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I’ve owned several Nintendo systems over the years as a tech reviewer, gamer and VR-obsessed individual, but I have never owned a Virtual Boy. It always makes me sad. So finally here I am, playing the latest version. My face was attached to a large red plastic visor, which stood on a tripod on a table at Nintendo’s preview event. My takeaway? Nintendo’s latest awesome retro move seems like a resounding success.
I’m old enough to own a Nintendo Play and Watch handheld games, and I remember the original Virtual Boy when it popped up at the Electronics Boutique in my local mall. The red-and-black monochrome 3D game console is not fully wearable, and it is not connected to the TV. It’s a tabletop game machine, something closer to the spirit of the old Vectrex. Calling the Virtual Boy “VR” isn’t exactly accurate. It’s like a 3D viewer for retro games.
Check it out: First Impressions of the Nintendo Virtual Boy
Nintendo has brought back this niche system as a plastic hobby that turns your Nintendo Switch into a Virtual Boy, along with games you can play on Nintendo’s Virtual Console through a Switch Online subscription. It only works with a small subset of retro titles designed specifically for 3D — Nintendo promises 14 by the end of the year, with roughly half available at launch. You need a full Switch Online and Expansion Pack subscription ($50 a year, or $80 for a family subscription) to use it. That’s a lot of money for a small slice of awesome retro gaming history.
I lean on the Virtual Boy for a game or two.
Leaning on a strange tabletop goggle-thing
A $100 viewer and holster for the Switch is absurd. It’s like an optical appliance to Tron’s eye doctor. It’s bigger than I thought and it’s impossible to carry. Instead of placing it on your head like a VR headset, you place it on a table with an attached tripod, lean back and play.
After a few moments inside the Virtual Boy, I found it quite comfortable. The large eyepiece is large enough to easily fit chunky glasses inside, but has light-blocking edges that keep the viewing experience relatively glare-free. It’s like watching old antique stereoscope machines that display 3D photos or flip-films.
You can see the Switch located right inside the Virtual Boy if you look closely.
The Switch (or Switch OLED or Switch 2, but sorry, no Switch Lite compatibility) display acts as a Virtual Boy screen, which splits into a 3D view of the headset. It’s like how Nintendo turned the Switch into a pair of VR goggles with Labo VR back when, but the Virtual Boy felt better than that. I’m watching through a Switch 2 display, which is higher-res than Nintendo’s original Switch systems, but these games are low-res by default, so the 3D effects don’t seem degraded. Think of a red-and-black 3D Game Boy, because that’s what it feels like.
Keeping the whole thing in a stable place also helps. No motion lag sickness, because you don’t move (and neither do games, really). Playing while leaning on the goggles for half an hour or more didn’t tire me out.
There are even some comfort settings. You can adjust the IPD (interpupillary distance) in the app to adjust the clarity, and you can change the color scheme to other colors. I only played the OG red-and-black mode, though, which felt very nighttime and cozy to me, like being submerged in a cave in the game.
Games are a retro set of entertainment
I played with a Switch Pro controller, although you can also use the Joy-Cons. I played a bunch, and they were all great fun. Teleroboxer is a 3D Punch-Out game with robots. WarioLand is a lost gem, a Wario game with 3D effects and depth layers. Galactic Pinball feels like all NES and Game Boy pinball games with a 3D slant. Golf is kind of a letdown, because the views of the course are static, but it’s cute. Red Alert is a wireframe Star Fox-like shooter, and it seems like a perfect fit for this retro indie gaming moment we’re in.
I wasn’t allowed to shoot photos directly with it, but this is what the eyepiece looks like.
A Japanese port of The Mansion of Innsmouth — a game I’d never heard of before — a simple 3D dungeon crawler with Lovecraftian monsters. And there is 3D Tetris, which allows you to flip the pieces in all directions to fall into a deep well in 3D. Nintendo has promised 14 Virtual Boy games to be released later this year, including two that have yet to be released. Will there be more after that? Well, only the system has 22 games released for it in the first place, so we see.
The cardboard Virtual Boy looks like the old Labo VR goggles. I haven’t tried it.
You also choose a cheaper Virtual Boy accessory to play these games, a $25 cardboard pair of goggles that I’m not allowed to demo. I’m sure it’s uncomfortable, but it allows you to hold the Switch to your face, grab the side controls to play.
When I went with the Virtual Boy, I was really surprised. It ended up feeling a lot more fun, and even “in the odd moment,” than I expected. I’m obsessed with retro indie games that look like they came from a parallel timeline, from UFO 50 strangely Panic Playdate console. The Virtual Boy feels like Nintendo unearthed an amazing magical thing from 1995. I’m ready to play more, because I feel a desperate need to revisit the game era.
