Just another day in the third dimension
June 27, 2015 12:25 PM   Subscribe

"The only way to play Virtual Boy for any length of time is lying flat on your back with the visor laying on your face and its flimsy stand propped on your chest. Then you just had to hope Teleroboxer didn’t give you eyestrain and nausea-inducing headaches. Outside of kitsch value and the zealous fandom Nintendo inspires, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would want to play the damn thing 20 years after the fact. When you do, though, there is something unmistakably alluring about Nintendo’s biggest failure. As with a curious stench you can’t stop sniffing, the Virtual Boy is hard to ignore because of how it embodies some of Nintendo’s best qualities. It’s also easy to see how its limited catalog hid some intriguing, forward-thinking ideas about how to make games..." With the Oculus Rift and friends putting virtual reality video games back on the scene and generating buzz, let's take a look back at one of the most beloved, most critically and commercially successful game consoles of all time--and the Virtual Boy.

Conceived by Game & Watch and Game Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi under the same philosophy of "lateral thinking with withered technology," the Virtual Boy was Nintendo's mid-90s horse in the 32X/Jaguar/3DO race of undercooked "32-bit" consoles. Using cheap vision-murdering red LEDs and mirrors, the system created a simulated stereoscopic 3D pop-out effect similar to the more recent 3DS. Though technologically interesting (WCES '95 tech demo reel), the machine was cumbersome to use and is a notorious failure. It was such a disaster that Yokoi, who also created the D-pad, Metroid and Kid Icarus, left the company in disgrace after thirty one years. Launching on 21 July, 1995 in Japan and 14 August, 1995 in the US, the little console that couldn't wouldn't see even a full year of global support before Nintendo threw it in the scrap heap. The ill-fated not-so-portable saw a mere 22 games officially released during its aborted lifespan, only 14 of which did not drown during their Pacific crossing. A list of unreleased games can be found here. A few of particular note:

Virtual Boy Wario Land is a generally well-regarded traditional 2D platformer in the Wario Land offshoot series that utilizes the Virtual Boy's 3D effect to create layered parallax backgrounds which give the illusion of depth. Given the Wario pedigree, classic mechanics and attractively grotesque aesthetics, it is probably the only Virtual Boy game no one has to be pressured into calling "good." In many ways, it's fitting that the platform's flagship title was a Wario, not Mario, game.

Jack Bros. is the very first Megami Tensei game localized for the United States. The game puts players in the role of Atlus' mascot characters, Jack Frost, Pyro Jack and Jack Skelton, as they scurry back to Fairy Land before the end of Halloween. The game itself is an overhead dungeon cralwer in the vein of Gauntlet, and is also pretty well liked.

Insmouse no Yakata (Innsmouth Mansion) is a full-on horror themed FPS based loosely on H.P. Lovecraft's classic coming of age tale "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The game is notable for its rather detailed visuals and for making prescient use of the 'Boy's right control pad to change camera angles.

Other notable odds and ends:

Mario's Tennis (the US pack-in title) is the first entry in that particular sub-series and can be said to have started the Mario sports line, preceded by the NES' not-Mario Tennis. The game was met with mostly positive reception, but can probably be safely considered outdated today.

Nester's Funky Bowling is notable for being the only game to star Nintendo Power mascot Nester and his twin sister Hester. The critical verdict seems to be thoroughly average.

Teleroboxer is Super Punch Out with well-designed robots in 3D.

Red Alarm is Star Fox with solid pewpewpew and eyeball bleeding crimson everything in 3D.

In spite of a meager library, the platform inspires a weird affection, and has sparked the craziest collector culture and a surprisingly robust enthusiast developer scene. A number of homebrew and classic games have been ported to the Virtual Boy by its dedicated fanbase, including Street Fighter II (previously), Hideo Kojima's Snatcher and a fan-made Silent Hill visual novel. Rumors of Virtual Boy Color projects continue to turn up, and while nothing has ever quite come of them, some intrepid adventurers have produced color filters for post-production (video). While enjoying a second life far less glamorous than platforms such as the Dreamcast, it's by turns heartwarming and skin-chilling to see the Virtual Boy truly loved.

Happy twentieth birthday, Virtual Boy. You have become a really weird young Virtual Man.
posted by byanyothername (33 comments total) 31 users marked this as a favorite
 
Nobody loves Virtual Boy. It's so bad.
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:27 PM on June 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


Note: posting this about a month early so I can clear queue and clock out of this corndog stand. I feel I put too much effort into this to waste it, so enjoyment is mandatory.

