• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Nintendo Virtual Boy Appreciation Thread, brought to you by the color Red!

Gestault said:
tMwsKNi.gif
Click to expand...

boy, that gif doesn't work well with the dark gaf theme. :lol
 
ShinUltramanJ said:
Rented a unit from Blockbuster along with Red Alarm. I have no love for this thing, sorry.

I remember Kay Bee Toys trying to unload them for $50.
Click to expand...

Way back in the day I was on a 6th grade field trip, we got to walk the mall and they had the VBs brand new for $30. I think five or six of us ended up buying them and we were all playing it on the bus on the way home.

I remember the Wario game being really awesome. I don't recall getting headaches or anything. It was quite a neat system. Ended up selling it a year or so later, kind of regret that now.
 
Rented a Virtual Boy from Blockbuster a few times. I liked it. Didn't hurt my neck or my back, but I was also like 8... not an old man like I am today.

Red Alarm was decent.

Telereoboxer was rad.

That Wario game was THA SHIT.
 
I got one as a present for my partner recently, and I love it to bits!
I have to play lying down with it resting on my face though, and it does mark my face up a bit lol.


Seeing the comment below... Galactic Pinball has the meanest soundtrack! I wanna get that on CD!
 
I love mine! Galactic Pinball is still my favorite pinball video game (followed closely by Pokemon Pinball, of course.)

I actually never got sick or got any headaches or anything and I actually enjoyed the way the system immersed you into its own little red world. I can completely understand why other people don't like it but I still enjoy mine from time to time :)
 
They should do a 3D Classics on that Wario Land. Never played it since VB didn't make it to Yurop. :/
 
tsab said:
They should do a 3D Classics on that Wario Land. Never played it since VB didn't make it to Yurop. :/
Click to expand...

Eh, it's still not impossible to get it. I bought it a few years ago with a VB + 6 games for 120€. It's a fun piece of hardware to play around with.
 
linko9 said:
The soundtrack to Mario's Tennis is one of my favorites, though nostalgia plays a very large part in that.
Click to expand...

Brofist, man. VB Mario's Tennis is the best Mario Tennis.

Also, Wario Land VB is the best Wario Land. I was, as far as I know, the first person to ever find where K.K.'s Song is hidden in that game.
 
Hey VB-GAF, there's a VB on Craigslist in my area with $45 for two games.

Should I jump on it? How reliable are these things? From the pics I can see it has Mario's Tennis and Galactic Pinball, the stand, visor, and controller.
 
Cody_D165 said:
Hey VB-GAF, there's a VB on Craigslist in my area with $45 for two games.

Should I jump on it? How reliable are these things? From the pics I can see it has Mario's Tennis and Galactic Pinball, the stand, visor, and controller.
Click to expand...

yo if you decide against it, any chance i could paypal you for it + shipping? lemme know man! my area's dry
 
Cody_D165 said:
Hey VB-GAF, there's a VB on Craigslist in my area with $45 for two games.

Should I jump on it? How reliable are these things? From the pics I can see it has Mario's Tennis and Galactic Pinball, the stand, visor, and controller.
Click to expand...
If you can test it, I would look into it. They are fairly reliable if taken care of, but if they are moved a lot and not actually used it is very possible it will have some problems. I think it takes 6 AA batteries (I have the AC Adapter, so I really don't know, might be more) so if you go take some with you.

Main things I would look for are that the visor is in nice shape and not glued on, as it is able to be replaced, and that both lenses are working, this is where you will want the batteries.
 
I recently got one in a huge lot I bought off of Craigslist for $100. I had to fix the displays by soldering the cables down. took 2 hours of work, but it was worth it. Here's two pics I took when I got it.





Wario land is worth the price of admission alone. what a great game. I need to finish that. Bound high is available in a homebrew printing, but is $70. Still, it looks like a fun game.
 
steveovig said:
I wish I had bought one when they were being cleared out as I always wanted to play Mario Clash and beat Wario Land. I didn't really enjoy anything else.

Like with many things, I wish Nintendo would release VC versions of these but it probably won't happen.

Also, how was Mario Clash? Was there any depth to it besides going for score?
Click to expand...

