Nintendo isn’t the only company with a handheld worth revisiting in the present. Yes, the games for the Japan-only WonderSwan are in Japanese, which would make playing some of them pretty difficult for people who cannot read that language. Here are a few things to consider, though.
The first is that a mini, classic, whatever WonderSwan is desirable due to the unique nature of the portable. The WonderSwan featured a multi-directional input setup: some games played with you holding the portable vertically, like a Game Boy, and others horizontally, like with a Game Boy Advance or Game Gear, which is why there are multiple Joy-Con-esque directional pads that can also serve as face buttons.
If you’re a cop or a narc, please just skip ahead to the next section. Second… listen, someone will inevitably hack the thing, and then we can all play unofficial translations of those Japanese-language games on it, and without anyone having to worry about figuring out how to play vertically oriented games on whatever horizontal hardware we’re currently emulating those titles on.
The Saturn’s library is much deeper than North Americans realize it is, and that’s because the Japanese version of the Saturn library is loaded with exclusive JRPGs, STGs, platformers, you name it. Sega has shown themselves open to fan input and contributions before, and partnering with unofficial translators a lato get some Japan-only titles to have optional English localizations would make a mini the next-best thing to managing to secure an actual Saturn to muck around with.