The History of My Virtual Boy: Part 2

So last week I talked a little about the history of the Virtual Boy and then left you hanging. Yes I did find a metric ton of Virtual Boys at Wal-Mart in the summer of '96 in Tennessee, but the amazing thing was that they were on clearance for around $25 each! Yes, I grabbed one and I still have it today!

I really had no interest in buying this Nintendo product, but for that price, brand new, I couldn't pass it up. The system was indeed portable as advertised and ran off 6 AA batteries. I did use it as a tabletop game sometimes, but when I got lazy I became an expert at laying on the couch and balancing the Virtual Boy on my face and chest. I'm sure that I'm not the only person who did that? I had heard that the red and black tones of the game along with the 3-D graphics caused people to have headaches, I personally never had that problem, but I can definitely see how players could have this problem. Fresh out of the box the Virtual Boy came with my favorite game for the Virtual Boy...

Mario Tennis! I was really surprised with how fun this game was. It's a casual game that can be played in a few minutes, the graphics were simple but nice and the control was solid. Speaking of control...

The controller was similar to an original NES controller. I can't quite remember why they had two D-pads, but I remember not using the right one at all. The layout was pretty easy to memorize if you were a previous Nintendo player, which is a good thing since you really couldn't look down while your face was stuck in the visor. My only small issue with the controller is that it is where the 6 AA batteries are stored to power on the system. This creates a bit of weight in the controller and makes it a little uncomfortable to hold for longer periods of time.

This is a backside view of the Virtual Boy. Not much to see here, just a cool design and sleek looking system.

Since I did enjoy Mario Tennis, I searched out and bought a few more games for the system including Mario Clash, Wario Land, Teleroboxer and a Japanese Baseball game. Unfortunately by the time I got into the Virtual Boy there were little to no games for sale at our usual game stops including Babbage's and Electronics Boutique. There were only 22 games released for the system and I just may try to grab them all some day. Until that day comes I have the memories of one of Nintendo's biggest failures sitting on a shelf in my basement and I'm glad I own it. Thank you Mr. Gunpei Yokoi for creating this 32-bit, three dimensional footnote in gaming history!

Do you have any memories of the Virtual Boy? Let us know about it in the comments section below!

The History of My Virtual Boy: Part 1

In 1995 Nintendo introduced the world to the Virtual Boy. Virtual Boy was created as the three dimensional next evolution in gaming. Nintendo allegedly dropped tens of millions of dollars into the marketing for this system.

Based on these print ads I was not convinced. They even did a promotion with Blockbuster Video to try and convince consumers of it's greatness! You could rent a Virtual Boy for $10 and try the system out for a few days and when you brought it back to the rental store they would give you a coupon for $10 off the purchase of your very own Virtual Boy.

This may have been a marketing misstep as people could rent the system and see how underwhelming it actually was especially for the initial selling point of  $179.95! I understand that Nintendo was trying something new as they usually do, to distance themselves from the competition. 

The marketing avalanche continued to spill over to the pages of Nintendo Power. I was a long time subscriber of this official Nintendo Magazine and lived by it's previews, reviews, tips, tricks and cheat codes. We were a loyal Nintendo family and always looked forward to the company's new releases and this was the way to get the inside info on these products.

I must say that the games did look impressive in the pages of the magazine. I know it's hard to try to visualize three dimensional games from a few pictures in a magazine, but the graphics looked nice and the promise of some new Mario games was a bonus. The one thing I just couldn't shake was the lack of color in the games.

Nintendo did their best to try and make the Virtual Boy seem like the next best thing. It was portable and in their words it would "Immerse players into their own private universe", but the part of this article that drew my attention was the talk of the new Ultra 64 system that Nintendo was releasing to compete with the Playstation! To me this was the bigger news and any thoughts of owning or even wanting a Virtual Boy was gone, until...

I took a trip with my Dad to Tennessee in the summer of 1996 and saw stacks of these Virtual Boy boxes at Wal-Mart! Check out Part 2 next week to see how I got my very own Virtual Boy console! Here is a commercial to tide you over until then!