September 5th, 2000 - Recently in Japan, toy making giant Bandai, encouraged by surprisingly successful sales of the first WonderSwan in the land of the rising sun, announced a follow up to the handheld to be called WonderSwan Color. Quite ingenious.

But why would a Final Fantasy site mention this? Well, Bandai also announced that Square have agreed to port enhanced versions of the first three NES Final Fantasies (Final Fantasy I, II and III). Even more interesting is that at the ECTS in London earlier this week, Bandai announced that the new color WonderSwan is to be released in North America, so we could in fact see enhanced English versions of Final Fantasy I, II and III.

Better still is that a special commemorative package will go on sale simultaneously with the standard WonderSwan Color package. The special package includes a white WonderSwan and an enhanced version of Final Fantasy I:

A very attractive piece of packaged... well, its won me over. ^_^ Anyone remember the Sega GameGear? Looks like one of those except with a larger screen.

As we're sure many of you know, Final Fantasy II and III were never released in North America, with Final Fantasy I starting the series and Final Fantasy IV being released as Final Fantasy II (meaning a complicated number system ensued until Final Fantasy VII - for more information, click here). Dedicated fans had to go through the complex process of downloading an emulator and emulating an unofficially translated ROM if they wanted to play the two games that were skipped.

The graphics have been drastically improved with the battle backgrounds more reminiscent of Final Fantasy VI than II or III:

WonderSwan Color Final Fantasy III Original NES Final Fantasy III WonderSwan Color Final Fantasy II Original NES Final Fantasy II