Virtual Boy: I didn't own one, but I played it once

Back in 1995 Nintendo was still king of home gaming and that was all about to change when the Playstation just took over almost everything. But before Nintendo slipped out of the race for the most part, there was a time that just about anything they released to the public would be picked up by just about anyone that could afford it. Their media power, their constant advertising and targeted commercials meant that you always knew what was going on in Nintendo-land. Also, Nintendo Power, a magazine that was exclusively about Nintendo and their products actually sold really well.

In early 1995 Nintendo started talking about a real 3-D system that was going to be the next thing in gaming. It was called the Virtual Boy.

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Nintendo faced a lot of difficult hurdles to get past in order to sell this to people. For one thing, how do you advertise the true majesty of your games when they are in 3D? You couldn't display 3D images on televisions at that point in time and aside from a kid's book that came with some silly glasses (that actually worked) and seeing Captain EO at Epcot Center, most of us didn't really have much of an idea about what 3D looked like.

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Their 2nd hurdle was the fact that the display was only red and black and I am sure there was some tech reason for why this needed to be the case but therefore, in the commercials that I remember seeing they didn't really focus on the gameplay all that much because the early to mid 90's having crisp graphics was becoming a very important aspect of gaming and 3D or not, this looks pretty terrible.

The 3rd hurdle was the price tag on this thing. It was nearly $200 at launch and marketed mostly to kids (as Nintendo products tended to be back then.) I didn't know very many parents that were affluent enough to shell out this kind of money for yet another Nintendo product and since it was released in August, it wasn't really meant to be the latest craze for Xmas.

To add another nail in the coffin of this ill-fated system, the Playstation 1 was released less than a month later and the Sega Saturn had already been released months prior. There wasn't really much reason to get involved with this system and this became evident to the public, and I'm pretty sure that Nintendo knew it as well.

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_{This bad boy would totally revamp the gaming scene forever}

I knew someone that had enough affluence to buy a Virtual Boy and he told me about it. I rushed over to check this thing out and quickly felt glad that I hadn't succumbed to the pressure to get one. After just a few minutes my neck hurt from being in an awkward position and the graphics weren't just unimpressive, they kind of hurt your eyes. The games were also boring and herein lies the biggest problem that the Virtual Boy would face: There were only 14 games ever released for it. There were a few more just for Japan but can you imagine if you only had 14 games to choose from at all? Seriously, no more official games were ever made.

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_{Such a relaxing experience!}
This Virtual Boy was short-lived and was a commercial and critical failure. Nintendo quickly stopped advertising it as the bad press it was receiving was damaging their name. You need to keep in mind that Nintendo's entry in the console wars, the N64, was doing very well despite the fact that their competitors seemed more chic and modern due to the use of disks instead of carts. Game Boy was still selling very well and I wonder if someone was fired over the fact that Virtual Boy was ever developed. I do not know if Nintendo lost money on it, but I would imagine that it wasn't great.

I tend to see Nintendo as an innovator instead of a challenger so I guess everything can't be amazing that they release. The Virtual Boy is one of those things that we can all be "Captain Hindsight" about because the idea behind a 3D system back in those days probably did sound pretty compelling around a board room table.