The Nintendo Virtual Boy thinks he is hot stuff…. As more successful consoles look on and mock.
MY NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY COLLECTION
1. Demo Cart
2. Golf
3. Mario Clash
4. Mario’s Tennis Virtual Boy
5. Nester’s Funky Bowling
6. Panic Bomber
7. Red Alarm
8. Teleroboxer
9. Tetris 3D
10. Wario Land Virtual Boy
11. Virtual Boy System Complete with Box, instructions and accessories. Sadly the head piece quite working though a few years back. A common problem…
Nintendo Virtual Boy was a lil-known 1996 videogame console created by Nintendo’s mastermind… no not Shigeru Miyamoto, but his mentor, Metroid creator Gunpei Yokoi (who also created the Game & Watch handhelds, the Game Boy and Kid Icarus).
Virtual Boy was the first ever mainstream stereoscopic 3D videogame console/handheld, wherein the player looked through a pair of goggles (a headmounted display) at a dual-monochrome screen made up of exclusively scarlet-red graphics. Only two colors of in-game graphics were available, red and black. Resulting in games with no real color… This made them seem lacking compared to the bright, colorful graphics seen in console systems, and the ever-present deep red and pitch black mix, while giving the games some “pop”, also made them seem drab and lacking in personality… once the extremely unique look wore off, that is.
Lacking portability due to the fact that you had to place it on a solid surface and look into the viewfinder, the system had many issues that killed it quickly… making the Virtual Boy Nintendo’s biggest ever system failure (resulting in the immediate firing of Gunpei Yokoi).
Putting the nail in the coffin of the system were the supposed headaches caused by extended play of glaring red graphics in front of your face, the battery-obliteration of a system that required six-double A batteries for only a few hours of play (though an AC adapter was available), the low-amount of high-quality games (only 14 ever released in America, 22 worldwide) and, worst of all, the extremely high cost. The system launched at a cost of $180, cheap for a console but somewhat high for a portable. Too high for what the system offered… and it thus died a sudden death without selling even 100,000 systems.
You can read much more about the system in my History of Portable Videogames.
I am extremely proud of my Virtual Boy collection, all of the games I own are boxed and complete, with instructions, and I have 9 of the 14 North American games ever released; alongside a super rare demo cart. There were 22 Virtual Boy games released in Japan/Worldwide (mostly Japan), so I still have a ways to go in order to actually complete my system collection. But the Virtual Boy set (including the system boxed) is arguably the pride of my collection.
Sadly the head-mounted display no longer works, and I’ve yet to replace it (this is a common problem). Some day I plan on doing unboxing videos of each game, and reviewing all of them, as well as tracking down a COMPLETE Virtual Boy set.
Now enjoy this awesome Virtual Boy commercial!
* See MY ENTIRE VIDEOGAME COLLECTION for a giant list on the rest of the videogames I own!
Watch Us Play Games 