History Platform / VirtualBoy

The Virtual Boy was a 32-bit portable... ''thing'' from Creator/{{Nintendo}} released in the summer of 1995 in Japan and North America. It remains the company's most notorious hardware failure, comparable to Creator/{{Sega}}'s tumorous [[Platform/Sega32X 32X]]. It was the brainchild of Creator/GunpeiYokoi, father of the Platform/GameBoy and co-creator of the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' series.

* This a minor one, but most forms of entertainment tend to do a good job of demoing themselves to potential consumers, since you can usually see someone else partaking in that media and gauge it secondhand: in the case of video games, watching a friend play one while sitting next to them. Many would say that watching someone else play a game [[LetsPlay can be fun in its own right]]. The Virtual Boy didn't let you do that, as unlike actual virtual reality devices created both before and after, the action isn't automatically mirrored to a television or monitor, nor was there any method to do so during its original run. Outside of emulation, there was no method to record from official hardware until 2018, ''23 years after'' its release, in the form of the short-lived Virtual Tap mod by Furrtek.

* Despite Nintendo's best efforts, extended use caused eye strain. Games did come with an optional automatic pause feature to relieve this, as did the ability to adjust the focus and IPD, but people who casually used display kiosks or didn't read the instruction manual just assumed that it caused headaches and eye strain all the time, giving the system bad word-of-mouth.

In the 1990s, the possibilities of virtual reality gaming was beginning to manifest right alongside the industry-wise VideoGame3DLeap. It seemed like the natural evolution of the medium would have us fully immersed in 3D gaming spaces, and many companies tried their hand at creating VR headsets and the like. And it wasn't as though such attempts were completely unsuccessful: the same year that the Virtual Boy released gave us the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVpRtSpVeOk $700 Forte VFX1]], which functioned well enough given the tech at the time. So what happened to suddenly make virtual reality so unappealing to everyone for an entire decade? There are probably a few reasons, but Nintendo's foray into the market with the Virtual Boy likely didn't help.

* ''VideoGame/MarioClash'', a revamped version of ''VideoGame/MarioBros'' Revisited as a microgame in the first ''VideoGame/WarioWare''.

* ''Red Alarm'' (''Red Alarm Virtual 3D Shooting Game'' in Japan), which looked like ''VideoGame/{{Battlezone|1980}}'' and played like a hybrid of ''VideoGame/StarFox'' and ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}''. One of only two games that actually tried the "3D first-person simulation" angle.

* ''Film/GoldenEye'', unrelated to [[VideoGame/GoldenEye1997 the game eventually released]] on the Platform/{{Nintendo 64}} - this one was a racing game.

* ''Virtual Lab'' (Japan only), a puzzle game which was [[ObviousBeta clearly unfinished upon release]] (for one, it uses a password-based system with nowhere to input said passwords).

The Virtual Boy was a 32-bit portable... ''thing'' from Creator/{{Nintendo}} released in the summer of 1995 in Japan and North America. It remains the company's most notorious hardware failure, comparable to Creator/{{Sega}}'s tumorous [[UsefulNotes/Sega32X 32X]]. It was the brainchild of Creator/GunpeiYokoi, father of the Platform/GameBoy and co-creator of the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' series.

* VSU-VUE custom sound hardware - 5 wavetable channels and 1 noise channel, easily comparable to the PSG of the [[UsefulNotes/TurboGrafx16 PC-Engine]], which was released about 8 years earlier)

The Virtual Boy was a 32-bit portable... ''thing'' from Creator/{{Nintendo}} released in the summer of 1995 in Japan and North America. It remains the company's most notorious hardware failure, comparable to Creator/{{Sega}}'s tumorous [[UsefulNotes/Sega32X 32X]]. It was the brainchild of Creator/GunpeiYokoi, father of the UsefulNotes/GameBoy and co-creator of the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' series.

Creator/ShigeruMiyamoto stated in an ''Iwata Asks'' interview that the Virtual Boy's failure killed all enthusiasm for stereoscopic 3D within the company, making it hard to generate support for the UsefulNotes/Nintendo3DS. [[https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/3ds/how-nintendo-3ds-made/0/1/ He believes that the system would've succeeded if it was marketed as a toy instead of a game console.]] Yokoi likely shared the same mindset. As the man who created the Virtual Boy and [[ImplementingTheIncomplete was forced to release it]] in an [[ObviousBeta essentially-unfinished state]] (Nintendo wanted to shift all hardware development resources to the upcoming UsefulNotes/Nintendo64, and needed something to sell for the 1995 holiday season after it was delayed to 1996), he had planned to retire shortly after the system's release, with the Virtual Boy being a parting gift. Its failure meant that he decided to stick around for a bit longer to create the Game Boy Pocket (a hardware revision of the original UsefulNotes/GameBoy with a slimmer build and higher-quality display) in a failed attempt to ward off rumors that the Virtual Boy got him booted out of the company.

* ''[[VideoGame/MarioTennis Mario's Tennis]]'', Mario's first outing as a tennis player (he'd been a referee in ''Tennis'' for the UsefulNotes/{{NES}} and UsefulNotes/GameBoy).

* ''Film/GoldenEye'', unrelated to [[VideoGame/GoldenEye1997 the game eventually released]] on the UsefulNotes/{{Nintendo 64}} - this one was a racing game.

* ''Virtual Bomberman'', an entry in the long-running series with 3D explosions. Hudson's booth at Space World '95 showed off the game, which was scheduled for release in December 1995 but pushed to February 29, 1996. Most likely the inspiration for ''Bomberman World'' for the UsefulNotes/PlayStation three years later.

The '''Virtual Boy''' was a 32-bit portable... ''thing'' from Creator/{{Nintendo}} released in the summer of 1995 in Japan and North America. It remains the company's most notorious hardware failure, comparable to Creator/{{Sega}}'s tumorous [[UsefulNotes/Sega32X 32X]]. It was the brainchild of Creator/GunpeiYokoi, father of the UsefulNotes/GameBoy and co-creator of the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' series.

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[[caption-width-right:350:Nintendo's (not-so) little red mistake.]]
->''"A 3-D game, for a 3-D world."''
-->--{{Tagline}} for the console.