@@segaunited3855 Nintendo has always gone for the lower-end market niche. The idea is they dial back the hardware for it's time which allows more profit and ideally cheaper prices for the consumer (worded that carefully lol). SEGA and Sony seemed to do the opposite which is to try upper-end hardware for it's time for a better more immersive experience. All the strategies work well but you have to pick your battles. With the lower-end dialed back approach to the market, a pseudo "vr" system isn't going to workout and I think that's what they realized shortly after release. In modern times you can totally create a dialed back lower-end fully immersive 3d system because it's 2019 but in 1995 VR systems had to require some serious upper-end hardware to be successful. I'm actually surprised the 2 color graphics didn't tip this off to Nintendo that it would be a failure lol.
I remember my mom got me this as soon as it came out. So I was excited to go to my grandmas with it so that I could show it to my cousin. I'm in the kitchen playing an intense game of Mario Tennis. Anytime the other team would score, I would curse. And every time I would curse, my cousin would laugh, but he would laugh way too hard at me simply just saying curse words. This happens a few more times. They score, I say a different curse word, my cousin laughs way too hard. So I finally pull my face from the game and my grandma was standing there with her mouth agape. Before I could blink, my grandma came across the table and slapped the hell out me. My cousin was sitting there laughing the whole time still. That's my most vivid memory of this system.
Despotic Waffle Despotic Waffle Lol! Actually it was fun. That Mario Tennis was top notch. I would play it so much that my eyes would be burning when I was done and my thumb would be sore from smashing the A and B buttons. (even as a kid I was mixing pain with pleasure) I don’t remember my back hurting tho. Eventually the stand that holds it up broke, so it was useless. Then someone stole it.
My first one was June 11 1996 my birthday my batteries exploding then got the last one for Christmas that same year at walmart it was the last one and found out it was cancelled and walmart was getting rid of all the games mad me sad then a year latter it was stolen
I was buying bullets for my school shooting plan and the person at the till was from my school he said enjoy that and handed me the bullets I said you too
The Virtual Boy system also had a rather tragic epilogue. Gumpei Yokoi, the system's designer and one of Nintendo's most celebrated imagineers, was forced to resign over the whole debacle, and a few years later he was hit by a car and killed. This incident might not have happened if not for the system's failure and his subsequent forced retirement. So not only was the Virtual Boy a terrible system, but it also took from us the creator of Metroid, Kid Icarus, and the original GameBoy. Sure, the Atari Jaguar sucked but at least it didn't kill people.
He was not forced to resign. Here is what Gunpei Yokoi said: “Actually, I didn’t leave for the reason of ‘taking responsibility for the failure of the Virtual Boy. Since before, I’ve thought about becoming independent after turning 55. That’s why I don’t have any hate or ill will towards Nintendo.” He then went on to form his own company Koto Laboratory and partnered with Bandai to create the WonderSwan (handheld game console).
Saying the Virtual Boy killed him is a far fetched claim, it was more of a series of indirect events caused by the Virtual Boy, and even that is debatable
Yes but having played vr its applications are extremely limited. Most games are not practical with vr as the motion sickness it induces can put you down for a night. You actually have to first acclimate and train your mind to use vr in certain games that have walking and other motion in them and even then you will have a limited play time until intense nausea takes you. That being said games where you remain stationary work extremely well in vr and can be outstanding but they are often limited in game play. Current gen hardware is still not powerful enough to push vr to its full potential with larger games such as fallout vr take severe hits to distance rendering and quality to get a stable near required 120 fps and most vr headsets have a fairly low pixel density. Of course another issue is the price. The price is slowly going down though so i wont get into that too much. Why it is a near failure though is that unless something changes it most likely will not last kind of like the wii. fun at first then boom no one even has one anymore.
Nice video. I wish you would have talked for a minute about the homebrew scene, though. In the description you mention Planet Virtual Boy, but it would have been cool if you mentioned that they now can make link cables, controller-to-USB adapters, and the flash cart that you are playing on. They're even close to making entirely new carts for homebrew games. And then there is the awesome, but expensive, Street Fighter II port.
I was 11 years old when the Virtual Boy came out. I don't remember there being a lot of hype about it at school at the time. The first time I tried it out was at a Blockbuster, even at 11 years old I wasn't very impressed. I at least thought it would be in color or "actual virtual reality" which was becoming a big thing back then. "Remember those 3d pictures you had to put your nose against and figure out what the image was" Yes it was uncomfortable, yes it did hurt your eyes over time and was awkward to play. I will say that games were actually not that bad, Mario Tennis is pretty fun. I knew a friend that had one but it was just sitting on his bedroom table with other junk. I was more into Super Gameboy at the time and I was already reading in Nintendo Power about there next console "Project Dolphin" which looked pretty exciting.
