The Virtual Boy is a video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo and released in Japan on July 21, 1995, and in North America on August 14, 1995. Promoted as the first system capable of rendering stereoscopic 3D graphics, it featured a red monochrome display viewed through a binocular eyepiece, with games employing a parallax effect to simulate depth. The console struggled commercially, and its limited market performance led Nintendo to discontinue production and game development in 1996, following the release of only 22 games.
The 32-bit Virtual Boy's development spanned four years under the codename VR32. Nintendo entered a licensing agreement with the U.S.-based company Reflection Technology to use its stereoscopic LED eyepiece technology that had been under development since the 1980s. In preparation for mass production, Nintendo constructed a dedicated manufacturing facility in China. Over the course of development, escalating production costs, health concerns related to the display, and the diversion of resources to the Nintendo 64 resulted in the downscaling of the project. Additionally, Nintendo's lead game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, had minimal involvement in the development. The system was pushed to market in an unfinished state in 1995 to focus on the Nintendo 64.
The Virtual Boy was panned by critics and was a commercial failure, even after repeated price drops. Its failure has been attributed to its high retail price, unappealing red-and-black display, unimpressive stereoscopic effect, poor ergonomics, lack of true portability, and reports of adverse health effects such as headaches, dizziness, and eye strain. Stereoscopic technology in video game consoles was later successfully revived, notably including Nintendo's 3DS handheld console. The Virtual Boy is by far Nintendo's lowest-selling standalone console, with just 770,000 units sold; for comparison, their second-lowest selling console, the Wii U, sold 13.6 million units.
History Development Since 1985, a red LED eyepiece display technology called Scanned Linear Array was developed by Massachusetts-based Reflection Technology, Inc. (RTI). The company produced a stereoscopic head-tracking 12-inch display device prototype called Private Eye, featuring a tank game. Seeking funding and partnerships by which to develop it into a commercial technology, RTI demonstrated Private Eye to the consumer electronics market, including Mattel and Hasbro. Sega declined the technology, due to its single-color display and concerns about motion sickness.
Nintendo enthusiastically received the Private Eye, as led by Gunpei Yokoi, the general manager of Nintendo's R&D1 and the inventor of the Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld consoles. He saw this as a unique technology that competitors would find difficult to emulate. Additionally, the resulting game console was intended to enhance Nintendo's reputation as an innovator and to "encourage more creativity" in games. Codenaming the project "VR32", Nintendo entered into an exclusive agreement with RTI to license its display technology. While Nintendo's Research & Development 3 division (R&D3) was focused on developing the Nintendo 64, the other two engineering units were free to experiment with new product ideas.
Spending four years in development and eventually building a dedicated manufacturing plant in China, Nintendo worked to turn its VR32 vision into an affordable console design. Yokoi retained RTI's choice of red LED because it was the cheapest, and because unlike a backlit LCD, its perfect blackness could achieve a more immersive sense of infinite depth. RTI and Nintendo said a color LCD system would have been prohibitively expensive, retailing for more than . A color LCD system was also said to have caused "jumpy images in tests". With ongoing concerns about motion sickness, the risk of developing lazy eye conditions in young children, and Japan's new Product Liability Act of 1995, Nintendo eliminated the head tracking functionality and converted its headmounted goggle design into a stationary, heavy, precision steel-shielded, tabletop form factor conformant to the recommendation of the Schepens Eye Research Institute.
Several were used to show the Virtual Boy's capabilities. Driving Demo is one of the more advanced demos; its 30-second clip shows a first-person view of driving by road signs and palm trees. This demo was shown at E3 and CES in 1995. The startup screen of the Virtual Boy prototype was shown at Shoshinkai 1994. A "very confident" projection of "sales in Japan of three million hardware units and 14 million software units as of March 1996" was given to the press. The demo of what would have been a Star Fox game showed an Arwing doing various spins and motions. Cinematic camera angles were a key element, as they are in Star Fox 2. It was shown at E3 and CES in 1995.
As a result of increasing competition for internal resources alongside the flagship Nintendo 64, and little involvement from lead game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Virtual Boy software was developed without Nintendo's full attention. According to David Sheff's book Game Over, the increasingly reluctant Yokoi never intended for the increasingly downscaled Virtual Boy to be released in its final form. However, Nintendo pushed it to market so that it could focus development resources on its next console, the Nintendo 64.
Release The New York Times previewed the Virtual Boy on November 13, 1994. The console was officially announced via press release the next day, November 14. Nintendo promised that Virtual Boy would "totally immerse players into their own private universe". Initial press releases and interviews about the system focused on its technological capabilities, avoiding discussion of the actual games that would be released. The system was demonstrated the next day at Nintendo's Shoshinkai 1994 trade show. Nintendo of America showed the Virtual Boy at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6, 1995.
