Virtual Virtual Boy
Matt posted in Wii on October 3rd, 2006

The year was 1995. I was 13 and hooked on Nintendo. I was the proud owner of an NES, SNES and a GameBoy. I thought Nintendo couldn’t lose and was very excited about the promise of their new system, Virtual Boy. It came out for a whopping $180, which was expensive compared to the other Boy Nintendo had (which started at $109). My mom had the foresight that it would drop in price, so she didn’t buy it for me then. (She also had the foresight to not buy me the Power Glove. She said we could wait until it was $30, but when it was $30, I no longer wanted it. I guess the marketing effect of The Wizard had wore off. Interestingly, if my mom, a non gamer, [I’ve tried to get her interested in games with no success] can figure out that a product is going to flop, it’s amazing that people at the company that made it can’t) When it went down to $70, she finally thought the price was low enough, so I became the proud owner of Nintendo’s latest and greatest (although, it went down to $30 when they were trying to get rid of them, so maybe she should have waited longer). I picked up a bunch of games for about $4 a pop from Blockbuster (they did rent them for a bit, but by this point, they had given up). Many people complained about the monochrome graphics, but red happens to be my favorite color, so I didn’t mind. I thought the games were pretty cool too. From Red Alarm, which actually featured 3D rendered wireframe graphics (most games were sprite based), to the games that would have had a better home on another console like Panic Bomber (which was a Bomberman themed puzzle game similar to Yoshi), I thought 3D could make any game better. I read all the health information and took it seriously. I tried to set the IPD (inter pupil distance) correctly, although I was never able to set it up so all four corner icons were perfectly clear. I took breaks when the game recommended it in order to prevent eye strain.

Despite my care for the safety warnings, the day after a gaming session, I would have terrible headaches. It wasn’t too hard for my parents and I to figure out that the Virtual Boy was the cause of them. My parents had to pry the Virtual Boy from my eager hands, since after receiving a taste of gaming in true 3D, I didn’t want to be constrained in 2 dimensions again. Despite my parents returning my original Virtual Boy, I ended up buying another Virtual Boy off a friend a few years ago. The only problem is that I am afraid to use it because I may suffer though the terrible headaches.

Now, with the Virtual Console for Wii, all the Nintendo consoles will be replayable for those who missed them, save one, the Virtual Boy. Now, many of you may say that they can’t do the Virtual Boy without the special headset. If the Virtual Boy were full color, that may be a problem, but because it’s monochromatic, it perfectly lends itself to red and blue 3D. If you recall, Square pioneered this on the NES with Rad Racer and 3D World Runner. I don’t know if you had any better luck with the 3D modes in those games (press the select button to toggle the amazing 3D effects), but they certainly didn’t look 3D to me. Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves feature 3D with red and blue outlines, but to be honest, it really hurt my eyes. I promised myself before I started the game that I would play it through all the 3D segments with 3D enabled (only a few levels allowed you to turn on the 3D mode thankfully), but by the end of the game, I was dreading the 3D segments. I’m not trying to discourage you from playing Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. It’s a great game, and I really enjoyed it, but I would definitely recommend against the 3D segments. It’s a great novelty, but not worth enduring the eye aches.

There has been plenty of successful monochromatic red and blue 3D things like Spy Kids 3D for example. I remember a very long time ago, ABC had TGIF (Thank Goodness It’s Friday - their family friendly Friday prime time line up that included better forgotten shows like Family Matters and Step by Step) in 3D. What could be better than a 3 dimensional Urkel? Possibly only Jaleel White voicing Sonic! I think the problem with Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves was that they did full color characters with 3D outlines, so it managed to confuse your eyes. If you’re interested in what playing Virtual Boy with red and blue 3D is like, people have already written emulators. Here’s a screenshot:

So, Nintendo, I know you think of Virtual Boy as your red headed step child, but there are plenty of fans like myself out there who would love to play it in a more eye friendly manner! I promise I will buy every single Virtual Boy game you release on your Virtual Console even if I already have the cartridge! I’m not going to buy any of your other rereleases because I have all of the old systems and hundreds of cartridges, so you can’t offer me anything worth buying besides Virtual Boy. Please? Do I have to start a petition? Although, according to Telltale Games, those don’t work, and they had much better luck with fans just contacting Nintendo. So, everyone start e-mailing Nintendo begging for Virtual Virtual Boy!