Topic: Remembering the Virtual Boy Launch

[JusDBerube]

The King Nintendo Fanboy remembers the launch of the Virtual Boy for the 20th anniversary of the platform.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/40931/remembering-the-virtual-boy-launch

Twenty years ago, much like today, I was a huge Nintendo fan. I remember scouring the pages of Nintendo Power magazine and coming across some early concept screenshots for what would be possible with the Virtual Boy. Back then virtual reality was a thing of childhood dreams, so the Virtual Boy had my attention from the start.

Nintendo Power basically remained my primary source of information for the platform. I was also part of Nintendo’s online community on AOL at the time, but I don’t remember much information being shared for the Virtual Boy there. I had saved my money for months to get Nintendo’s latest platform, and August 1995 quickly approached.

My hype came to a fever pitch when the Virtual Boy cover edition of Nintendo Power finally came in the mail. The issue was special because it came with a pair of 3D glasses that made the images in the magazine pop out. I was shaking at the prospect of having my own Nintendo made VR device.

The only problem for someone like myself trying to get a Virtual Boy was that it didn’t appear to have a solid release date. Nintendo basically said it would just come out in August 1995. Back then most gaming related items didn’t have hard release dates like they do today, so I began calling every video game retailer in my area multiple times a day. Toys”R”Us, Kay Bee Toys, Babbages, Electronics Boutique, you name it. I even called multiple locations of each store. Nobody knew when it was coming out, so I just had to be on top of things.

Then the day finally came. On August 19, 1995 one local Toys”R”Us got the Virtual Boy. My mother was pretty against me picking it up and encouraged me to rent it from Blockbuster instead. Yes, Blockbuster was about to rent Virtual Boy systems and games during this time. My father, knowing me better, said to me, “You’re going to buy it either way aren’t you?” Yep, I sure was.

So my dad took me to the store and I eagerly was the first person to pick up the Virtual Boy. This also happened to be the first piece of Nintendo hardware I bought at launch. I remember one man in Toys”R”Us asking me if I was the guy who kept calling about it. I told him yes and I’m pretty sure the electronics section of that store threw a party knowing I was done bugging them.

I got home and played Mario Tennis for hours. I should have spent more time reading the setup instructions though, because I didn’t fully adjust the system for my eyes. This left me feeling a little sick, but it also turned me into a great demonstrator for the system because I made sure all my friends who played it adjusted it for their own eyes.

I may have spent too much money on the Virtual Boy, but I had no way of knowing the eventual fate of the platform. Many people criticize the Virtual Boy today, which isn’t completely unfair. The platform had its faults, but back in an era where Virtual Reality was a more of a legend, having my own 3D capable platform was something special. So happy 20th anniversary Virtual Boy, you will always be special to me.

[Ian Sane]

The Virtual Boy is totally Nintendo's "jump the shark" moment.  Think of the shockingly dumb things Nintendo has done over the years that has hurt their reputation and I'd guess probably ALL of them are from the Virtual Boy onwards.  The company that released this obviously doomed-to-fail product then followed up the next year by going with cartridges over CDs and has been puttering along making easily avoidable mistakes ever since.

The key trademark is to make mistakes that everyone outside of Nintendo with even the slightest familiarity with videogames spots a mile away.  While the VB has a lot of obvious problems that everyone else spotted (as well as its creator Gunpei Yokoi who told his superiors it wasn't a sellable product; so was Yokoi secretly the brains behind Nintendo?) the one I really noticed at the time was that there was no good way to market it.  It was a system where it was nearly impossible to provide screenshots in magazines or show the gameplay in commercials.  Hell one can't even watch someone else play it.  There's an annual fair in Vancouver called the PNE that around this time used to always have a Nintendo play area where they would demo new and future releases.  In 1995 they had VB demo units but the lineup was long enough I didn't bother to try them and there was no way for me to even observe anyone else playing it like I could with the SNES games.  I remember mags like Gamepro and EGM mentioning the VB but having no screenshots or if they did, they were tiny little blurry ones that must have been taken by someone shoving a camera in the view finder.  Eventually I saw official screenshots from Nintendo and they looked like red Game Boy games.  The 3D is the selling factor but it cannot be demonstrated in any way besides playing the system itself.  Without it you have games that look worse than SNES games (and remember the Saturn and PlayStation were released the same year) that don't even have colour graphics.  So you can't show the selling point and without the selling point the product actually looks BAD.  They should have caught on to that marketing disadvantage very quickly.  As a kid I didn't reject the VB so much as not really understand exactly what it was and why I should care about it.

[Mop it up]

Anyone who bought one of these probably learned their lesson about being early adapters.

Mario's Tennis was probably a fun game to play at that time, though. Did you ever get any more games for this system?

[stalfo]

Gotta love the Virtual Boy, I bought one off ebay when I was in HS which was probably around 2005. I pop it out every once in a while to play for a bit. Last time I did my dad ended up playing Golf for like an hour and was loving everything about it .


I know you're a collector, how many games do you have?


I've got: Galactice Pinball, Golf, Mario Clash, Mario's Tennis, Panic Bomber, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer, Vertical Force and Wario Land.

[broodwars]

It really is a shame that Nintendo hasn't re-released the Wario Land Virtual Boy game on 3DS. As awful as that "portable" system is, I remember that Wario land game being surprisingly decent.

With game developers & pundits seemingly lining up to try to shove VR down our throats again (regardless of whether anyone actually wants VR games), it is funny to think back on the spectacular failure of the virtual boy and consider how few of the problems of the medium as a commercial product have been addressed since then.

[Ian Sane]

It really is a shame that Nintendo hasn't re-released the Wario Land Virtual Boy game on 3DS. As awful as that "portable" system is, I remember that Wario land game being surprisingly decent.

I don't see why they don't offer all of their first party VB games.  The 3DS is the only other system that could accommodate them.  Though Nintendo tends to sometimes pretend the VB never existed.  I'm surprised they didn't at some point poach the level designs from VB Wario Land for a later Wario Land title.  Almost no one would have noticed.

[Mop it up]

Yeah, I don't see Nintendo ever re-releasing any of these games, though it'd be awesome if they made a Virtual Boy collection of all its games, released for its anniversary or something.

[pokepal148]

It really is a shame that Nintendo hasn't re-released the Wario Land Virtual Boy game on 3DS. As awful as that "portable" system is, I remember that Wario land game being surprisingly decent.

I don't see why they don't offer all of their first party VB games.  The 3DS is the only other system that could accommodate them.  Though Nintendo tends to sometimes pretend the VB never existed.  I'm surprised they didn't at some point poach the level designs from VB Wario Land for a later Wario Land title.  Almost no one would have noticed.

Introducing Wario Land: The Lost Levels!

[kokumaker]

@ Ian Sane - I was damned glad that Nintendo stuck with cartridges for the N64. The load times for the PSX rendered that system completely unplayable, in my opinion. Nintendo at least understood that most players should want to spend their game time actually playing games, rather than watching them load. Just because discs were becoming the popular medium for games in the mid/late-90s, that didn't make them a better format, and load times were exactly the reason why.

[Ian Sane]

@ Ian Sane - I was damned glad that Nintendo stuck with cartridges for the N64. The load times for the PSX rendered that system completely unplayable, in my opinion. Nintendo at least understood that most players should want to spend their game time actually playing games, rather than watching them load. Just because discs were becoming the popular medium for games in the mid/late-90s, that didn't make them a better format, and load times were exactly the reason why.

The actual sales figures suggest that most players preferred FMV, red book audio, lower game prices, and access to games made by companies other than Nintendo and Rare.