New Wonderswan Color demo released

[mic_]

It's not often that you see homebrew stuff for the WS (actually, this might be the first proper demo?), but here's one from the group Titan: http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=59699

[Morden]

It is the first proper demo on WonderSwan. Other demoscene efforts include three cracktros [not available on Poüet], one cracktro style intro and WonderSnake, so it's great to see something like this. I'm really impressed with the music, too.

[Flavor]

Was this shown on actual hardware? Nice effort, and nice to see a proper WS demo come out after all these years.

[Morden]

Was this shown on actual hardware? Nice effort, and nice to see a proper WS demo come out after all these years.

As far as I know, they ran it on an emulator [Mednafen], to show it on the big screen, but they ran it on hardware as well. In fact, if you download the zip package, you have two builds of the demo. One for running on real hardware and second, optimized for use with emulators. WonderSwan emulators are a mess, anyway. There are four or five in total. WSCamp, Cygne, Oswan, Mednafen and maybe one more I can't remember. One of them has no sound emulation at all, another doesn't support the PCM channel [used extensively in this particular demo].

So, now that we have a proper demo, it's time for someone to build that flash cartridge! I wonder if Titan guys had the extremely rare Wonder Magic, or maybe built something of their own. If they did, it could hold their 16 megabit ROM image, which isn't bad.

EDIT - Doh! I only now read Alien's comment, which mentions custom hardware this was running on: "Awesome thx to jix for building all his own wonderswan hardware shizzles (...)" The capture comes from Mednafen, though.

EDIT Part Deux - Turns out Titan did run this on actual hardware during the compo. SwanCrystal's screen is pretty good, when properly lit. Too bad the sound is a bit out of sync at the beginning. I love how it looks live. Totally massive. European demoscene rocks.

[Biogon]

Nice find Mic_.!

The Wonderswan is the handheld that got me interested in homebrew. It would be so cool if reasonably priced flash carts could be available for people like us.

[Flavor]

I still want to do a WS cart when I get a chance. I know a guy that (I think) would lend me a WonderMagic to attempt to reverse engineer. If you know of any good info on this stuff, let me know. Someday I'll get to it.

[Morden]

I still want to do a WS cart when I get a chance.

Let's hope you'll get your chance soon! I can't think of any other flash device I'd want more than this one.

I know a guy that (I think) would lend me a WonderMagic to attempt to reverse engineer. If you know of any good info on this stuff, let me know.

Try contacting Jix and get him to spill his beans. After all, he made the hardware for Titan's demo.

[Biogon]

I stumbled upon this a while ago. It's a documentation of a slightly successful attempt at creating a Wonderswan flash cartridge.

https://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/course...index.html

[Morden]

I stumbled upon this a while ago.

Yea, I saw that, too. It's quite old and the design is rather limited. I have mentioned it to Flavor in an e-mail, while trying to convince him that a WonderSwan cartridge would be worth making [mainly because I crave one]. There are some other documents around, which could help. Let's hope Flavor can get his hands on that WonderMagic, as well!

[Flavor]

I stumbled upon this a while ago. It's a documentation of a slightly successful attempt at creating a Wonderswan flash cartridge.

https://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/course...index.html

Actually, I tried contacting the publisher of that document. I never heard back.

This Jix fellow sounds like a good lead, though. Has anyone here ever contacted him?

UPDATE: I actually got ahold of him on IRC. While he did not make a flash cart, he did do some low-level work with the WonderMagic. He has agreed to share some info with me, so I will take that opportunity and discuss it further with him via email. Thanks for the lead!