There's something to be said about the gullibility of a teenaged brand loyalist.
But I ain't gonna say it!
Instead I'm going to tell you about my history with Nintendo's ill-fated Virtual Boy--the curiously designed stereoscopic 3D device that was advertised to us as a "virtual reality simulator."
Now, I don't believe that there's any need for me to provide a retrospective on the Virtual Boy and its history. You all know how that horror story unfolded, and it's unlikely that you could ever forget about how badly the platform failed. Because you're reminded about its failure all the time: You see its story regurgitated on a weekly basis in those "video game's biggest blunders" videos. Its name is cynically invoked whenever game journalists form round tables to discuss the prospects for any newly announced Nintendo system ("It's going to be the next Virtual Boy!" they always declare). And tech blogs constantly reference it as a major misstep in the evolution of VR technology.
In every instance, the mere mention of its name is met with mocking and derision. It's gaming's biggest punching bag.
To put it bluntly: The Virtual Boy was modern Nintendo's first high-profile commercial failure, and the platform's disastrously short run worked to all at once tarnish the company's name, sully its reputation, and precipitate the loss of one of its greatest assets (I'll talk more about this loss later).
For me, the Virtual Boy's tale is one of a red-colored, decapitated-Johnny-5-like oddity that took up residence on my dining room table for a few months before it decided to abruptly exit the scene and leave me hanging. It arrived with great fanfare, it spent all of its time confidently bragging about its own potential, and then, one day, it suddenly exited the scene.
At the time, I didn't understand what was going on with the platform. And because I was provided no explanation by Nintendo, all I could do was create theories as to why it was starving for software: "Maybe the big games have been delayed!" I speculated. "Or perhaps Nintendo is short on development resources because its teams are currently preoccupied with that other 3D project: the upcoming N64!"
I was certain that it wasn't the case that the Virtual Boy had failed or suffered some other unfortunate fate, and I felt that it was absurd to even entertain such a theory. Because the fact was that the device was made by Nintendo--the company that ruled the video-game market! The company that had never, ever failed in any of its gaming ventures (as far as I knew)!
"There's no point in even considering such a possibility!" I thought. "It's simply illogical!"
I didn't discover the true nature of the Virtual Boy's inexplicably brief run until a few years later, when I read about its quick and ugly death in an unbiased publication (naturally Nintendo Power never addressed the situation). And as someone who believed Nintendo to be infallible, the news that one of its products had failed spectacularly was pretty tough to swallow. I just couldn't fathom how a company that had done so well to court third parties to its 8- and 16-bit systems could allow for its newest product to go entirely unsupported.
But let me put that issue aside for a moment and provide you some important context. Let me take you back to the early 90s and a time when I was largely ignorant about the VR scene.
I have to start by saying that virtual reality wasn't a concept that ever held great appeal to me. Being able to simulate the effect of moving around in a three-dimensional space sounded incredible, sure, but my perception was that the means for experiencing such an effect were a concerning combination of cumbersome and claustrophobic. They were simply too inhibiting to be fun.
That was the impression I got from watching other people demo VR units: Whenever I was walking through any of our local malls, I'd pass by a booth that housed one of those complicated-looking virtual reality machines whose use required that you stand within a rubberized enclosure, don a ridiculously large headset, and hold what looked to be a plastic staple gun; and I'd observe that the kids who were testing out the machine were wildly flailing about as if they were labeling food products while on fire.
I didn't know what game they were playing or what their actions were meant to simulate because I never got the chance to personally interact with any of the VR machines. There were a variety of reasons for this: (1) The lines of people were too damn long. (2) I was a bit self-conscious about how I'd look when I was jumping around while wearing all of the oversized gear. And (3) the entire process of engaging with the VR machine just looked plain uncomfortable.
Of course, everyone--including my brother, James, and his friends--kept telling me how amazing VR was and that it was the future of how we'd interact with video games, and while I had no reason not to believe them, I couldn't shake the feeling of indifference that I had for the technology. All I could see were its physical limitations.
Also, I was worried about what VR's proliferation would mean for the types of games that I enjoyed playing: 2D platformers, side-scrolling action games, single-screen puzzlers, and such. "Will all of these genres become casualties of the industry's 'inevitable' shift to virtual reality?" I wondered in a concerned manner. "Will they all be rendered obsolete forms of gaming?"
