What Did Virtual Boy’s Failure Teach Us About Virtual Reality?
Lessons learned from the disastrous mid-’90s console
Black and red visuals, a monochrome red headset, flat colorgraphics and lack of head tracking — all combined with side effects of headaches and nausea — were the memorable features of Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s first attempt at virtual reality, a console the company launched 21 years ago yesterday on August 16, 1995, and scrubbed within months after scathing reviews and commercial failure.
After Virtual Boy’s failure, virtual reality dropped off the map — for most consumers — for nearly twenty years. So while Xbox prepares to launch a VR-ready console this fall, is Nintendo being too cautious about an industry that’s poised to disrupt gaming?
The years prior to the Virtual Boy launch were charmed ones for Nintendo. Its Nintendo Entertainment System, released in 1985, became the best selling console in video game history. Nintendo soon followed up with GameBoy in 1989 and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991. By the time they released their ambitious — possibly too ambitious — Virtual Boy in 1995, it seemed as if they could do no wrong.
The game, though seemingly simple in form, was different than any other technology on the market at the time. The console included a headset, which the player could lean into, and a handheld controller, both of which allowed to player to virtually participate in a variety of 3-D games such as tennis (“Mario’s Tennis”), bowling (“Nester’s Funky Bowling”), and golf (aptly named “Golf”).
“We thought it was going to be huge,” said Ben Wells, chief scientist at Reflection Technology, which created Virtual Boy’s prototype. “We had the technology, which was very cool, and we were trying to find what we called the ‘killer app’.”
Expecting sales to top three million units, Nintendo released what they were sure was a huge hit. But sales fell drastically short — barely three quarters of a million.
Virtual Boy lacked the realistic images and comfort of a modern virtual reality headset. Even people who didn’t hate the console didn’t find it mind-blowing. “It didn’t fulfill their huge expectations of how great it could be,” Wells says. He blames bad timing, positioning and marketing for compounding the poor execution.
To experience Virtual Boy — not in 3-D but close enough to get a feel for it—you can visit a slightly obscene and occasionally affectionate video takedown in a 2008 episode of Angry Video Game Nerd. “The first problem was that it was marketed as a portable system,” complained reviewer James Rolfe. But the unwieldy console required a firm surface. “Why isn’t there a headstrap? This must be one of the worst designs for any invention in history! It’s basically a pair of goggles on a stand.”
Rolfe’s other complaints included a power source (battery or adaptor) wedged into the controller. “It can come loose and shut off your game!” The display problems were worse:
The 3-D effects are hard to focus and they strain your eyes. There’s even a warning on the box that said it could cause headaches and seizures. That’s great, right…how’d you like to play bad games and have a headache too?
Virtual boy wasn’t for children under seven, at risk for lazy eye development. “If the two eyes don’t point in exactly the same direction it can throw off the development,” Wells said. The console even had a timer set every 15 minutes to remind gamers to take a break and rest their eyes, since long, uninterrupted usage could cause eye strain, neck pain from leaning into the unattached console, and even nausea. In Japan, Nintendo was forced to warn of health hazards to comply with a new product liability law.
Games like “Mario’s Tennis” got a grudging thumbs up from Rolfe — “the 3-D effects are actually quite effective.” But the primitive red-and-black display disappointed those who expected something more cutting-edge. The console could only produce wireframe images.
“We wanted to make a full color display and that wasn’t possible at the time,” scientist Wells says.
“The biggest problem with Virtual Boy was the press,” journalist Ben Edwards says now. “Since it was called ‘Virtual Boy,’ people figured Nintendo is coming out with a virtual reality set. What people got instead was a sort of primitive thing on a stand.” As he wrote in a look back last year:
Despite the name, there is one thing Virtual Boy is not: virtual reality. They system was conceived during a period of fascination with virtual reality and was originally intended to be a headset akin to a proto-Oculus Rift.
James Rolfe’s review echoed the criticism:
I don’t feel like I’m on the court interacting. I would have expected this to be in a first-person perspective. The whole idea of virtual reality is to simulate the experience of the game like you’re actually in the environment. It’s supposed to feel like reality. Hence the term virtual reality!
Cost was another obstacle. The $179.95 price did not include any Virtual Boy games. In late 1996, Edwards reported, the consoles could be found for $30 at Toys R Us. By then, the product had been discontinued. (Today, however, it’s a hot collector’s item on eBay.)
Looking back, Edwards is fonder than most critics: “The coolest thing about it was the first stereoscopic 3-D game system.” He enjoyed the feeling of being in a different world with games like “Warioland.” “The image was sharp and crisp. The implementation was excellent.”
Virtual Boy’s spectacular failure marked a sad career capper for chief Nintendo creator Gunpei Yokoi, who left the company soon after. Edwards defends Yokoi, who realized how far short the mid-1990s technology fell of his vision and was “reticent to release it in general.” (Edwards maintains that Yokoi was already planning his retirement, which was only delayed in order to complete the Virtual Boy project.)
Damien McFerran, editorial director of Nintendo Life, still owns a Virtual Boy. He admits that the device had its share of problems. “It’s certainly a flawed system, and possibly should never have made it to market in its current guise. But I still find it an interesting experiment with VR.”
Nintendo’s unfortunate foray into proto-VR was followed by success with more straightforward consoles like the Nintendo 64 (1996), Game Boy Color (1998), Nintendo DS (2004) and the Wii (2006). Could it make a triumphant return to the VR space? Or possibly augmented reality?
For now, the answer is no: the company recently signaled that VR won’t be part of its next-gen NX console, due for release in March 2017. The Wall Street Journal quoted “Mario” and “Legend of Zelda” creator Shigeru Miyamoto telling shareholders that the company is still concerned about kids using VR:
We’ve been looking at the technology, but we should also see how it fits into our products that are designed to use for the long term and how parents would feel about their children mounting VR devices.
Like Miyamoto, Nintendo Life’s McFerran remains to be convinced about VR. He was impressed with Samsung’s Gear VR, but got bad motion sickness from the Oculus Rift, and sees nothing yet approaching the status of a VR killer app.
No doubt the bad taste of Virtual Boy and its particular risks for children looms large in Nintendo’s concerns. Still, Virtual Boy veterans expect the gamemaking giant to come around eventually. No longer involved with VR, Virtual Boy prototype maker Wells is now intrigued by developments like Google Cardboard, which he uses. “It’s a fascinating business and sooner or later it will be big.”
Journalist Edwards sees more potential in augmented reality — “the next step that’s kind of mainstream.” He lauds Microsoft’s Hololens — “everyone else is sort of barking up the wrong tree” — and believes AR may just be promising enough to get Nintendo on board.
McFerran agrees: “If any company could make VR truly mainstream, it’s Nintendo. The company has a talent for taking new concepts and make them easier to understand for the modern consumer.”
