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The future of the handheld has never looked so bright. It started with Nintendo's GameBoy, a brick-like 8-bit pixel pushing Neanderthal that wasn't so much a technical marvel, but a marketing success story. A story that not only continues to rip handsome dividends for Nintendo, but one that the company is also banking on to take it to the next millennium. Case in point, the GameBoy Advance - Nintendo's newly announced successor to the Color GameBoy.
Well, we've all read the press releases, and we've all noted the marvelous specifications of this new pocket dynamo. To summarize, the GameBoy Advance will not only boast new and powerful hardware, it will also be linkable to Nintendo's next generation game console. More importantly, however, it will come with a peripheral device that links it to cell phones for internet ready wireless communication and downloadable games. This is what Nintendo has promised, and this is what we should get when the GameBoy Advance is released in Japan sometime in August 2000.
What we might not realize, however, is that the competition has already fulfilled much of what Nintendo has prophesied for the GameBoy Advance. After all, talking about what the GameBoy advance can do is nice, but to see it working in real world conditions will require that we look at some of the new hardware announcements from both the WonderSwan and Neo Geo Pocket. | | In that department, the Neo Geo Pocket has already proven the prophesy with the release of the Dreamcast link-cable. In this respect, it's one up on Nintendo, since the Neo Geo Pocket isn't at all particular with whom it's linking with. The Neo Geo Pocket also makes good use of infrared technology. With its infrared communications device (sold separately), wireless multi-player gaming is possible on titles that support it. 
| | In this respect, Bandai's Wonder Swan is first to market with the introduction of its Wonder Gate cellular set-up. The Wonder Gate plugs easily into a cellular phone and includes a web browser, email software and the ability to download mini-games. The browser also supports HTML 3.2 Subset, Table-tag, (GIF, Animation GIF, JIS and S-JIS and EUC) recognition, capital and lowercase letters, cookie files and URL entry support. It will also have room for about 20 bookmarks.
The mail software supports POP 3/SMTP, HTML mail and attached picture files as well. The address book will hold up to 50 addresses and the inbox can save up to 100 messages of 300 characters each. Best of all, you will be able to download mini-games of about 32k each. 
Bandai has also introduced the Wonder Wave, that will not only allow infrared capabilities for the Wonder Swan, but will also allow it to communicate with Sony's up-coming PlayStation 2. 
New too for the Wonder Swan is the Wonder Mexia, a portable image capturing device with built-in graphic capabilities and scribbling programs. 
| | One of the most exciting new features introduced for the Wonder Swan is the Wonder Borg. An insectoid machine that uses the Wonder Swan's Wonder Wave infrared port to program and control its movement. This feature is still in the preliminary stages, but already it shows that the handhelds of today and those in the future, are capable of more than just light and meaningless entertainment. 
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