Full disclosure: my parents bought me a Virtual Boy during its brief "heyday." I asked for it. They asked me if I really meant to ask them for it. As a child fascinated with "virtual reality" both in the hokey sense the VB represented, and the virtual worlds that were emerging online in the mid 90s, I actually thought it was really neat for what it was. We didn't have many games and it didn't have a long life in our household, but it was a fun toy. My Virtual Boy philosophy: absolutely no regrets. Its shortcomings are very real, but often exaggerated as a part of the urban legend it's become.

After it crashed and burned, I sort of forgot about it. I can't actually tell you what made me look into the thing all these years later, but it really is a bizarrely fascinating piece of Nintendo esoterica. Somehow the memory of it has stuck with me, and I thought I'd share some of the things I've discovered in an only partly self-deprecating celebration of all things Virtual Boy. After all, the Virtual Boy never died. It just went home. To the third dimension.

Also, my eyes hurt so freaking much now.
posted by byanyothername at 12:28 PM on June 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


I have one! Any offers for it? ;)

I haven't used it in almost 20 years... because, yeah, not that much fun. But I keep thinking I should try it again someday. I got it in the divorce. I guess the geeky spouse didn't even want it.
posted by litlnemo at 12:32 PM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


Fortunately, the platform's two rarest games are also the worst.

(I'm looking at you Shantae !!!)
posted by fairmettle at 12:34 PM on June 27, 2015


I remember when it came out, my local Blockbuster had a unit set-up in the store for people to look at. It was...interesting. But, yeah, it was pretty easy to see it wasn't going anywhere.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:35 PM on June 27, 2015


I played one for a bit, Teleboxer, I think. It's so many degrees of terrible I don't think even Sega would think of it, let alone Nintendo.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:36 PM on June 27, 2015


I got a Virtual Boy for Christmas when it came out and my first memory of it is breaking the stand right out of the box. So, yeah, I did have to play it on my back, staring up into the screen. And it didn't actually work right because I have no depth perception. Fun times.
posted by SansPoint at 12:40 PM on June 27, 2015




In college, someone had brought theirs along, and we made it a voting member of our student tech club (it always abstained.) What a weird device! I can feel my eyes crossing as I recall it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:56 PM on June 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


Nobody loves Virtual Boy. It's so bad.

I think that I love that they tried it, though. Nintendo takes risks. Often, it pays off pretty well. It's hard to have a 100% success rate when you take big chances in an industry that changes incrementally and that change is more often defined by increased processing power than UI. That being said,

It was such a disaster that Yokoi, who also created the D-pad, Metroid and Kid Icarus, left the company in disgrace after thirty one years.

This, to me, is a shame, as it indicates a problem with checks and balances internally than one person being at fault. If it's a universally reviled product, this should be something they caught before it actually got out the door. Also, if you created Metroid, you get at least one mulligan.
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:02 PM on June 27, 2015 [7 favorites]


I got mine on clearance with two games for probably $50.
I remember lying in the summer grass at the old family home under the maple tree with that crude monochrome 3d rig propped on my face. It felt like the future, and it was glorious.

Within a year I'd traded it to a friend for 32 Megabytes of EDO SRam.
I sure do miss that eyestrain inducing little devil.
posted by The Legit Republic of Blanketsburg at 1:02 PM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I remember playing the demo setup in ToyRUs as an 11yr old who's parents only begrudgingly gave in to getting a NES and were categorically against upgrading to the SNES, "You already have a Nintendo!".

Even then I never wanted a Virtual Boy. Who wants to play games only in red?
posted by T.D. Strange at 1:13 PM on June 27, 2015


I have one somewhere in storage -- I got it when Blockbuster was dumping them for cheap, complete with its big foam-filled rental case.

It was more of a novelty than anything to be taken the least bit seriously, but several of its games were certainly decent. Jack Bros. was a fun little platformer.
posted by delfin at 1:18 PM on June 27, 2015


This, to me, is a shame, as it indicates a problem with checks and balances internally than one person being at fault.

I think that this was more colossal arrogance mixed with traditional Japanese business culture.
Nintendo, despite a lot of bullshit products tied in with the NES, was yet to know true failure in the videogame hardware market and so, Yokoi had to be right in his ideas, and any negative feedback were just bad samples, discontents, or any other excuse. After it flopped, Yokoi was just an out-of-touch old man that cost his company millions.