Even with cost-saving measures in place, Nintendo priced the Virtual Boy at a relatively high . Though slightly less expensive and significantly less powerful than a home console, this was considerably more costly than the Game Boy handheld. With seemingly more advanced graphics than Game Boy, the Virtual Boy was not intended to replace the handheld in Nintendo's product line, as use of the Virtual Boy requires a steady surface and completely blocks the player's peripheral vision. Design News described the Virtual Boy as the logical evolution of the View-Master 3D image viewer."BreakTime: Virtual Boy Updates the Viewmaster Idea." Design News. 6 (1995): 192.
The Virtual Boy was released on July 21, 1995, in Japan, August 14, 1995, in North America with the launch games Mario's Tennis, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer, and Galactic Pinball and September 1995 in Latin America countries. It was not released in PAL markets. In North America, Nintendo shipped Mario's Tennis with every Virtual Boy sold, as a pack-in game. Nintendo had initially projected sales of three million consoles and 14 million games. The system arrived later than other 32-bit systems like PlayStation, 3DO, and Saturn, but at a lower price.
At the system's release, Nintendo of America projected hardware sales of 1.5 million units and software sales numbering 2.5 million by the end of the year. Nintendo had shipped 350,000 units of the Virtual Boy by December 1995, around three and a half months after its North American release.
The Virtual Boy had a short market timespan following its disappointing sales. The last game officially released for the Virtual Boy was 3D Tetris, released on March 22, 1996. More games were announced for the system at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 1996, but these games were never released. The Virtual Boy was discontinued on December 22, 1995, in Japan and August 1996 in North America without any announcement. In June 1996, Nintendo reported to Famitsu worldwide sales of 770,000 Virtual Boy units, including 140,000 in Japan. Next Generation reported that 13,000 Virtual Boy units were sold in December 1996. The system is number 5 on GamePros "Top 10 Worst Selling Consoles of All Time" list in 2007.
Promotion Nintendo extensively advertised the Virtual Boy and claimed to have spent on early promotional activities. Advertising promoted the system as a paradigm shift from past consoles; some pieces used cavemen to indicate a historical evolution, while others utilized psychedelic imagery. Nintendo targeted an older audience with advertisements for the Virtual Boy, shifting away from the traditional child-focused approach it had employed in the past. Nintendo portrayed the system as a type of virtual reality, as its name indicates. Nintendo also focused on the technological aspects of the new console in its press releases, neglecting to detail specific games.
Challenged by showing three-dimensional gameplay on two-dimensional advertisements, the company partnered with Blockbuster and NBC. A campaign promoted NBC's late 1995 lineup alongside the Virtual Boy. American viewers were encouraged via television advertisements on NBC to rent the console for $10 at a local Blockbuster. This affordable demonstration provided 750,000 consoles for rent, some in a clamshell Blockbuster case. Upon returning the unit, renters received a coupon for $10 off its purchase from any store. The promotion included 3,000 Blockbuster locations, and sweepstakes with prizes including trips to see the taping of NBC shows. The popular rental system proved harmful to the Virtual Boy's long-term success, allowing gamers to see just how non-immersive the console was. By mid-1996, Blockbuster was selling its Virtual Boy units at $50 each. The marketing campaign overall was commonly thought of as a failure.
Hardware The CPU is an NEC V810 32-bit RISC chip, making the Virtual Boy Nintendo's first 32-bit system. The Virtual Boy system uses a pair of 1×224 linear arrays (one per eye) and rapidly scans the array across the eye's field of view using flat oscillating mirrors. These mirrors vibrate back and forth at a very high speed, thus the mechanical humming noise from inside the unit. Each Virtual Boy game cartridge has a yes/no option to automatically pause every 15–30 minutes so that the player may take a break to prevent eye strain. One speaker per ear provides the player with stereo audio.
Display
The Virtual Boy is the first video game console capable of displaying stereoscopic 3D graphics, marketed as a form of virtual reality. Whereas most video games use monocular cues to achieve the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional screen, the Virtual Boy creates an illusion of depth through the effect known as parallax. Like using a head-mounted display, the user looks into an eyeshade made of neoprene on the front of the machine, and then an eyeglass-style projector allows viewing of the monochromatic red image.
The display consists of two two-bit (four shade) monochrome red screens of 384×224 pixels and a frame rate of approximately 50.27 Hz. It uses an oscillating mirror to transform a single column of 224 red LEDs into a full field of pixels. Nintendo claimed that a color display would have made "jumpy" images and have been too expensive. A color display would have required red, green, and blue LEDs; blue LEDs were then considerably expensive. This, plus the other drawbacks, influenced the decision for monochrome.
Controller
The Virtual Boy is meant for the player to be seated at a table, and Nintendo promised but did not release a harness to wear while standing.