Just the idea of such a future was enough to make me feel anxious.
"How in the world could this company expect me to keep up with the releases for four separate platforms?" I nervously contemplated.
Yet I found little comfort in my theorized alternate scenario in which the Virtual Boy was meant to be a successor to the Game Boy (because it did have "Boy" in its name, after all), which would keep the number of platforms at three. I hated that idea because I had absolutely no desire to see one of my all-time-favorite systems replaced by some stationary 3D device whose values were entirely incompatible with portable gaming's!
Either way, thinking about how the Virtual Boy would impact me as a consumer induced only feelings of anxiety.
Don't get me wrong: The Virtual Boy's technology sounded incredible, and the visuals on display in the preview screenshots looked pretty damn impressive (obviously, I can see now, thanks to the questionable marketing practice of using prototype images to falsely represent what the hardware was realistically capable of rendering) despite their being jarringly mono-color and overwhelmingly red. But it was difficult for me to buy into the hype when my sense was that the company was being purposely vague about which space this device was meant to fill.
Of course, I was going to buy the Virtual Boy, anyway, because I felt as though I had no choice but to do so. If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to keep up with Nintendo's games! But I was going to buy it while looking toward the future because I wasn't terribly interested in any of the launch games that were being previewed in Nintendo Power Volume 75.
"Where are Zelda and Metroid?" I wondered as I flipped through the preview. "If this is a major Nintendo system, then shouldn't those two series be there at release?"
They were completely absent from the piece. Instead there were two Mario games and a pinball game. That was it (from Nintendo, at least).
I recalled seeing images of a traditional Mario platformer in a previous issue, yet, strangely, it hadn't been mentioned since. "Surely it's still in development and will be formally announced in an upcoming issue," I figured, "and its subsequent release will no doubt mark the start of a first wave of more-substantial Virtual Boy releases!"
And because it was certain, by my reasoning, that all of the big franchises would inevitably be there, I simply had to own the Virtual Boy!
So during the week of its release (late July, 1995), I put into action my foolproof plan for obtaining a Virtual Boy as quickly and as cleanly as possible. Mainly, I sent my poor father out to scour all of Brooklyn in search of one!
Now, I wasn't expecting him to come home with a Virtual Boy on the very first day, considering that the system was presumably a hot new product, but that's exactly what happened! After opening front door opened, he entered into the hallway with a funky red-and-blue box in hand And according to what the reps at Toys "R" Us told him, he was lucky to get one because the system was indeed in high demand.
Hearing him say those words alleviated some of my apprehension, and suddenly I felt more comfortable with my decision to drop two big bills on a system whose technology was unproven. Because after all: The Virtual Boy's selling through all of its initial shipments surely meant that it was going to be a big success! So there was no longer any reason for me to have any doubts about its future!
My naivety knew no bounds.
Normally new systems would immediately find their way into my room upstairs, but the Virtual Boy was a special case. Because its use required a flat surface and a certain degree of elevation, I assembled it on the dining room table, which is where it remained until I permanently boxed it sometime during the spring months of 1996.
I spent much of the time in between waiting for the announcements of big-name games and Nintendo's explanation for how and where the Virtual Boy fit into the picture. But I wasn't rewarded for my patience: The information that I was hoping for never arrived, and the future that I envisioned never came to be.
The only thing that I could do, rather, was focus on the games that I owned. There were five of them in tall, and I came to own all of them within a two-week span. And since you've read this far, why don't you stick around a little longer and join me as I run through my small Virtual Boy collection and provide some quick thoughts on how I felt about each game?
The first is the most famous of them.
In the Nintendo world, Mario's Tennis was just about the last of its kind: a pack-in game that was meant to serve as a proof of concept (since then, only Wii Sports has been given that honor).
It was the game that I played the most. And it did its job: It made me feel as though I was seeing the birth of next-level technology. I was honestly very impressed by the way in which Virtual Boy rendered 3D spaces and how it was able to create a true sense of depth. As I ran around the court with Mario and friends, I could swear that there was real spatiality to the environment that I viewing!
I wasn't bothered by the fact that the visuals were mono-color, no. Rather, I felt that the all-red display imbued the Virtual Boy with an unmistakable personality. And by fully embracing its graphical limitations, the device was able to provide each of its games an enchantingly unique atmosphere.