I bought a Virtual Boy (with no tripod! I propped the headset up on the controller all of the time, and that actually worked) from Blockbuster for $20 with Mario Tennis, and picked up Mario Clash and Galactic Pinball as well.

Aside from the cardinal sin of making Mario jump with B and attack with A, Mario Clash was a really fun game. I don't suppose that it had a lot of depth necessarily, though the roster of enemies and backgrounds did vary more than Mario Bros. and its various remakes, with Mario Clash clearly being a thematic if no gameplay riff on the Mario Bros. gameplay format. It feels like an evolved version of the early NES arcade-style games like Ice Climber -- you're going for high scores, there are bonus rounds, you can select which level up to level 40 you want to start on.

I think that Mario Clash is definitely more fun than Mario Bros. in 1-player, really satisfying core gameplay with hitting enemies on a different plane from you forwards or backwards with shells. It's also probably one of the VB titles where the depth perception is least necessary to make it fun (though it's certainly icing on the cake, and surely is of some help). I'd like to see it remade or released as a cheap download on the 3DS. Also, it's odd, but for whatever reason, to this day, whenever I see a 2D screenshot of Mario Clash, for the first second or two that I look at it, it's like my eyes will always automatically try to perceive the depth of the playing field. Go figure?
 
Some info about the Virtual Boy:

  • It uses the 32-bit CPU from NEC's disappointing Japan-only successor to the TurboGrafx-16, the PC-FX. I don't know that this is related to the CPU, but the VB's audio also sounds a helluva lot like the audio from a TG-16.
  • The original intention was for it to be in full color, but Nintendo in Japan and North America alike pretty much doubted Gunpei Yokoi's project from the start, and insisted in the lowest-power possible LEDs (red, low on the color spectrum = lower power) as an alternative to keep production costs cheaper.
  • The VB controller is the first Nintendo-produced controller with handles (they feel very reminiscent of a GC controller's handles), and also the first Nintendo controller that has both handles and a B button angled below the A button (instead of above it, like on the N64 controller). With the GC controller, and the tendency to use B and A as the primary buttons on the Wii Classic Controller [Pro], I still don't understand what the ergonomic idea is supposed to be with that approach.
  • I think that a lot of people take it for granted that the Virtual Boy display must be two LED/dot matrix-type displays side-by-side, but there is actually only one vertical row of pixels per eye that updates extremely quickly. These two rows are reflected against mirrors that oscillate back and forth quickly enough that each eye perceives it as a 384 x 224 pixel image. This oddball approach to a screen refresh rate -- more so than the stereoscopic 3D -- is why so many people complain of getting headaches while using the Virtual Boy, and it's also why the screen would seem kind of "jumpy" or laggy when the unit had been bumped or moved during gameplay. For an idea of what's going on, imagine a faster, more refined, higher-resolution, stereoscopic version of what Entex did here with their AdventureVision in the '80s. For what it's worth, I never really suffered any headaches while I owned mine, though the visor made my forehead itchy sometimes.
  • The ever-rare Jack Bros. was actually the first game related to the Shin Megami Tensei series to ever be localized and released in North America. Obviously, the gameplay in Jack Bros. is pretty far removed from the standard Pokemon-with-demons setup of the MegaTen series.
  • VB emulation has improved substantially in recent years with Mednafen!
 
So I contacted that Craigslist seller about the VB and after getting more details I couldn't just pass all this up for $50. He let me test it and everything. I am extremely happy with my purchase, an excellent addition to my Nintendo collection that I've hunting down for a long time.

GEDC0667_zps61900de9.jpg
GEDC0668_zpsbe5e9051.jpg
Click to expand...

Some first impressions: the games are fun! I really love Galactic Pinball. The controller's bumper buttons are perfect.

The red color doesn't bother me as much as I thought it would. The 3D is quite effective. The only issue I'm having is finding a comfortable way to play the thing, but I'm sure I'll figure something out soon.
 
I had one in Jr. High, around 97-98ish it was gifted from from a parent's friend. Came set up on a camera tripod and I had Red Alarm. For the life of me I cannot remember what happened to it but all through high school people would try it and have fun but the inevitable complaints of the color would follow. It was neat, I could of seen myself buying games for it if they had ever been available to do so.
 
