Watara Supervision

The Watara Supervision was introduced for the Christmas toy buying season in 1992 and with its handheld form factor and monochrome screen it was positioned as a lower cost alternative to the hugely popular Nintendo Game Boy. Unfortunately the Supervision had no support from major game developers, and its low prices could not bridge the gap to make up for its generally lower quality software offering.

While most often sold with a tilting 160x160 screen that supported four shades of gray, the Supervision also had a form factor that encased the screen in a solid slab that closely resembled the Gameboy. The Supervision supported stereo sound, could be hooked up to a television with an adapter. The system ran off a MOS 65C02 chip which had perviously used on many late 70s and early 80s consoles such as the Apple II, Commodore 64 and Famicom/NES, among others. While most games were 1 player, a communication link option was available to link two systems together.

Variants of the Supervision were released throughout Europe and Asia and under a number of different names, even leading to speculation that the Supervision was really just a modification of the Hartung Gamemaster, an earlier German handheld that used an almost identical cartridge format.

By mid-1993 the system had already started to fade from the market, having been surprised by Nintendo drastically lowering the price of the Gameboy, and plans for licensed game titles and even a color adapter were seemingly abandoned. Less than 70 games are known for the Supervision.