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Twenty Years Later, Nintendo's Virtual Boy Is Still an Oddity
An anonymous reader writes: Nintendo launched its Virtual Boy gaming console twenty years ago today. Expectations were high after the company sold tends of millions of its previous devices, but the Virtual Boy only sold about 770,000 units. It was conceived at the height of the '90s VR craze, but the technology of the time just couldn't produce the kind of experience that Nintendo (or gamers) envisioned. An article from Benj Edwards provides insight into the Virtual Boy's development and its inevitable failure.
"A major problem with the idea of making VR32 wearable, according to Makino, was that Nintendo engineers were concerned about placing a chip with high radio emissions near a user's head, since the safety of EMF radiation on the brain had yet to be thoroughly studied. Its proximity also produced visual noise in the displays. 'This meant that the internal CPU had to be covered by a metal plate,' says Makino, 'which made the whole system too heavy, forcing the goggle concept to be abandoned.' Not long after, Yokoi's console evolved from a strap-on headset into a heavier device that one could prop up onto one's face using a clumsy shoulder stand. Again, Nintendo's legal department feared liability issues; the device might cause children to fall down a stairwell while playing. ... Hobbled by liability concerns, VR32 soon evolved into a bulky red viewport mounted to a bi-pod that rested on a table."
"A major problem with the idea of making VR32 wearable, according to Makino, was that Nintendo engineers were concerned about placing a chip with high radio emissions near a user's head, since the safety of EMF radiation on the brain had yet to be thoroughly studied. Its proximity also produced visual noise in the displays. 'This meant that the internal CPU had to be covered by a metal plate,' says Makino, 'which made the whole system too heavy, forcing the goggle concept to be abandoned.' Not long after, Yokoi's console evolved from a strap-on headset into a heavier device that one could prop up onto one's face using a clumsy shoulder stand. Again, Nintendo's legal department feared liability issues; the device might cause children to fall down a stairwell while playing. ... Hobbled by liability concerns, VR32 soon evolved into a bulky red viewport mounted to a bi-pod that rested on a table."
I think I kept Red Alarm, I also had Mario Tennis and Wario World, or do I have those backwards?
Ultimately they were a fun gimmick but frustrating to play on. 3d would have really added to the experience if the resolution were high enough to actually see stuff clearly.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The LEDs that are projected by an oscillating mirror are unfortunately connected by a strip that is prone to getting unseated, and now many units have glitchy displays. Luckily with a 3D TV and an emulator that supports stereoscopic display you can still experience it today. Not the most amazing library, but Red Alarm was one of my favorites. A bit like StarFox except you could control your speed and turn around, most levels took place in a corridor but some levels had branching paths. Wario Land was great too. They should bring these titles to 3DS but licensing issues probably prevent this.
Twinstiq, game news
I remember the first time I played one of these. After 10 minutes I had a headache and my back hurt.
Just what every kid wanted to spend their hard-earned allowance on.....a 10 minute headache/back pain inducer.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
All the "flop flop flop" commentary... no one ever seems to have anything positive to say about it.
I had access to one of these "occasionally" when I was young and I would play it every chance I could get for hours at a time. Which was impressive, because the only game they had for it was the tennis game. Anyhow, I loved it and wished I could get one of my own. Never had any headache problems or double vision. The 3d certainly worked well enough to gauge when to swing at the ball as it was coming towards the screen.
Sam
>> the device might cause children to fall down a stairwell while playing
This was the 1990s. We were still allowed to go out outside without supervision, and we were still the targets of public service announcements telling us to quit playing in abandoned refrigerators. So if we wanted to die of suffocation, we should at least have been able to die happy with a crappy VR helmet on our oxygen-starved heads.
VR requires individual tuning to be really good. It's not worth the hassle and cost for most people to have it, use it, and/or develop for it. Having built 3 VR Cave/Powerwall systems for large company theaters I have a good amount of experience with subject.
A very minor amount of people think it's great and pay for it which is fine. VR has been, and will remain, a niche market. Most people realize that Johnny2D can kill them in the MMO even when they have VR and don't see the benefit in paying extra.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A dedicated device for stereo graphics is interesting, each eye got its own picture and you can bet the games are developed with it in mind. Even if it is anti-social by nature, when someone's using a giant 3D TV all you can see is a scrambled overbright overlaid thing and it is not very much better.
I've only seen it once in some museum-like convention, next to an Osborne 1.
I also think the red light thing is cool, it's something different. A scanning display with one light per line, that leaves me asking if we can make a laser projector that way.
And I don't care if one screen is monochrome, we're surrounded with color screens otherwise (and even that weird video game called "life").
For that matter I would like to see a monochrome smartphone : lower power, readable, potentially cheaper and just pixels, not sub pixels. Flashy colors aren't exactly needed for looking at icons, contact lists, etc.
I have a Virtual Boy, and like many I too have the glitchy display.
But there are a number of approaches to fixing the cable problem... some of which involve ovens.
Not had the chance to choose one fix to apply, but they do not appear too hard. Remember this was ancient tech so components are still on a human scale.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All that is true, but we had The Day After.
The current children have ready access to an entire world of porn, or if that is too crude inteernet at you beck and call from age three on.
Honestly children of different times get different childhoods, but it's impossible to say I think which ones are truly better.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I expected N to port all first-party Virtual Boy games to the Nintendo 3DS.
I'm tempted to blame the Virtual Boy for strangling the first wave of VR development in its cradle.
The problem. . . Virtual Reality is being researched around the world. VR is being hyped in the media. Everyone is excited. Then a major, high-profile game company releases, with much fanfare, a game machine with "virtual" in the name -- but it isn't actually Virtual Reality. At all. People look at it and shake their heads. "That's it? Wow, what a let down! I thought VR was going to be something cool." And then everything just dies. Coincidence?
For what it's worth, I played Dactyl Nightmare in the arcade around that time. It was crude, but it was, in fact, virtual reality, and it was fun (at least to me). But it was something like $4 per game, at a time when most kids were balking at shelling out $0.50 per game instead of the traditional quarter. Maybe that had a hand in killing off enthusiasm for VR too.