There's also the idea Yokoi was not pleased with the machine, and had considered retirement anyway, but that doesn't explain why he went ahead and designed the WonderSwan, unless he didn't want his last major release to be a flop.
posted by lmfsilva at 1:38 PM on June 27, 2015


I remember Red Alarm actually being good when I tried a frend's Virtual Boy for 15 minutes.
posted by zsazsa at 2:17 PM on June 27, 2015


Gumpei Yokoi was an out-of-touch old man who cost his company millions who also invented the GameBoy. That's worth far more than one mulligan.
posted by JHarris at 3:21 PM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I had a friend who would buy any game system available when it came out. He had gotten rid of his old Atari stuff by the time I met him, but he was one of the few Virtual Boy owners. I'd sit around at 3AM smoking cigarettes I shoplifted from the grocery store as I was playing Tennis on his Virtual Boy while he was finishing Wanderers from Ys 3 on his SNES. I actually liked the Virtual Boy. I was a bit surprised when it flopped given that the Game Gear and other color handhelds hadn't gone anywhere by that point. The 3D effect was pretty decent and I didn't find the red any more offputting than black and green monochrome.

I was more surprised that neither the Atari Jaguar nor the 3DO achieved even a TurboGrafx 16 level of success, though. They each had some pretty decent games and released way ahead of anything comparably powerful. I suspect the issue there was PlayStation, which sucked in comparison, TBH. It did, however, have Final Fantasy. I maintain that the PlayStation would have been a total flop had N64 not lost the FF franchise.
posted by wierdo at 4:01 PM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


My google-fu is failing me, but I swear at one point I heard a story that the coalition forces found a case of like 60 unopened Virtual Boys in a cache at one of Sadam's palaces. (Insert WMD joke here.)

Did anyone else hear that one too, or did I just imagine this story?
posted by radwolf76 at 4:06 PM on June 27, 2015


(just to point out my "out-of-touch old man that cost his company millions" was a remark on Nintendo's corporate view on him, my personal view is that he - not Miyamoto - was the main reason why Nintendo became a major player, and his inventions, most noticeably the portable business, were the reasons the company stayed afloat after Sony started to eat their market share in the late 90s)
posted by lmfsilva at 4:29 PM on June 27, 2015


It was such a disaster that Yokoi, who also created the D-pad, Metroid and Kid Icarus, left the company in disgrace after thirty one years.

This, to me, is a shame, as it indicates a problem with checks and balances internally than one person being at fault. If it's a universally reviled product, this should be something they caught before it actually got out the door. Also, if you created Metroid, you get at least one mulligan.


The people at FOX who greenlit Titanic were shitcanned like two years later for greenlighting Fight Club. Entertainment industries have short-ass memories.
posted by Navelgazer at 5:08 PM on June 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


This was around the time when you could rent consoles from Blockbuster, so my only experience with the VirtualBoy was when we rented one (and a Sega Saturn!) for my birthday party. We had a lot of fun, but I'm sure glad I didn't wind up owning either of those systems.
posted by buriednexttoyou at 6:12 PM on June 27, 2015


"lateral thinking with withered technology"

Wow. All the best and worst things about Nintendo are summed up in those five words.
posted by Sys Rq at 6:15 PM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


My google-fu is failing me, but I swear at one point I heard a story that the coalition forces found a case of like 60 unopened Virtual Boys in a cache at one of Sadam's palaces. (Insert WMD joke here.)

I heard this too! Can't provide a source, though.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 9:30 PM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I proudly own a working Virtual Boy, with 4 games.

Nothing is cooler than playing it for an hour, then staring at a fire.
posted by The Power Nap at 9:39 PM on June 27, 2015 [3 favorites]


just to point out my "out-of-touch old man that cost his company millions" was a remark on Nintendo's corporate view on him, my personal view is that he - not Miyamoto - was the main reason why Nintendo became a major player

Yeah, sorry about that, didn't mean to make it sound like I was complaining about you personally. In fact, Nintendo has a lot of figures who contributed to their early success, Miyamoto and Yokoi are just two of the best-known names. Imagine Super Mario Bros. or The Legend of Zelda without Koji Kondo's music, to pick just one example.

Entertainment industries have short-ass memories.

Yeah, but Nintendo is, or should be at least, better than that. They're famous/infamous for going their own way regardless, but still, they dumped Gunpei Yokoi, who was nothing less than a hardware design genius.

