Digital Monster Ver. WonderSwan

Digital Monster Ver. WonderSwan was among the titles that accompanied the console's launch and was meant to show that Bandai could carry its strongest brand from pocket eggs to a full-fledged gaming device. The game builds on what made Digimon famous at the time: the player acquires digital creatures, looks after them, trains them, and sends them into battles, except here it's all wrapped in the structure of a real game with exploration of a digital world, progression, and enemies that follow their own order. What was simple pet-raising on a keychain display thus becomes something closer to an RPG.

The core is long-term care. The creature grows and changes form depending on how the player treats it, how much training it gets, and what battles it goes through, and its final form is the result of dozens of small decisions. The battles themselves are rather short and clear, since the main tension lies in whether the upbringing is heading in the right direction. Technically it's a game for the original monochrome WonderSwan, so it relies on bold, easily readable sprites and a simple interface; the device, running on a single AA battery, lasted for long hours, which suits a title built on patient raising more than anything else.

At the time it was an important piece of the puzzle, since Digimon were at their peak in Japan and their presence on the new console helped it find an audience among younger players. At the same time, the game shows nicely how a toy turned into a game genre: the raising mechanism, where the same creature can evolve into completely different forms, remains a defining trait of the series to this day and sets it apart from competitors that rely mainly on collecting. Today it's more of a historically interesting title than one you'd return to for long, but anyone who likes slow raising and sees the charm in watching an egg turn into a monster will enjoy it. It's also a nice reminder of a time when digital pets were taken deadly seriously, and their fate depended on whether their owner made time for them.