Because I had recently started a new paper route and had
direct access to the money I earned, I had began buying more video games and
hardware. I started saving up for what I assumed would be the new craze – the
Virtual Boy. I read about it mainly from Nintendo Power and was planning on
getting one. I was a little put off by the red monochrome, but still wanted
one. To get myself used to how the VB would look, I played Game Boy games on the
Super Game Boy, but made the colors black and 3 shades of red to match what I
had seen from screenshots in magazines.
I had saved up almost enough money, but because I had been
getting into card collecting and comics at the time, I was short about $20. It
turns out that my family would be in Boise at a family party on the day of the
release, which worked out well in my favor. Growing up in the small town I
lived in, I was used to our stores and theaters not getting things on release
dates. But I would have to have all the money that day. I managed to talk my
friend Jake into lending me $20 to get the VB on release day, and in exchange,
he would get to keep and play it until I paid him back.
Part of the way through the family get-together, my dad
agreed to take me to Fred Meyer. We bought the VB and returned to my grandma’s
house. I set it up and played it for a bit. My uncles and a few cousins all
took a quick peek at it but didn’t seem super impressed. I tried to play it on
the way home, but it wasn’t really meant to be portable, so I had to wait until
I got home.
Since it came with Mario’s Tennis, and it was the only game
I had, I was forced to play tennis, but I learned how tennis worked for the
first time in my life. Occasionally I played it by laying in bed and resting
the unit on my face, but most of the time I had it set up on my desk in my
room.
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It usually ran on 6 AA batteries, but I wanted an AC adapter so I didn’t have to replace batteries all the time, having gone through that
issue with the Super Scope a couple years earlier. The AC adapter was $20, and
I was short on the cash, having just paid back Jake and bought Red Alarm and
some comics. So I kinda pulled the same stunt with my friend Travis. He lent me
the money to get the AC adapter and in exchange he got to keep the VB for a couple
weeks until I got the cash. The actual cord was identical to a SNES cord, but required the adapter to attach it to the Virtual Boy controller.
The only other game I bought for it was Golf. So officially
that means that 2/3 of my games for it were sports games, technically. None of
the other games that were available at Wal-Mart/K-Mart seemed interesting at
the time, and I was itching to get another game for the VB to have a little
variety. As a golf game, it was on par (ha!) with all of the other modern golf
games, but it made me wish that it had a green screen instead of red.
After the novelty of it wore off, I started playing it less
and less often. The neck/eye strain combined with the fact that the games
weren’t anything special started to wear on me.
Eventually, I put it
back into its box, which I had kept. I would pull it out here and there, but
the stand cracked at the spot where the two legs hinged, forcing me to play it
balanced on my face. I threw the stand away, but I should have at least kept
the small connector piece. There are a lot of DIY stand suggestions online, but
they all require having that particular piece, unfortunately.
Much later, I got a gift from my friend Michael. He was in
Japan, and had seen some sort of clearance bin that had VB games for cheap. He
bought V-Tetris, a Japanese-only release. It had regular Tetris, as well as a
version that had a 3-D version with a rotatable base – sorta like putting
Tetris pieces inside of a drinking glass.
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[not actually me] |
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Somehow I also had lost my copy of Mario's Tennis, so I purchased a used one from eBay to replace it. Finally, I found someone who is able to solder the lenses to the ribbon cable, thus eliminating the cracked glue problem for good. In early 2023, I found a website that sold replacement stands that are nearly indistinguishable from the genuine article. It even came with a cross brace to prevent the exact problem that plagued these stands from occurring again, and it was a 10-cent piece of plastic - something Nintendo probably should have thought about including originally. Between new screws, new clip, a replacement game, and the soldering job, I have probably spent as much on restoring/maintaining my Virtual Boy as I did purchasing it originally.