When I first saw this on Facebook I didn’t believe it, so I looked for a reputable source before posting it here
Remember the ill-fated Nintendo Virtual Boy? It’s coming back. Sorta. Its games will be released over time on Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 Online, but will require a dedicated headset that looks much like the original Virtual Boy.
For those who don’t remember, the Virtual Boy was Nintendo’s first foray into 3D and VR gaming, but the game graphics were all in shades of red.
A total of 14 games will be available through the service. The main VR headset will cost $99.99.
I recently watched a video about the conception, development, and failure of the system, and then its legacy. It was pretty good and not extremely long (just over 20 minutes).
There’s still a niche market for people who are fans of the console, and large library of unofficial fan-made games that can be loaded onto the system. The video above also mentions how the Nintendo museum in Kyoto started selling Virtual Boy merchandise last year, which I suspect was testing the waters for interest in the old console, and might have led to this recent offering.
Oh geeze, the barf machine is coming back? I remember playing Mario (or Wario?) on that thing. It was cool for five minutes and then sickening after that
I never quite understood why companies keep pushing VR. Vision, Index, Rift, Oculus… most of them completely failed and even the Oculus is a niche product. And yet they keep trying…
I worked at Toys R Us when this console was released. We had one in our store and I would play it on my breaks. I really enjoyed the tennis game, I thought that game in particular was really well done, but I always had a massive headache after playing the console for any length of time.
I guess if you’re going to make a VR headset, it makes sense for it to run your old stereoscopic games, even if they didn’t do well.
I have a Virtual Bot emulator on my 3DS and even then I mostly turn the 3D off. They went for way to much field depth in the games. The 3DS wisely includes a slider, but that requires the game internally to use the z axis. It seems like Vurtual Boy games just wrote to both eyes separately, and so the depth is baked in. All you can do is choose how far apart the two eyes are.
Honestly, new VR versions of the best games, in color, would probably be better. And throw in support for 3DS.
