Several months ago I mentioned the Watara Supervision and provided a little quick backstory on the would-be competitor to Nintendo's Game Boy dominance, but now Racketboy's retrogaming division has crafted a proper orientation to the little lackluster handheld device.  You'll learn about the system's multiple revisions, its unknown development teams, pitiful marketing attempts, shoddy construction, and much more.  Is it any wonder that this gadget never became a major force in the gaming industry?

By 1992, Nintendo was crushing the competition in the handheld market with a piece of handheld hardware that was technically out of date when compared to its main sources of competition. But with a little ingenuity, great battery life, and some serious gameplay, the Game Boy continued to hold its own against the likes of the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx. The amount of success was enough to get many companies to take notice, and while some chose to try their hand making games for the beloved grey brick, a few others instead began speculating on how they could get a piece of the action.

Enter Watara, a Taiwanese company that figured it could take some of the Game Boy’s potential market if it released a product that was only slightly better in design and cheaper for the consumer to buy. Thus the Watara Supervision was born. But despite the technical improvements on the Game Boy’s design, the low price, the international releases, and the advertising, the Supervision failed to provide the quality of games needed to capture the market. This fatal oversight proved to be its downfall, and the Supervision fell into obscurity, just another machine left on the roadside in Nintendo’s wake.

Remember, this a system sporting a library of titles such as Super Pang, Happy Race, Dancing Block, Recycle Design, Witty Cat, and John Adventure.  It never had a chance in North America.  However, some people apparently have fond memories of the system.  There are emulators available for the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Xbox, and PC that will bring the likes of Witty Cat back for those who originally loved it.  It just goes to show that even the most obscure games are never truly lost and forgotten.

(image via WiseGamers)