolls through the level. Really, purchasing the games is sort-of touch and go. You really don't know if you will be able to play them or not until you first turn on the unit. There seems to be no list anywhere that I have found on the net that gives you any knowledge of, "you must know Japanese to play this game." Some games are in black and white which were made for the first system. Like the GB, the games can be passed down to the newer and better system. On the down side, the games are getting harder and harder to find.

The battery is in a removable drawer? How interesting. And powered by only one AA? How unique.