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The Virtual Failure? A Look Back At the Virtual Boy
Written by Robert Falcon on Sunday, March 26, 2006
We take a look back at Nintendo's Virtual Boy, and its rise, fall, and after-effects.
The handheld gaming market has seen quite a rush over the years, with something that started as simply as the Game Boy in 1989. Nowadays, we have these complex systems, with the Nintendo DS Lite possessing high-resolution displays and a powerful touch-screen, and the Sony PSP picking up steam all its own with a large library of solid games and a beautiful presentation all its own. The market itself has stabilized over the years, and hasn't really seen that many failures along the way...just mainly innovations.
However, there was one system that stands out that managed to be both a high innovator for the company at hand, and yet a colossal failure. This system is the Nintendo Virtual Boy, a stand-alone VR unit that displayed red-and-black displays to provide the gamer with 3-D visuals, to present an exciting new dimension of gameplay. Yet, even with Nintendo's excitement for the machine and some quality software mixed in with average games, it bombed ferociously. This article takes a look back at what went right, and then what went wrong.
The VR32, as it was originally known, made its debut at the Shoshinkai Show in Japan in 1994, when heresay about the system began to spread, and Nintendo confirmed that it was, in fact, in the works. At the following winter CES show in Las Vegas, Nintendo showed off a few tech demos to the public and redubbed the machine the Virtual Boy, sort of a virtual successor to the Game Boy. After all, both were designed by the late Gunpei Yokoi, and Nintendo had invested full trust in him following his success of Nintendo's handheld machine.
The demos got a great deal of attention, and this prompted Nintendo to go ahead with a full launch of the machine in July 1995 in Japan. The Virtual Boy launched with a number of titles, including the 3-D flying game Red Alert, the boxing game Teleroboxer, and the sports game Mario's Tennis, which would not only become the pack-in game for the system in the US, but would also be one of the few series to survive from the Virtual Boy's shadow. (Wario Land was the other, living a better life on the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance.)
The system got a launch in the US one month later, on August 14, 1995, and Nintendo gave an estimate of three million units to be sold. Unfortunately, despite a heavily promoted launch and a buzz from the gaming critics around the world, the hype for the Virtual Boy never caught on, and even those who had bought the machine found problems beginning to surface.
The first was in terms of its design. The package came with the virtual red visor, a stand to place it on, a controller, and the plug-in cable to assure the system received power. While the visor was a comfortable fit for many, it was a little hard to adjust on the stand that came shipped with it, forcing those to either set it up on a counter where they could get comfortable, or having to get in an awkward position to play it. The design alone could've used something along the lines of a more flexible stand to make it easier to play.
Then there was the internal design. The red-and-black displays were something new for the machine, but they were also very limited in terms of presentation, not really giving the feel of a virtual reality like the hype had promised some time ago. And the display actually became harmful. There were reports of people getting sickness from such a display, not to mention headaches after a half hour of play. Nintendo also stated that the machine was not intended for those under seven years of age, cutting off a large group of their audience, as kids really manage to eat up a lot of Nintendo's games with their all-ages appeal.
Then there was the software. While Nintendo was able to release a number of varied games for the system, third-party support had never caught on, and when games were released by other companies, they failed to live up to the hype and instead were offered basically as slightly interactive tech pieces. Disappointment came all around with the Virtual Boy, and even some of its greatest highlights, like Tetris and Wario Land, were dwelled by the mighty foot of disinterest.
By August 1996, Nintendo quietly ceased production on the Virtual Boy, after a disappointing 770,000 units worldwide sales report. They lost a great deal of money of this, and Yokoi left the company in disgrace as a result. To make matters worse, Yokoi was mounting a comeback with a new company, but his life was cut tragically short in a car accident.
Many hardcore collectors do still have the Virtual Boy in their collection, and I know a few Nintendo-philes who still hold onto it as a sign of good faith in the company. Nintendo themselves, however, forgot all about the Virtual Boy in the face of the next coming revolution, conquering the market with the Game Boy Advance and its redesign, the Game Boy Advance SP, before eventually moving on to greener pastures with the Nintendo DS.
Like it or not, the Virtual Boy did try to be different and bump up the handheld market to something new. It was significantly flawed, to be sure, but it brought with it an experience that couldn't be ignored, and at least had to be played once. And its ideas haven't been forgotten, as several companies are trying to implement 3-D effects into their video games. Konami, for instance, had their own little tool, the Solid Eye, packed in with Metal Gear Acid 2, allowing gamers to not only see the game in full 3-D glory, but also a number of Metal Gear trailers.
Looks like the Virtual essence is still around somewhere.
posted March 29, 2006