Virtual Boy was a design disaster in 1995, so why did I buy one for Switch?

A red VR headset — (Image credit: Nintendo / Future)

The stratospheric success of the Nintendo Switch, carried over into its successor, is such that the failure of the Wii U feels like a distant memory. It was, however, far from the Japanese company's biggest disaster. That honour goes to the Virtual Boy, a portable console released in 1995 for Japan and North America, but it was so panned that it was discontinued in less than a year, with a paltry 22 games released.

Yet like most failures, there's a mythic allure, especially given that it never actually released in PAL territories, and second-hand units on eBay fetch the same prices you could be spending on the best current VR headsets with actual 3D graphics rather than the extremely primitive red-and-black sprites being displayed through the Virtual Boy's stereoscopic lenses to create the illusion of 3D.

Photos of a Nintendo VR headset and games — (Image credit: Nintendo / Future)

Nintendo celebrates its failure

Of course, since the games' original graphics were rendered from two stereoscopic images, you can't just play them on your console right off the bat. I mean, you could, but there are two images, and they're so small due to being rendered at their native 384x224 pixels that you'd quickly strain your eyes.

Sure, I suppose there could have been some more effort in the emulation to make it playable as just a 2D game on a single screen, but you also have to respect Nintendo for ensuring you experience these games the way they were intended - even if that means shelling out £67 / $99 for just a replica of the console that you slot your device into (there's also a cheaper cardboard model, though without a stand it would mean awkwardly trying to play with just one hand while using the other to hold the device up to your face). So, even though I had very briefly sampled the original hardware at a gaming event in Japan some years ago, I just had to get a hold of this replica for myself.

There's a real audacity to Nintendo selling a replica of what is universally agreed to be a dud console. Nonetheless, it's certainly a faithful replica, including the moulds for where the headphone and controller ports should be (sadly, the original controllers haven't been re-released like on other platforms in NSO, so you just have to make do with your Joy-Cons). There's even a charm to the legs for you to attach the headset to, which (assuming you positioned it correctly) makes it sort of resemble a bird, that toy-like persona you would expect from Nintendo and the system's designer, the late Gunpei Yokoi.

Now the games

I'm not quite sure why a removable red filter has been added in front of the lens since the original Virtual Boy games were rendered in red and black anyway, as a way to keep costs down on what was already an expensive device at the time. I know it's because Nintendo is updating it later so that you can have different colour filters, though I'm not sure why they can't just change those in-game instead. Plus, if you get rid of the filter, you can also use it to 'enhance' select Switch games that previously added VR support for Labo VR (I would personally only recommend using it for Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker since it really fits those diorama puzzles).

I must admit that I was a little surprised by one aspect of Virtual Boy, and that is that it hasn't actually made me dizzy or sick, despite trying out the seven launch titles on NSO (strangely, this doesn't include Mario's Tennis, which was a pack-in title for the original US release). Perhaps this is just down to recent years of developing VR legs, though it's also because a lot of these games are largely stationary. Of course, compared to modern VR, you're also getting extremely primitive 3D graphics where just some sprites pop out or to create the illusion of depth, such as being able to traverse between the foreground and background in Wario Land, or the no-frills wireframes of your ship in 3D shmup Red Alarm.

It's not that it doesn't work because you can see the images pop, which work fine for casual fare like Golf and Galactic Pinball - heck, I was even getting into the latter enough to at least get on the leaderboard for its four space-themed tables. But the main problem is that the games are just dull. 3D Tetris is painfully slow, its blocks and awkward design not at all resembling the Tetris you know (incidentally, it would be the following year that The Tetris Company would form and standardise the rules for all Tetris games).

A red and black pixel art pinball game — (Image credit: Nintendo / Moby Games)

Easy on the eyes

Given the known health concerns and constraints of just looking through the lens of a headset that you can't actually move or look around in, there seems to be a restraint in the games so that nothing gets too much for your eyes to handle. But then that also means everything feels pedestrian. Without its 3D gimmick, Wario Land is just a plodding platformer.

The Japanese release Innsmouth no Yakata is intriguing as one of few first-person games, although you're really just navigating the maze of this manion with Lovecraftian horrors one grid at a time like other old-school dungeon crawlers, and the short time limit to complete each floor is also probably so that you only play in short bursts.

Yet whether they're good or bad, there is something admirable about Nintendo rolling out more Virtual Boy games on the service, including previously unreleased titles, which is, frankly, more support than Sony has given its PSVR 2 headset. The irony is that, even though the tech has greatly improved and offers immersion that could only have been imagined decades before, modern VR gaming seems no better off right now than the Virtual Boy.

A red and black creature in a pixel art game — (Image credit: Nintendo / Moby Games)

Even as a failed experiment, stereoscopic 3D would return to Nintendo with the release of the 3DS years later, though the tech also eventually felt like a gimmick that became obsolete by the time it released its final iteration, the 3D-free New 2DS XL. Perhaps that's a sign of a later update that lets every Switch owner experience Virtual Boy games on a flat screen.

Still, I'm glad I do have a relatively affordable way to play them as they were designed, even if the actual experience is largely for the most curious of Nintendo fans.

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Alan Wen is a freelance journalist writing about video games in the form of features, interview, previews, reviews and op-eds. Work has appeared in print including Edge, Official Playstation Magazine, GamesMaster, Games TM, Wireframe, Stuff, and online including Kotaku UK, TechRadar, FANDOM, Rock Paper Shotgun, Digital Spy, The Guardian, and The Telegraph.

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