Cody_D165 said:
So I contacted that Craigslist seller about the VB and after getting more details I couldn't just pass all this up for $50. He let me test it and everything. I am extremely happy with my purchase, an excellent addition to my Nintendo collection that I've hunting down for a long time.
Click to expand...

congrats by the way! lovely haul - i keep checking but my local CL never sees virtual boys. still keeping an eye out!
 
So weird how nintendo's 2nd attempt at 3d was successful. Lol

I brought one for 25 bucks at EB when they were discontinued. I really enjoyed Red Alarm game.
 
I am Christina Aguilera said:
Some info about the Virtual Boy:

  • It uses the 32-bit CPU from NEC's disappointing Japan-only successor to the TurboGrafx-16, the PC-FX. I don't know that this is related to the CPU, but the VB's audio also sounds a helluva lot like the audio from a TG-16.
  • The original intention was for it to be in full color, but Nintendo in Japan and North America alike pretty much doubted Gunpei Yokoi's project from the start, and insisted in the lowest-power possible LEDs (red, low on the color spectrum = lower power) as an alternative to keep production costs cheaper.
  • The VB controller is the first Nintendo-produced controller with handles (they feel very reminiscent of a GC controller's handles), and also the first Nintendo controller that has both handles and a B button angled below the A button (instead of above it, like on the N64 controller). With the GC controller, and the tendency to use B and A as the primary buttons on the Wii Classic Controller [Pro], I still don't understand what the ergonomic idea is supposed to be with that approach.
  • I think that a lot of people take it for granted that the Virtual Boy display must be two LED/dot matrix-type displays side-by-side, but there is actually only one vertical row of pixels per eye that updates extremely quickly. These two rows are reflected against mirrors that oscillate back and forth quickly enough that each eye perceives it as a 384 x 224 pixel image. This oddball approach to a screen refresh rate -- more so than the stereoscopic 3D -- is why so many people complain of getting headaches while using the Virtual Boy, and it's also why the screen would seem kind of "jumpy" or laggy when the unit had been bumped or moved during gameplay. For an idea of what's going on, imagine a faster, more refined, higher-resolution, stereoscopic version of what Entex did here with their AdventureVision in the '80s. For what it's worth, I never really suffered any headaches while I owned mine, though the visor made my forehead itchy sometimes.
  • The ever-rare Jack Bros. was actually the first game related to the Shin Megami Tensei series to ever be localized and released in North America. Obviously, the gameplay in Jack Bros. is pretty far removed from the standard Pokemon-with-demons setup of the MegaTen series.
  • VB emulation has improved substantially in recent years with Mednafen!
Click to expand...

I remember reading about there being a full color version somewhere inside Nintendo years ago. Now Im wondering if there is a way to mod a VB to display full color or did games all have a red color platt?
 
Looking at the Virtual Boy prgramming faqs on PlanetVB suggests everything programmed for it was made with a 4 color pallette in mind.

Here's another cancelled game that has since been released as a reproduction:

Bound High
 
Bought one back when it launched in 1995, had a blast with both Galactic Pinball and Mario Tennis. Shame the system and games got flooded in 1998.

Found a really cheap sealed copy of Galactic Pinball in a Sears store back in 2005 that I intend to open when I get a functional system again.

jYqyslPl.jpg
 
Purchased one from Blockbuster when they were getting rid of them. Came with 4 games and that awesome hard case they rented them in. Still have it and it works fine, but my stand is broken.
 
I got my hands on Teleroboxer last weekend. New favorite VB game, it's like Punch-Out in first-person with robots. So good.

I also got VB Wario Land and it's pretty solid, love the 3D effect during some of the boss fights.
 
Waiting so patiently for that Dragon Hopper proto. Someday.

I got mine for around $90 with five sealed games. Got really lucky, but it got the display flickering after a while.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

RTTP: Virtual Boy Wario Land
RTTP 
0
153
kevboard replied
Best-selling Game Boy Color games in the US by August 2001
Sales-Age 
9
397
deriks replied
Virtual Boy™ for Nintendo Switch™ 2/Nintendo Switch: Preorders now open in the USA.
Event Hardware  2
90
2K
krumble replied
The ridiculous speed of the Virtual Boy - The Slow Mo Guys
News Retro 
9
289
Hudo replied
Virtual Boy prototype game discovered.
News 
1
298
nush replied
Top Bottom