Games General

[Hālian He/him]

Solved my biggest peevee with Wonderswans. Slapped an IPS panel kit into one.
(snip)

Hell yeah! I'd love to get a WSC or SwanCrystal sometime, but $$$, especially once you account for a flashcart.

[VonDaab]

They're fairly expensive these days yeah, but it's worth having an eye out for any "junk" systems with a faulty display, as IPS kitting is kinda a must for anysort of modern comfort. I've had a first model, monochrome display WS for over 10 years now and been telling myself I didn't need a WSColor, until now (then again, drop-in IPS kits weren't a thing 10 years ago). I guess I could've gotten one for bit cheaper back then, but oh well. The one I found was supposed to been "faulty screen" so I got it for an ok price. Turns out the screen was just fine, so dunno what the seller had thought. Came even with Final Fantasy I, even though it's all in Japanese.

Flashcarts are really expensive yeah, and also currently there's only 1 guy who makes them, so they can kinda dictate the price and quality (their current model still uses 3D printed shells, which is far from ideal). There is supposedly a new flashcart in the works, but who knows how long that will take to become a final product.
Current flashcart has also quite high battery drain so a IPS kitted WSC with a Flashcart might end up with rather poor battery life, like 1-2 hours with standard Alkaline battery. People say they can get more with 1.5V Lithiums. IPS kitted with genuine cartridge gets you somewhere between 2-3 hours. Which is like, just okay for modern standards, also to consider the thing runs on a single AA cell, which is impressive.

I decided to instead get some fairly cheap bootleg cartridges which have already English translation hacks on them. Also noticed there are new-made headphone jack adapters for it, so had to grab that too.
IPS backlight is at about half brightness in this pic, which is more than enough for indoor use, and is better for the battery.
BTW, the game in photo is Dicing Knight, a genuine cartridge of that game goes for about $1500, so yeah... the Wonderswan world is wild.