What also helped the Virtual Boy's cause was that its sound and music capabilities seemed to be inherited from the Game Boy, whose aural qualities were so very nostalgic to me. Their presence instantly made me feel right at home (and it had me convinced that the Virtual Boy was intended to be the Game Boy's successor).
In Mario's Tennis' case, it's the distinctly "portable"-like music that shapes my memories of the game. I'll always remember how its music's remindful tones worked in tandem with its imagination-stirring background visuals to produce a purely nostalgic-feeling vide-game atmosphere.
The most memorable combos belonged to Luigi's court, whose background was formed from moon-lit pipes, and Princess Toadstool's court, whose chief visual was the castle that I was soon able to see up close and explore (in Super Mario 64).
Whenever I'd play on Luigi or Toadstool's court, I'd always take the time to drink in the music and the background visuals and the nostalgic atmosphere that they worked together to create. Doing so was an essential part of the experience, I felt.
And you know something? It was damn good tennis game!
I hadn't played many tennis games over the years, so my frame of reference was rather limited, but I felt confident in thinking that Mario's Tennis was among the deepest of their kind. It had multiple shot types, each of its characters had different skills and abilities!
Its action felt genuinely next-level.
I played it mainly in Doubles mode because having more players made the action more frenzied and engaging. Also, I always felt that a tennis game was more fun when it allowed you to use all of a court's space and furthermore assign posts (have, say, one player cover the baseline and task the other player with patrolling the net), which were two things that Mario's Tennis was eager to do.
And I can honestly say that Mario's Tennis' was some of the most fun tennis action that I ever experienced.
Mario's Tennis wasn't good enough to convince me that the Virtual Boy had real staying power, no, but it was a fine proof of concept, and it proved to me that the system was capable of smoothly rendered 3D games.
Also, it helped me to confirm that I wasn't susceptible to any of virtual reality's potential side effects (headaches, vomiting or brain death).
So that was nice.
(Though, I never became comfortable with the idea of pressing my face against the neoprene eyepiece for hours at a time because staying still for long periods made me antsy.)
I consider Galactic Pinball to be the best of the five games that I owned. It was the one that I spent the most time playing.
I was drawn to it for two reasons: It had some of the best table features I'd ever seen, and its music and sound design were superb. I was honestly surprised that such an outstanding soundtrack was reserved for a pinball game of all things!
The music had a cosmic, alien vibe that would have helped it to fit in well in a Metroid game, which makes sense when you consider that the game's composer was Kenji Yamamoto, who created music for Super Metroid and the Metroid Prime games (including, coincidentally, Metroid Prime Pinball).
That should tell you all that you need to know about its quality.
My favorite table was Cosmic, and it held that distinction for one reason in particular: it contained a Metroid-themed mini-game!
If you were able to destroy all of the upper-right bumpers after activating the "Bumper Clash," the action would suddenly shift to mid-screen, and you'd take control of Samus' gunship and earn points by blasting away familiar series enemies (wavers, skrees, Metroids, etc.), horizontal-shooter-style, as they swooped down from above.
Sadly, any single collision would end the mini-game and usually do so all too soon. I liked this mini-game a lot, and my desire to replay it was all of the incentive that I needed to determinedly work to reactivate Bumper Clash and once again destroy those bumpers!
The other appealing element of of the mini-game was its musical accompaniment: a wonderfully snazzy version of Super Metroid's intro. It played for the entire duration of the mini-game, and as always, it succeeded in invigorating me and inspiring me to imagine myself as a space-traveling hero.
If only it would have continued playing during the main game!
Because everything's better with Metroid, after all.
It's games like Mario Clash that make me sad when platforms fail. Because they're really good, and they deserve to be enjoyed by large audiences.
It's games like Mario Clash that make me sad when platforms fail. Because they're really good, and they deserve to be enjoyed by large audiences.
Mario Clash's case is especially tragic to me because it represented my last hope for the return of one of my favorite genres: single-screen arcade-style platformers, which appeared to be headed to extinction after all current industry competitors released their 16-bit systems and started focusing mainly on creating consolized action games.
I really missed simple arcade-style games, and I wished that the big companies (especially those that had arcade roots) would get back to creating them. Unfortunately they never did.
Mario Clash is a spiritual successor to Mario Bros. (though it's limited to single-player action for obvious reasons) and basically a three-dimensional version of it.
