Happy 30th Birthday to Nintendo's biggest failure! The Virtual Boy!

[Max]

Yeah and Nintendo killed Gunpei Yokoi for this
(Just kidding)

 

[Eogram]

Huh, I didn't realize that it was almost exactly 10 years younger than my mom's biggest failure.

Anyways. I've played it. Both at Circuit City back when it was new, and at a friends house not terribly long ago.
You don't lose much by emulating it.

Actually, there's a 3ds emulator for it, haven't tried it, but I suspect that'd be pretty ideal.

 

[Don Patch]

I hear the Wario Land game is actually one of the best ones....
Man-o-man, it needs a remake/re-release.

 

[ThunderBoy]

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Yet Wario Land nor that SMT spinoff got re-releases...

Post automatically merged: Jul 22, 2025

also, from watching avgn, i learned that there was a movie called waterworld, which is considered one of the biggest flops in movie history. the only game ever made for it was for the virtual boy.
i wonder if one of these things unintentionally doomed the other one or if that was just a crazy coincidence.

What about

 

[iamthemilkman]

I got my Virtual Boy for $24.99 brand new from Sears. I wish I had a time machine to buy more. I even bought some imports for it from Electronics Boutique when they sold imports back in the day.

 

[DrunkGecko]

When's Nintendo gonna release the Virtual Femboy

 

[KaiserMk7]

When's Nintendo gonna release the Virtual Femboy

I'd imagine the indie scene has already done that well beyond Nintendo's capabilities.

 

[Pseudo64]

While the system itself was mostly a failure, there are some amazing games in it like Innsmouth No yakata, Jack Bros, and Virtual Boy Wario Land that I definitely reccomend giving a shot, even if via emulation where your eyes won't be assaulted by that console. XD

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Was the Virtual Console a VB reference?

Still, why no 3DS tentative of making VB ports (even in colour)?

 

[Egg (McMuffin) Man]

I don't understand all of the comments about headaches. I have one and it's never caused me to have a headache.

My 3DS, on the other hand, gives me literal migraines.

 

[FrootyLoopsSamurai]

I think it's cool playing VB on actual hardware. The technology is really neat despite its obvious flaws. I don't get headaches from it, but my eyes feel tired after a session.

 

[VampireLord1024VampireLord1024's icon]

Happy birthday, Nintendo's biggest failure.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY VIRTUAL BOY!​

View attachment 92653

Can you believe that Nintendo's biggest failure is hitting the big THREE-O today? I can, because THAT'S HOW TIME WORKS YA FOO'!

Anyway, it's been 3 decades since Nintendo released this thing, has opinion on it changed given 30 years of hindsight and do you like any of its games?

Been meaning to explore this system super strong for a long time. The infamy, the YouTube hair pulling, it gave this little fella a new life to folks like me. Us younger people were always eager to see Nintendo’s darkest moment, and the tech, story, and games for it are all so interesting.

Leave it to Nintendo to make a financial failure still successful in the long term, because thanks to its charm and the company that made it, it’s a system that everybody into games will at least know about.

Post automatically merged: Monday at 8:32 PM

I think it's cool playing VB on actual hardware. The technology is really neat despite its obvious flaws. I don't get headaches from it, but my eyes feel tired after a session.

I’ve wondered why for a while, but I think it’s the eye strain that comes from the rapidly moving mirrors that make the VB possible. This system was such a cool thing but such a terrible idea for a commercial product at the time.

Also weird to think that this was the only released 32 bit platform Nintendo ever had. Power-wise it seems about on par with the Amigas or perhaps a 32X, which is nuts to consider that technology being put into a form factor like this.

 

[Coon]

Happy Birthday!

 

[Matricks]

I played Red Alarm emulation iys awesome...
[media]

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

My favorite game on the VB is a game that just BARELY didn’t make it out the door. Was fully finished but didn’t release. It’s BoundHigh! It’s a special action puzzle game where you’re bouncing up and down on a grid, attempting to take out all the enemies. Enemies explode into shrapnel that can take out other enemies depending on the angle. The main character and whole aesthetic is cute and appealing, with a charming “robots in space” theme. I love it, and I highly recommend checking it out if you have VB emulation! I would love to try it on real hardware one day, since it has been officially released in a limited run and has been sold as homebrew for years.

 

[Adrastia]

For a failure , it has really awesome and underrated japanese games that are very unknown to this day .

The Cthulhu-dungeoncrawler-shooter was one that comes to my mind in an instant . And we didnt saw all japanese games on this eye-cancer-device.

Sometimes its a look worth to give while playing Devils advocate here.

No risk , No fun as people say .

It's not as bad as people think it is. Yes the red can be painful after awhile. But I think a lot of the people that slam the Virtual Boy so hard have never even used one.

I used it several times at Toys R Us and it was a neat concept. But the execution was not up to par. They tried. I think Gunpei Yokoi really believed in his idea but it was not the right time for such a device. Plus Nintendo wanted to rush it out while Gunpei Yokoi wanted to keep working on the design.

The link cable was never released so multiplayer features in the few games that use them are useless. And it's unfortunate that the LEDs are red and there are no multicolors or LED color selector. But red was the cheapest color and they wanted to keep production costs down.

I totally understand the reason behind having it mounted on a stand. If a kid was walking around with this on their head and fell down the stairs or went into the street Nintendo would be all over the news and it would look bad. At the time parents groups were already very vocal about the so-called dangers of video games. Nintendo didn't need a device that potentially could get you badly injured or worse.

However, I wish that there had been an option for a head mount (as uncomfortable as it might be) with some kind of safety lock to the stand that small children couldn't open.

The Virtual Boy definitely has a place in gaming history.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

It's not as bad as people think it is. Yes the red can be painful after awhile. But I think a lot of the people that slam the Virtual Boy so hard have never even used one.

I used it several times at Toys R Us and it was a neat concept. But the execution was not up to par. They tried. I think Gunpei Yokoi really believed in his idea but it was not the right time for such a device. Plus Nintendo wanted to rush it out while Gunpei Yokoi wanted to keep working on the design.

The link cable was never released so multiplayer features in the few games that use them are useless. And it's unfortunate that the LEDs are red and there are no multicolors or LED color selector. But red was the cheapest color and they wanted to keep production costs down.

I totally understand the reason behind having it mounted on a stand. If a kid was walking around with this on their head and fell down the stairs or went into the street Nintendo would be all over the news and it would look bad. At the time parents groups were already very vocal about the so-called dangers of video games. Nintendo didn't need a device that potentially could get you badly injured or worse.

However, I wish that there had been an option for a head mount (as uncomfortable as it might be) with some kind of safety lock to the stand that small children couldn't open.

The Virtual Boy definitely has a place in gaming history.

I see it sort of like this: have you ever been to a tourist spot where you have those binoculars that you pay a quarter to use?
That’s what the Virtual Boy is. It’s the video game version of that kind of thing.

 

[Mr. SyS]

Got a 3ds? Red Viper is the only thing that can give the vb justice with its 3d support and you can also choose to play in black and white over the headache inducing default color scheme.

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

Got a 3ds? Red Viper is the only thing that can give the vb justice with its 3d support and you can also choose to play in black and white over the headache inducing default color scheme.

Exactly! There’s also some fantastic emulation options for modern VR setups with similar, if not, expanded feature sets! But Red Viper is one I have experience with and can vouch: Mr. SyS is on the money! That emulator is the good stuff!

 

[SherionVane]

i cant feel my eyes