A lot has been said on the topic of the Virtual Boy in the past few weeks, including from myself. Nintendo has seen fit to make Virtual Boy games playable on the Nintendo Switch via their Nintendo classics line, and as a huge Virtual Boy fan, I saw this as reason to celebrate. 

I’ve long held the belief that the Virtual Boy didn’t fail because of its games, but because of the system itself. I would argue that there isn’t a single “bad” title in the platform’s 14-game North American lineup. The trouble is, it doesn’t really matter how good your games are if nobody wants to play the system they were created for. And thus, the Virtual Boy failed, and its library has languished in obscurity ever since. Theoretically, until now.

Nintendo hasn’t just brought back the games, they’ve brought back the entire Virtual Boy experience, including the very reasons nobody wanted to play these games in the first place, the uncomfortable system they were created for. 

There's a lot that bothers me about here, but the biggest of all is, none of this is necessary. Like, at all. 

See, the Virtual Boy’s 3D effect is a wonderful gimmick, but it’s just that. A gimmick. Yes, many of the games released for it are enhanced by being able to see them in 3D, but it wouldn’t have taken much at all to take the brilliant work done on games like Teleroboxer, Wario Land, or even Mario Clash and get them up and running on more contemporary platforms. The 3D effect is in no way actually necessary to play the games. So, as a huge fan of Nintendo and their weird history, seeing some of their more interesting stuff locked away on a platform nobody wants to use was pretty painful. 

Nintendo Virtual Boy Stand w/ Trogg Tech Medallion + Brace

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Then the 3DS came along, and I thought for sure Nintendo would take the system’s library and let folks give them a go there, but no. They let that one fly right by them. Now, here we are in the Switch 2 generation, and Nintendo has finally seen fit to give new players a chance to experience some genuinely interesting stuff from days gone by that was previously extremely unavailable. 

Except they kind of didn’t. 

The entirety of the Virtual Boy Nintendo Classics line has been intentionally rendered unplayable without the use of some sort of peripheral that recreates the original experience. Now, on one hand, I understand this. These games were designed to be played with the Virtual Boy in mind, but on the other hand, the reason these games have been played by so few is that nobody wants to play games this way! And this is coming from a staunch Virtual Boy fanatic! 

As various nefarious means have proven beyond any shadow of doubt in the past few decades since the console’s untimely demise, it’s that these games are not only playable, but arguably superior when experienced in 2D. The Virtual Boy by its very nature has a lot of visual limitations, including a general inability to see the entirety of the playfield at a single glance. It’s a completely insane experience that while not without its charm, is far from an optimal way to experience a video game. 

But instead of offering these peripherals and the 3D mode as options for players looking to recreate the authentic VB experience, they’ve literally blocked players from even trying to play them in a comfortable manner. When you plug your system into the dock, it tells you you can’t play. When you try to zoom in on one of the stereo images to play in handheld mode, it tells you you can’t zoom in using this software. It’s so incredibly backwards and unnecessarily restrictive, it really makes me scratch my head. 

Obviously, the cynical answer is that they just want to sell these peripherals. So they’ll only allow players to access the games while using them until they sell through their stock. Then they’ll release an update that allows you to play on TV, likely coupled with the already announced ability to change the color of the screen, and that will be that. But this is also Nintendo we’re talking about. The company that released the Virtual boy in the first place. The company that demanded Metroid Prime NOT be playable with dual analog controls. The company that demanded that Metroid Other M and Donkey Kong Country Returns be played with a Wii Remote held sideways, not even offering the option to use the Classic Controller. The same company that didn’t release Virtual Boy games on the 3DS, arguably the only system in history that's uniquely suited to play them even better than the VB itself. It’s entirely possible, and I’d even say likely, that they will never allow players to just fire them up in 2D on their televisions. 

What else baffles me is, why did they decide to go this route instead of the controller option? Every other platform they've released in their Nintendo Classics line has had an optional wireless version of said platform’s original controller you can use to recreate the authentic gameplay experience. Why on earth did they not just make a new VB controller that’s wireless and can be used to play the games on TV instead of this insane $100 Virtual Boy replica? That controller is genuinely unique and I would argue much more central to the experience of playing Virtual Boy games than the dang 3D effect. That would have been a heck of a lot more marketable than trying to sell people on a $100 hunk of admittedly awesome-looking plastic that forces you to play the games in the way that made them fail in the first place.

I just don’t understand. The 3DS was the perfect layup for VB games being played by a wider audience, but here they are with a whole new opportunity to do right by these gems, and they’re paywalling them behind unnecessary peripherals. This is just making some of Nintendo’s most interesting bits of history remain inaccessible to the vast majority of players, and that’s simply unacceptable. 

I’ve had a good time messing with these accessories so far, but at the end of the day, I still prefer the original hardware for these games, and I prefer… other means to that. I was hoping those other means would become my Switch 2, but alas, Nintendo is gonna Nintendo. 

What do you think?