It's an arcade-style game, so there are no bosses or winning conditions. Your goal, rather, is to advance as far up as you can into Clash Tower and do so by clearing out each of its pipe-filled rooms, which are infested with Koopas, Sidesteppers, Snakes, Thornies, Big Boos, and other types of pesky creatures. Otherwise you attempt to rack up big points by taking out multiple enemies at a time and earn multiplier bonuses and thus set a high score.
Of the five games, Mario Clash, I felt, had the most fun with the element of depth. Its levels required you to travel back and forth between the background and foreground and take out enemies by tossing shells across all planes and axes. This was, I thought, a really interesting twist on a classic formula, and it created a gameplay style that felt truly novel and helped me to see the Virtual Boy's potential.
At the time, I actually liked it more than the game that inspired it!
Mario Clash isn't the most graphically striking of the bunch, but it's the game whose visual style I continue to remember best. Whenever I see or hear its name, my head instantly becomes filled with images of gradient-textured pipes that stretch in all directions, and I recall scenes of Mario running around in a background plane and throwing shells into the foreground and right toward the camera.
They are, to me, the images and scenes that best define the Virtual Boy.
It's just a shame that Nintendo didn't continue the series on its other platforms and use Mario Clash as its new foundation. I'm certain that a multiplayer-focused Mario Bros. game that was created directly in the mold of Mario Clash would have offered players hours of fun, frantic arcade-style action and would have been consequently become one of its host platform's most popular competitive/cooperative multiplayer action games.
Instead, sadly, its concept and its series died with the Virtual Boy.
Such is the fate of hidden gems that find themselves married to failed platforms.
Honestly, I don't remember who was responsible for the purchases of Teleroboxer and Red Alarm (if I had to guess, I'd say that James picked them up on the cheap at a local electronics store). The only thing that I recall is that I didn't devote much time to either of them.
When I was reading about them in previews, Teleroboxer looked more interesting to me because it bore a strong resemblance to Punch-Out!!, which was a legendary game to me. It likely played the same way, I thought, so I kept it on my radar.
"If it's said to be better than Super Punch-Out!!, I might pick it up one day," I told myself.
Admittedly, though, I was turned off by its alien-looking characters and wished that its cast was instead formed by human characters like Glass Joe and Bald Bull. The absence of such characters made me skeptical of the game and made me think that it might be too wildly different to appeal to a Punch-Out!! player.
And, well, I didn't like it much. It played similarly to Punch-Out!!, yeah, but its action had a much higher degree of complexity, and I simply couldn't get a strong grasp on its more-involved punching and dodging mechanics. In fact, I don't think that I ever landed a single blow on an opponent!
That's how much I struggled with the game's controls.
Like the games that inspired it, Teleroboxer had a strong visual presentation, but unfortunately it lacked the equally important accessibility element: It had too many inputs, its fighting system was too complex, and it required too much movement from the player.
It was all too much for me.
I played the game for about fifteen minutes before giving up on it.
I devoted even less time to the wire-frame-formed Red Alarm, whose action was simply inexplicable to me. I had no idea what the game was about, and I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing.
"What the hell is going on here?" I kept wondering as I attempted to traverse the game's stages. "And what am I even looking at?"
I wasn't a fan of space shooters or spaceship simulators, admittedly, so there was little chance that the game would have resonated with me even if I had figured out how to play it.
In a future era, I might have given Red Alarm a fair chance. But in 1995, it simply wasn't going to happen.
And that was the extent of my experiences with the Virtual Boy. I didn't buy any additional games for the system, and I never considered doing so.
Part of the problem was that Nintendo Power wasn't giving me anything to be excited about. In fact, it wasn't longer before the magazine stopped covering the Virtual Boy entirely, which left me completely in the dark. Thus I was left to wonder about whether or not games of any caliber were still coming the system.
The company on the whole was radio silent on the matter, and consequently it seemed as though the Virtual Boy had never been. I didn't care to theorize that the system had failed or that the mighty Nintendo had made a spectacular blunder (at the time, I didn't believe the company was capable of doing so) because my attention had already started shifting elsewhere. I was too busy thinking about the upcoming N64 and what it meant for the future of consoles.
In the months that followed, I slowly forgot about the Virtual Boy. And, looking back in retrospect, I obviously did exactly what the company wanted me to do.
I did what the company hoped that every enthusiast would do.
