"The Wii U outsold Sweden, but the Virtual Boy was different. It was its own platform, it was its own entirely unique creature, it had its own games, its own style, and it couldn't even outsell Maine."
— Scott The Woz
Virtual Boy
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| Virtual Boy | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 ULTIMATE CLASSIC SHIT - Some Wario YTP
| ||||||||||
|
"It's like puking on a pile of shit!"
— The Angry Video Game Nerd
"Yep, I just played all twenty-two Virtual Boy games, and you want to know what? I actually liked a few of them. Wario Land, Jack Bros., Teleroboxer, and Innsmouth would all actually be kind of cool to see remastered in the modern era. But...this is the Virtual Boy, and it will continue to fade into obscurity until our own sun will turn red in five billion years."
— Nathaniel Bandy
The Virtual Boy was a "portable" game system co-developed by Nintendo and Reflection Technology, Inc. (RTI), described as the first portable game system to display 3D graphics. It was also Nintendo's first 32-bit gaming system. It was released on July 21, 1995, in Japan and on August 14, 1995, in North America. It was discontinued on December 22, 1995, in Japan and on March 2, 1996, in North America.
Why It'll Give You a Headache
- Overpriced; as it costed $179.95 USD (approximately $307 by 2020's exchange rates) at launch, and nowadays the price is much higher!
- False Advertising: Despite being advertised as being a portable game system, it is not portable in the context of it being a handheld like the Game Boy, but rather as a tabletop system that could be taken anyplace.
- Nintendo rushed the Virtual Boy, far before its creator, Gunpei Yokoi, felt it was ready. This was because Nintendo was not seeing a return on their investment in VR technology and was already starting to rebrand their home console, "Project Reality," as the "Ultra 64," dropping all VR-related elements. The Virtual Boy was surplus to their plans and clearly not working, so they simply dropped it on the market as it was in the hope of recouping some of their R&D costs. Because of the failure of the Virtual Boy, Yokoi's 31-year career with Nintendo ended on a sour note.
- Prolonged use of the system could cause medical problems, often causing neck and back pain when trying to use it. In addition, it was known for causing eye strain, nausea, and headaches. It was even capable of causing permanent eye damage if used too long, the console's box even warns you from using it for too long.
- It lacked a head strap unlike the Tiger R-Zone, it was originally designed to be worn on the user's head, but Japanese safety regulations had it changed to a tabletop unit. Nathaniel Bandy, in his TRIGGERED! video on the console, realized that the headset is too heavy to wear normally and would likely have caused neck strain had there been an actual head strap, thus potentially explaining the safety regulation crackdown.
- Despite the rubber head strip fitting surprisingly good to head, there is no way to remove it, meaning that there's no way to clean it after being dirty for a while (especially after playing too long).
- The decision to make the graphics in red and black was a call purely based on cost. Attempting 3D graphics was very expensive in 1995, so having a single color was cheaper. Cheap multi-color LEDs weren't invented until 1996. While the tactic of a monochrome screen worked for the Game Boy, it didn't work for the Virtual Boy.
- It had a very small library of games, with 22 games total, with 19 released in Japan and 14 in North America.
- On that topic, this is the only Nintendo console that lacked a The Legend of Zelda game.
- Two of the Virtual Boy games are dedicated to bowling. (Nester's Funky Bowling, and the Japan-only Virtual Bowling) another two are Tetris games (3D Tetris, and Japan-only V-Tetris) and another three games are Mario games (Mario's Tennis, Mario Clash, and Virtual Boy Wario Land)
- In fact, There was a 23rd Virtual Boy game (Bound High!) which was finished in development, but went unreleased due to the Virtual Boy's discontinuation.
- Despite the name "Virtual" Boy, none of the games succeeded in providing a true virtual reality experience. While a few games tried to add 3D effects, only three of the games actually tried to put the players in the actual game world, with gamers complaining that they didn't feel any sense of immersion and that it was just like playing a regular two-dimensional game that one would normally play on a television or handheld screen. The only three Virtual Boy games with a first person perspective are Teleroboxer, Red Alarm (In the POV camera angle), and Innsmouth no Yakata.