"lateral thinking with withered technology"
Wow. All the best and worst things about Nintendo are summed up in those five words


That was basically the Wii in a nutshell. There is nothing in a Wii that's technically advanced, the Wiimote is nothing more than a cheap infrared camera, some accelerometers and a gyroscope, and basically a NES controller connected to over Bluetooth, but it was unquestionably the best-selling system of its generation. The line between the Virtual Boy and the Wii is a lot thinner than most people would think.
posted by JHarris at 10:35 PM on June 27, 2015 [1 favorite]


I have a VB and like 8 games that I bought for next to nothing in 1999 off of a friend. I played the hell out of it in the next year or so, and yeah, lying on the bed with it balance on my face is definitely the way to play.

Wario World is a fun little platformer. There's a 3DS/iOS platformer called Mutant Mudds that duplicates the parallax movement and dimensional it's pretty well. It's said to be inspired by Wario World.
posted by sleeping bear at 11:22 PM on June 27, 2015


Brianna Wu: “The Virtual Boy gets a lot of smack, but WOW, I loved that system. Red Alert and Mario Tennis were a blast.”

Interesting. I saw her speak this week and she mentioned that her company is heavily pursuing virtual reality gaming.
posted by msbrauer at 6:50 AM on June 28, 2015


> It was such a disaster that Yokoi ... left the company in disgrace after thirty one years.

I recall (but can't really substantiate) that Yokoi was assured by Nintendo execs that his standing didn't falter due to the failure of the Virtual Boy (considering all the successes he's had with the company). Yokoi had planned to retire at 50, but due to the Virtual Boy flop he stayed on a few more years to develop the Game Boy Pocket. He thought that a sudden departure after Virtual Boy's failure would make it look like Nintendo rebuked him for it.
posted by cyberscythe at 11:23 AM on June 28, 2015


I had not heard that cyberscythe, but then, I have no special place to hear from, it could well be true. The only thing I know that argues against it is that Gunpei didn't actually retire after leaving Nintendo, he started the company Koto and developed the Bandai WonderSwan before dying in a car crash.

(Damn car crashes.)
posted by JHarris at 11:54 AM on June 28, 2015


I had not heard that cyberscythe, but then, I have no special place to hear from, it could well be true. The only thing I know that argues against it is that Gunpei didn't actually retire after leaving Nintendo, he started the company Koto and developed the Bandai WonderSwan before dying in a car crash.

(Damn car crashes.)


Really? I had no idea that's how things ended for him. I say this with all due respect, I think you could make an great movie about his life, including all of the triumph and tragedy.
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:42 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Looks like you can run an emulator for your Rift or stream to your smartphone/google cardboard.
posted by Sophont at 1:43 PM on June 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


According to the Wikipedia page on Gunpei Yokoi, he didn't actually die in a car crash. Instead, he rear-ended a truck, got out to see the damage, and then two vehicles fatally struck him. Not really a crash, then.
posted by JHarris at 4:30 PM on June 28, 2015


One of my favorite childhood memories is my dad taking me to a shmancy public demo event at the pacific science center for the VB. They had unlimited pizza and sodas, and rows of systems setup. My dad lied to get me in because you had to be at least 8 or something and i was like 6.

They had basically every launch game and more than a couple of the somewhat later ones on display. Some were betas.

I stayed there all day and did in fact get a monster headache. My mom forbade me ever getting one since she 100% bought in to the theories about eye damage/strain which is really what killed it IMO. All my friends also had their parents veto it, and we all just kept at our gameboys and SNESes. I don't know a single person who got one, and all i remember was that. The murmors and random coverage of it being "dangerous" were omnipresent, and the meme continued well past the n64 launch. When i recently mentioned still wanting one just for the cool/weird factor around my parents, they were both like "isn't that the game that ruins your eyes?".

That nintendo event led up to another one of my recurring favorite memories though, at the same science center, the NBC toy test. which seems to have been completely erased from the internet(i swear, there used to be some youtube videos). Nintendo, microsoft, sony, sega, and others would show up with all their latest games and let kids play them. The rules were you only got 15 minutes, and you had to fill out a survey card afterwards. Unlimited plays, but you had to get back in line. They even had PC games!

It would be fucking mobbed. The line would be upwards of 45 minutes long generally. Me and my friends would go there basically every day it was open, from open to close. There were always a few weird games that got cancelled, and stuff like starfox adventures before the rename had been nailed down and there were still mentions of "dinosaur planet".

Being a nerdy kid in seattle in the 90s kind of ruled. I still have a bunch of silly shirts and stuff from various nintendo/microsoft events like that. Not to mention wizards of the coast...
posted by emptythought at 4:01 AM on June 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


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