Virtual Boy



"A 3-D game for a 3-D world."

Okay, so the Virtual Boy was a failure. You know, I know, we all know it. It strained your eyes if you played for more than fifteen to thirty minutes at a time, there were like, fourteen games, and it came out only a few months before the Nintendo 64. It even gave virtual reality a bad name, even though it was not a virtual reality machine in any relevant way.

So why bother? Well, to be fair, some of the games are really fun, for one. It's also an interesting anecdote in Nintendo's history, seeing how it was their first attempt at gaming in 3D, but most importantly, it was Gunpei Yokoi's last major project there (he would still create the WonderSwan for Bandai). Sadly enough, Yokoi never intended for the Virtual Boy to be released in that state, Nintendo's management pushed for it... so we basically got Yokoi's prototype. Who knows what would have happened if things had gone differently? What if he lived, and the Virtual Boy had been properly finished? We'll never know, we can just appreciate this small step in gaming history for what it is, and was.