The Virtual Boy was released 20 years ago in Japan

20 years of headaches.

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Virtual Reality might be the hot ticket in tech right now but 20 years ago it was Nintendo leading the charge in VR tech. Now the Virtual Boy has almost as much tech in it now as a calculator does and products like the Oculus Rift make it look like a babies toy. If you wanted babies with vision problems that is.

The Virtual Boy was released in Japan 20 years ago as of yesterday, it made it to America too and sold poorly in both regions. Nintendo had some sense and never released it here in Australia and neither in Europe either.

The system had a meagre 22 titles for it, most of them terrible and of course the red-only screen caused more eye problems than looking into the sun. If only Nintendo were to port these games to the Nintendo 3DS, least then everyone could enjoy Virtual Boy Wario Land which is the only decent game amongst them (and not go blind).

Did anyone ever pick up one of these? We have one here at Vooks HQ and well its nice to look at – not much fun to play. A bizarre mis-step in Nintendo’s history but an interesting one none the less.

Let us know what you think of the Virtual Boy in the comments.

Daniel Vuckovic

The Owner and Creator of this fair website. I also do news, reviews, programming, art and social media here. It is named after me after all. Please understand.

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Daniel Vuckovic