The Virtual Boy

In the middle of the “Bit-Wars,” Nintendo had accidentally made some new competition for itself by making a deal with Sony to manufacture a CD add-on device to the SNES. When Nintendo reneged, Sony decided to make their own console: the PlayStation, a 32-bit CD based system. SEGA had also made something similar – the SEGA Saturn. Nintendo had opted to skip the 32-bit era and move directly on to a 64-bit system. But in the meantime, they released the Virtual Boy, a 32-bit system that was unlike anything that had come before, and anything that has come out since.

The Virtual Boy looks like a bulky, expensive pair of goggles or futuristic space binoculars. Instead of using a TV screen, this system provided its own display (kind of like a Game Boy), but the player would have to stick his head into the system to play it. Home computing and the Web were the new and trendy tech things that were catching on, but everyone was talking about “Virtual Reality,” and music videos, movies, and TV shows were popularizing the term. The VB seemed to glam onto this concept, but in reality it was a simple gimmick to produce a 3D image.

By calling it the Virtual BOY, it implied that it was portable and the successor to the popular Game Boy line of hardware. But it wasn’t portable at all. It was far too bulky and delicate to carry around in a backpack, and it couldn’t just be played anywhere. It couldn’t be strapped to one’s head (like most virtual reality demos showed), and instead the goggles were set atop an adjustable 2-legged stand that was meant to be used on a desktop or table.

Full color screens would have meant that the system’s cost would have basically doubled, so in order to save money, Nintendo opted for a red monochrome screen. Like the Game Boy, it could only do 4 colors – 3 shades of red, and black – on a dot-matrix screen. But for the effect to work, each eye needed its own display, so there were actually 2 projectors, each putting out a slightly different picture that combined into 1 3D image.

The sound was better than a Game Boy, but not as good as a GBA, though it did have the “poppy-clicky” sound features that the GBA would later have. One advantage that the VB had in the sound department is that they knew exactly where the player’s ears would be, so it could sort of simulate surround sound with its stereo speakers. Like the Game Boy, it had a headphone jack and a volume dial on the left side of the bottom.

On the top of the unit were 2 dials. One adjusted the focus (like a projector), and the other changed the distance between the eyepiece and the projector. In order to block out the light, the display had a felt visor that touched the player’s face, kinda accomplishing the same task as when you cup your hands around your face to look into a window on a bright day.

Games were inserted into the front (meaning the end that was farthest from the player’s face) into a small slot. The games came with a small black cover to protect the pins when not in use, but like all past sleeves, they were lost easily.

On the bottom of the VB’s right side were the controller port and the gamelink port (intended to hook up 2 systems à la the Game Boy, but cords and games were never released). The controller for the VB was unique and revolutionary for the time for a few reasons. Revolutionary because it was the first controller to feature 2 D-pads – one on each side, as well as pistol-grip type sides to help hold it comfortably. The controller was symmetrical except for the colors of the buttons; the left side featured gray Start and Select buttons, while the right side had red B and A buttons. R and L buttons were in the back of the controller, and felt more like a trigger than the shoulder buttons on the SNES did. Some questioned why 2 D-pads were needed, but it was easily explained that a single D-pad could handle 2 dimensions nicely, and these games were in 3D. But one unique (by which I mean badly designed) feature was that the power switch was on the controller. The back of the controller featured a removable battery box that held 6 AA batteries. So unlike NES or SNES controllers which pulled power from the console, the console pulled all of its power from the controller. An AC adapter was available that allowed the battery box to be replaced with a cord.

Because Nintendo anticipated the headache and eye-strain complaints, they included a warning to take frequent breaks in the manuals, on the startup screen, and in most games as well (similar to what the Wii and its games suggested).

The Virtual Boy didn’t sell well, and was discontinued after less than a year. The main issues were that the monochrome colors were unappealing, neck and eye strain was rampant, and it wasn’t portable. The stands often broke where the two legs connected because of cheap plastic, forcing players to play with it balanced on their head or make a DIY solution. 3D effect couldn’t be shown in TV or in advertisements, so unless someone took the time and effort to go into a store to try the demo, most people weren’t impressed. Also, unlike a Game Boy (or any console), only one person could see it. Finally, there weren’t any “killer apps” that would make people want to buy the thing. Most games didn’t really take advantage of the one thing that differentiated the VB from all other video games.

In the end, it was a victim of poor timing, poor marketing, and rushed development. 

Additional Resources

Gaming Historian: The Virtual Boy

The Angry Video Game Nerd reviews every VB game