Twenty years ago, on August 21, 1995, Nintendo released the Virtual Boy in North America. The stilt-legged tabletop gaming console, which offered a unique red stereoscopic 3D display, attempted to ride a wave of popular interest in virtual reality. It was a risky, innovative gamble for Nintendo that didn’t pay off, leaving many to wonder why it existed in the first place.
I vaguely recall the magazine talk of this thing (I was 9 at the time), but I never actually got to see one, let alone play one.
I was about the same age when my older brother brought one home. It was pretty cool, for what it was – high-res monochrome screens, and stereoscopic 3D made certain games really cool. I mainly played the Wario game, and Mario Tennis. It was fun, but impractical, so my bro eventually sold it.
Mario Tennis was super fun, though. The 3D effect was very convincing.
I’ve been hoping for some virtual console releases on the 3DS, but nothing has been released yet.
I totally remember the Virtualboy. One of my friends had one and I remember spending quite a few hours playing the boxing game and tennis. The 3D effect actually worked pretty decent. Calling it monochrome is like calling grey scale black and white. Granted it was only red, but it was many different shades of red. I think it would have been better if it actually strapped to your head though.
I had an opportunity to use the demo model at the store once. I remember being blown away by the 3D graphics. The videos in the article don’t do justice to the experience; there was true depth to what you saw, not just a 2D representation of a 3D world as you’d get on a computer monitor or TV.
Ten year old me wanted one so bad, but in retrospect it’s easy to see why this didn’t take off. When I stopped playing (after about half an hour of flying a virtual fighter jet around), I got slightly dizzy. Not enough to fall over or anything, but enough to induce some queasiness. Also, the soft material that covered the viewport smelled pretty bad (possibly due to coming in contact with hundreds of greasy foreheads at the store).
There was always a line to play it at the store, so I never got the chance. But, I understand why it failed. With video game systems very much still kid dominated at the time, parents were only willing to pay for so many video game systems. The better off families had a main game console and a portable one. This didn’t replace either one and no one could watch you play so you couldn’t even co pilot. It was an experience we all would have bought if we had the money, but we didn’t because we were kids. And parents wanted to spend money on more practical things like mortgages and actual computers.