Virtual Boy

One sexy machine.

Back in the mid-'90s Nintendo came out with a "revolutionary device" that was supposed to accompany the failing Gameboy (this was before Pokémon). But what it really was there for, like almost all of Nintendo's mini gadgets, was to hype up the upcoming release of Nintendo's upcoming console, this time being the Nintendo 64. Unfortunately for Nintendo, due to atrocious design flaws that could have easily been fixed by a little thing called common sense, the Virtual Boy, as it was known, is now known as possibly the worst gaming system Nintendo has ever made, with the only competitor being the Nintendo Wii. There were only 14 games made for this piece of shit, and the Virtual Boy bombed in sales, and was discontinued not too long after it came out.

Some History

Why go to the beach when you could be wasting your life staring at a seizure inducing screen?

In 1994, Nintendo announced it was working on a device that would allow a person to step into VIRTUAL REALITYYYYYYY! Naturally, since this was 1994, and video game graphics definitely weren't in their prime, this made Nintendo fans go into a rabid frenzy saying stuff like "HOLY FUCKING SHIT BALLS THAT'S AWESOME! HNNNNNNGGGGG!!!". After hearing this news, many Nintendo fans proceeded to hump their Nintendo Power magazines, their Mario figurines, and obviously any other Nintendo merchandise they owned, while Sega fanboys were crying in a corner watching Nintendo finally start to kick Sega's ass. Who could blame them? This was a product being produced by Nintendo, the same people who made the NES, the SNES, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, ect. So how on earth could anything possibly go wrong with this thing? Unfortunately, nobody knew just how bad this abomination was.

The Deception

The day it came out, people drove in flocks to specialized retailers everywhere in hopes of acquiring this wonderful promise of virtual reality (because obviously their pathetic lives sucked enough). But little did they understand the pitiful design of this thing. There were so many issues this thing had. The most obvious issue upon first glance was its portability. For a machine that was SUPPOSED to be portable, the Virtual Boy was practically the definition of XBOX HUEG for its time. There was no real way to strap it to your face, and to play it, you had to set its incredibly unnecessary tripod stand down on a counter, where you had to fucking bend down just to play it. But that wasn't necessarily the worst part. The worst part was the gameplay itself. Instead of being in full color, everything was in RED. When it came down to it, the Virtual Boy was a shitty version of the ol' Vectrex. Despite the marketing ploy of "OMG VIRTUAL REALITY", most of its 14 games were not even built for that concept. Upon trying it, people complained of dizziness, headaches, nausea, sudden miscarriage, depression, abdominal pain, diarrhea, loss of appetite, loss of sleep, hallucinations, dementia, diabeetus...The list went on and on. Some were even self-diagnosed with severe cases of ass boogers.

The Games

You know how I said there were 14 games? I lied. There were 22 games, and only 14 of them were released outside of Japan. So let's look into these games, shall we?

• 3D Tetris - Tetris, except Vectrex style with a shitty 3D view.
• Galactic Pinball - A pinball game just like every other pinball game at the time, except shitty due to the Virtual Boy's god awful graphics limitations.
• Golf - Just like Golf! Except you are playing it cramped up in an uncomfortable position and everything is red. Perhaps it should have been renamed to "Golf in Hell".
• Jack Bros - Atlus (the people most known outside Japan for Trauma Center and Persona) made this game featuring their mascot. It's supposedly decent, but one must question why this wasn't released on the Gameboy instead, as there are absolutely no virtual reality elements to it.
• Insmouse no Yakata - Some FPS based on some shitty Japanese movie.
• Mario Clash: Remember Mario brothers? Imagine that game shat onto the Virtual Boy with very cheap 3D effects added in to make it "appear" to have a virtual reality feel. That's Mario Clash in a nutshell.
• Mario's Tennis: No, not that somewhat decent tennis game, as Mario's Tennis is far from decent. This game may have been good though if the virtual boy wasn't such a bad system.
• Nester's Funky Bowling - A bowling game with obviously nothing funky about it. There is nothing "virtual" about it, so one must question why it wasn't made on the SNES instead.
• Bomberman: Panic Bomber - A bad port of the Turbo Grafx 16 version of the game.
• Red Alarm - A shooter which tried (note the italicing which defines that Nintendo and T&E Soft tried) to be the Virtual Boy's answer to the uber superior Star Fox, but the game failed to do that because 1) there was no talking furries, and 2) It was easy to go off course and bump into a column one too many times.
• Teleroboxer - It's like the arcade version of Punch-out, but with robots.

Basic Gameplay

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The Truth

Goatse as seen through the Virtual Boy.

So what the fuck went wrong you ask? Well, the cool bro behind this system, Gunpei Yokoi was still making the thing, but Nintendo grew way too impatient with him, and pulled a Sega on his ass, because they wanted to focus on the Nintendo 64. Because of this, the Virtual Boy was released in an unfinished form which Yokoi never intended it to look like. But Nintendo, being the corporate money making Jews they are, fired Yokoi because of the failure of the system.

Yokoi died a year later.

See Also

• Oculus Rift
• Gameboy
• SNES
• Nintendo

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