The Game Boy left many slain in its wake. From the very beginning, many have challenged Nintendo’s dominance in the handheld market and all of them failed. Some of those systems made a bigger splash than others, but Nintendo would inevitably hog the market in perpetuity, with even Sony’s PlayStation Portable failing to overtake the Game Boy’s successor, the Nintendo DS.
Regardless of how badly other handhelds were trashed by Nintendo, it’s a pretty interesting graveyard to dig through. The Atari Lynx was physically massive, but actually a pretty neat console; the N-Gage was a silver taco; and the Neo Geo Pocket was totally awesome, and I want one. The there’s the Bandai Wonderswan, which was developed by one of Nintendo’s most prolific hardware designers, Gunpei Yokoi. The former mentor of Shigeru Miyamoto, Gunpei Yokoi departed Nintendo soon after the massive failure of the Virtual Boy (whether this was related is debatable) and set to designing his own console. Sadly, he died in a traffic accident before he could see the release of his creation, but the little handheld actually made a modest impact in Japan.
The Wonderswan was released in March 1999, making it 20 years since it left a pockmark on the industry. Happy birthday, pockmark.
Source: Destructoid Happy 20th birthday, Wonderswan