But for our friends at Nintendo, there's really no escaping the Virtual Boy's dark legacy. Because the video-game media will ensure that its calamitous tale is never never forgotten and that its stains remain permanent. And Nintendo's detractors will forever use the device's failure as ammunition against the the company.
Whether or not it deserves to be treated as such, the Virtual Boy will continue to be the gaming world's symbol for unsuccessful video-game systems.
Yet in my view, the biggest tragedy in all of this is not that Nintendo's image was damaged or that its financials took a hit, no, but rather that the legendary Gunpei Yokoi was scapegoated for the Virtual Boy's failure and pushed out of the company. I see this as Yokoi being the fall guy for a company whose real problem was that it was equal parts disorganized and dysfunctional.
I mean, seriously: Where was Nintendo's support for the Virtual Boy? When I look up information for Nintendo-published Virtual Boy games, I find that Yokoi's development team was just about the only one that worked on them. Where were Miyamoto and the rest of the company's development teams? Where was the communication? Where were the big-name franchises (Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Metroid)?
The entire situation is inexplicable!
It's a shame that Japanese culture functions as such that a man who contributed so much to both the company (he created the Game & Watch line, the Game Boy, Metroid, the Super Mario Land games, and many other successful products) and the industry at large could be treated in such a cold and cruel way. And for what reason? Because of one failed product out of a hundred? Because of a game system that his own company barely supported? I'm sorry, but that's just a senseless way to operate!
And all I can think about, now, is how much better the video-game world would be had events not played out the way they did.
What a waste.
In talking about this subject, though, I'm reminded that I've been meaning to delve deeper into the game library of Yokoi's post-Nintendo creation: the WonderSwan (thus far I've only played one of its games). I'd be thrilled if Nintendo were to help my cause by acknowledging the platform's existence and working with Bandai Namco to bring some of its games over to the company's online service. More than anything, I think, Nintendo's introducing the WonderSwan to its longtime customers would go a long way toward reminding them of Yokoi's genius.
For that matter, I hope that Nintendo one day finds the courage to face its demons and finally acknowledge that the Virtual Boy exists. I'd like for the company to bring the Virtual Boy's games, too, to its online service, where they certainly belong.
You might argue that a system whose library totals a paltry 22 games isn't worth the effort to emulate, but I'd counter that by saying that a company like Nintendo, which appeals to its fans partly because it values its history, should spare no expense in keeping its older products relevant--even those that performed poorly. Because after all: He who controls the past controls the future!
And besides: Some of those games are really good! Mario's Tennis, Galactic Pinball and Mario Clash are fun and interesting, and I'm certain that Nintendo's current audience would enjoy playing them.
Personally, I'd like to get the opportunity to play Wario Land, which is said to be the Virtual Boy's best game and its most fully realized creation. To me, this single game make would make entire endeavor of bringing the Virtual Boy's games to Nintendo's online well worth the effort. (And if it's as good as they say, I might even feel inclined to write about it on this blog!)
It'd be too bad if games like Wario Land, Galactic Pinball and Mario Clash wound up lost to history because the company that created them were too prideful to do anything that evoked images of system that failed three decades ago. I mean, so what if game journalists see the re-release of Virtual Boy games as an opening to speak of bad omens and make flimsy parallels ("If this new Nintendo system has icky Virtual Boy games on its online service, then surely it'll be cursed and wind up suffering the same fate!" they'll be apt to declare). Screw them, I say. Own your mistakes. If you do so, you'll diminish their ability to spread fear and uncertainty for the sake of generating clicks.
"So where do you stand on the Virtual Boy, Mr. Journo-Hater?" you ask in a blunt manner while tilting your head upward.
Hey now: I don't hate anyone or anything! And certainly I have no ill feelings for the Virtual Boy. Though it failed in the marketplace and I didn't get a whole lot of use out of it, I don't regret owning it, no. Because I would never take pride in missing out on a video-game system even if it were shunned by the public and plagued with shortcomings.
As a passionate enthusiast, I love that so many wonderfully disparate platforms exist, and I feel enriched whenever I take the time to explore an unorthodox or novel platform and play its uniquely presented, distinctly designed games. That's why I fondly recall my experiences with the Virtual Boy and its games. And it's why I didn't want to miss the chance to write this piece and tell you about those experiences.
Because that's just who I am: a guy who can't help but view the world through rose-colored glasses.
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