Swan Crystal released, will Nintendo look back at their mistake?

[Phire]

The new Wonderswans have been announced and will probably feature a backlit LCD, Although Wonderswan is mostly only Japanese software it will still hit Nintendo bad in Japan. I know that GBA not being backlit reduces my playtime with it about 80%, I just dont have all day to sit in a specific spot and have a light directly pointing at it. One thing I did notice though, the Swan Crystal is only two buttons and it looks like it has two d-pads?

[Kinopio]

Although the GBA sells better in the states than in Japan, I think little of that could be contributed to the sales of the wonderswan color. Its gonna take a lot more than that to affect nintendo. they did knock off sega and snk with inferior technology, afterall.

[Klonoa]

[Phire]

Hmm, I wonder if they made the alignment that way becuase you could turn the system vertical and play games that way.. but that's a guess and not too many games would look that great with less horizontal space.

[Ragnarok the Red]

That's pretty cool looking, kind of hybrid of the Lynx and GameGear designs, the Gameboys two most serious rivals.

Hmmm...I wonder if this is an omen?

[icarusfall]

I just bought a fucking Wonderswan color 2 months ago!

Now I need a new one.

Fuck...

[MechDeus]

Think about the shooters, that makes a perfect portable overhead shooter environment (turning sideways).

And those do look cool as hell, wish they'd get around to offering a translated version of the redone FF1 and 2, I want to really play around with those (damn language barriers).

[Phire]

Yeah but if it was meant to be that way it still would be sorta opposite. Who would need 4 buttons for a shooter (Not to say that it cant use them) and only two for other games. It really should be two for the shooters and 4 for horizontal games such as fighters.

[MechDeus]

Well, I haven't actually used a WS, but it looks like there's a raised area inbetween the buttons that constitute the d-pad, so rolling is impossible, which negates any Capcom-style fighter (basically, 2D fighting as we know it). As for other games, sure, they could definately use them. Most shooters only need two buttons (three at max, but they sometimes substitute pressing both together as the third).

Screwy placement indeed, but until it actually has some games I want (that don't require the use of an additional language), I'm not going to fret over it.

[Kidnemo]

Originally posted by MechDeus
Well, I haven't actually used a WS, but it looks like there's a raised area inbetween the buttons that constitute the d-pad, so rolling is impossible, which negates any Capcom-style fighter (basically, 2D fighting as we know it). As for other games, sure, they could definately use them. Most shooters only need two buttons (three at max, but they sometimes substitute pressing both together as the third).

Screwy placement indeed, but until it actually has some games I want (that don't require the use of an additional language), I'm not going to fret over it.

That exactly what I was about to say.

That raised area, combined with how far out the A and B buttons are placed to the edge makes that thing look about as ergonomic for game playing as a PDA...