- None of the released games had any form of two-player gameplay modes (the link cable that was supposed to allow this feature was never released). Only a few Virtual Boy games had multiplayer and all that players did was take turns playing the games.
- The controller is required to run the system, as it actually has the power switch on it.
- You can't even simply power it up without having a hard time! The battery pack requires 6 AA-sized batteries, and the Virtual Boy will totally drain them all in just ~4 hours! What a waste of battery money! This can be changed out for the AC adapter tap (which uses the SNS-002 AC adapter of the SNES) if the user doesn't wish to use batteries, but if playing on a table, the AC adapter can come loose during gameplay and the console will turn off.
- Terrible Marketing: Commercials of game consoles should depict the console as cool, friendly, or something else positive. The Virtual Boy was (very ironically) depicted as terrifying. Commercials like this might scare a child and they would perhaps make more sense made by a Nintendo competitor in the first place. (That said, their competitor astonishingly did this to THEIR own console too.)
Redeeming Qualities
- Fans of the console claim there are methods to lessen the medical problems this console can cause like playing the game in the dark to lessen eye strain.
- Some surprisingly good games were released on the console like Mario Clash, Virtual Boy Wario Land, Teleroboxer, Jack Bros., and the Japan-only Space Squash (even the Angry Video Game Nerd acknowledged this), although they were mainly games that could have been played on a home console or Game Boy. Among its Western releases at least, the only Virtual Boy game that's usually considered to be outright bad is WaterWorld, while the worst Japan-only game is Virtual Lab.
- Its small library also means that it's easy to finish the collection (though the prices may be very high for some games, such as Jack Bros.).
- Like most of Nintendo's portable systems, the Virtual Boy is region-free.
- Decent 3D effects in some of the games.
- If not for the Virtual Boy's failure and the lessons learned from it, the 3DS or modern virtual reality headsets, such as the Oculus Rift, might not have been made.
- The controller has a more conventional design than the Nintendo 64's.
- Before being discontinued, the price was reduced from $170 to $100.
Videos
Reception
 "What were they thinking?"
|
The Virtual Boy was a colossal bomb, and even more so than the Wii U, selling only a miserable 770,000 units and was discontinued in less than a year, making it the worst Nintendo console ever produced. Despite its failure, it has a cult following and is considered a valuable collector's item.
YouTuber Doc Seven ranked it as the worst game console (made by well-known brands) of all time. (His review also contains a short clip of AVGN trying to find a good pose to use it)
WatchMojo.com ranked the Virtual Boy 2nd worst Nintendo fail, only behind the Inadvertently Creating the PlayStation, and ahead of the Nintendo Creator's Program.
Nintendo would eventually make built-in 3D without glasses correctly with the Nintendo 3DS.
Trivia
- Argonaut was working on a VR project for Nintendo called the Super Visor, which would have had superior hardware specifications to that of the Virtual Boy, along with Argonaut's own BRender real-time 3D graphics engine. However, it was canned in favor of the Virtual Boy. The Super Visor was also sold to Hasbro, which was going to release it as a VR gaming console codenamed "Toaster" (later known as X-Scape under Citadel Entertainment and later the Rush), but it was never released.[1]
- The Virtual Boy's CPU is a customized version of the NEC V810, a model of RISC processor which is also used in the PC-FX console, which, like the Virtual Boy, was also a commercial failure.
- It does not have a startup screen, in fact the cartridges provided their own startup screens, which explains why the screen in some games has a different design, or different/no audio.
- It made a cameo appearance as the "Virtual Boo" in Luigi's Mansion 3.
- It was originally going to be worn on the head with head tracking, but Japanese safety regulations forced Nintendo to put it on a stand.
- A YouTuber named Shank Mods made a Handheld version of it, which was called Real Boy.
References
Comments
Loading comments...
Categories:
- AVGN Shit Scale The Very High Category
- Bad media
- Consoles
- The Angry Video Game Nerd episodes
- Gimmicks in gaming
- Bad consoles from good companies
- Overpriced
- Consoles and accessories ahead of their time
- Nintendo
- Injuries caused by video games
- Consoles and accessories reviewed by Game Sack
- Commercial failures
- Misleading in gaming
- Scott The Woz episodes
- Games reviewed by Nathaniel Bandy
- Consoles with terrible commercials
- Internet memes