in September of 1995 just one month after Virtual Boy came out, i bought one. My biggest regret isn't buying it, its giving it away 1 year later.... if only i had held on to it. 😔
I remember playing this game back in the day in sears, while waiting my turn to play the Super Nintendo that was right next to it, and even as a kid it wash so wack, but I played anyway lol
no black and red, the virtual boy could only show red because black isn't a colour in itself it was just 3d screen with a 16 bit red shade in a 32 bit system
Virtual boy didn't actually fail it actually in today's time actually paid the way of VR and more and more research that we do for VR thanks to the virtual boy and thanks to Nintendo for paying the way for virtual reality so if you think of it this way Nintendo kind of paid the way of VR because of the virtual boy
Ya I remember this, my rich cousins had it, but when I visited them it looked like the toy was abandoned for 10 yrs LOL. It was kind of dumb, since I was looking at red outlines on the screen and you had to be in a fairly dim room to see what was on the screen. It didn't feel that different from playing those super retro handheld games with red outlines. Basically, it felt like you were holding those retro handheld games up to your face; that's literally what it was. I think it was too early for gaming world at that time. On top of that, virtual boy felt very outdated since my family owned an SNES which had vibrant colored games, comparatively. This whole experience was coming from a kid in 2nd grade. If Nintendo had let any child test out their system, he probably would've threw it against the floor in anger, or told them how lame it was, lol. In essence, the kid wouldn't have sugar coated his opinion like a young adult, so they would've had some good business advice at no cost.
Never tried an actual virtual boy but I played the wario game on a retropie arcade and it was really fun! I've heard there is alot of good homebrew games outside of the few commercial releases.
I remember I was eight years old and riotously heckled my Dad at Service Merchandise to buy me this! He did, but beyond playing Batman Forever a couple of times I never touched it again.
If you get past the horrible blinding effect of the console,the head set had some fun games,like pinball,Wario Land,and Tennis;no console has only bad games;even the 32X add on console had some fun games.Road Rash and MK2 were on 32X.
My friend's highschool classmate used to own one of these. He read in the manual that says this hardware is only intended for boys, which I think contributed to very low sales. True story.
I had one when I was 12. I kinda liked but I hated the monochrome red and black colors. And it was extremely fatiguing on my back, neck and eyes. Wish I had mine till this day including my SNES, NES and my collection of games.
0:41 oh, no it wasn't! The Genesis took the title from the SNES during the early to mid-90's! The SNES only barely beat Genesis, they didn't "dominate" when they're losing marketshare!
I didnt hear about it till AGVN. I was a 5 and my brother 11. We hadnt even got a SNES till the Christmas before. We weren't wealthy enough to get new consoles till a year or so into its lifetime VB was dead by then.
Used to have one when I was young. That thing gave me headaches and made me unable to process certain colors for a while after playing. I do remember having fun with the Wario game though and only that game.
If they were not so expensive I'd pick one up now to try it out. Would be cool if they did something with the labo vr to play some of the virtual boy games.
I have 1 my step dad brung 1 back when he was working in us. I live in uk what are they worth as would consider selling as cex doesnt have sellers price
Virtual boy: W-who are you?
Virtual Reality: Im you, but stronger.
but more "realistic and not hurting spine"
Good one
Good one, its legit
Virtual reality:and how are you
HTC VIVE: am better than everyone
@@notsquarezum2858 HTC VIVE: and who are you?
Valve index: I'm you but better
And now we have VR on everything now. Nintendo was ahead of the times, but tech wasn't there.
The market wasnt ready and the internet
No they weren't. SEGA had a VR system for Master System in 1987.
It wasn't virtual reality! They literally said that in the video
@@segaunited3855 Nintendo has always gone for the lower-end market niche. The idea is they dial back the hardware for it's time which allows more profit and ideally cheaper prices for the consumer (worded that carefully lol). SEGA and Sony seemed to do the opposite which is to try upper-end hardware for it's time for a better more immersive experience. All the strategies work well but you have to pick your battles. With the lower-end dialed back approach to the market, a pseudo "vr" system isn't going to workout and I think that's what they realized shortly after release. In modern times you can totally create a dialed back lower-end fully immersive 3d system because it's 2019 but in 1995 VR systems had to require some serious upper-end hardware to be successful. I'm actually surprised the 2 color graphics didn't tip this off to Nintendo that it would be a failure lol.
someone didn't actually watch the video.
I remember my mom got me this as soon as it came out. So I was excited to go to my grandmas with it so that I could show it to my cousin. I'm in the kitchen playing an intense game of Mario Tennis. Anytime the other team would score, I would curse. And every time I would curse, my cousin would laugh, but he would laugh way too hard at me simply just saying curse words. This happens a few more times. They score, I say a different curse word, my cousin laughs way too hard. So I finally pull my face from the game and my grandma was standing there with her mouth agape. Before I could blink, my grandma came across the table and slapped the hell out me. My cousin was sitting there laughing the whole time still. That's my most vivid memory of this system.
drudill I'm guessing you weren't too fond of it based on that memory.
Despotic Waffle Despotic Waffle Lol! Actually it was fun. That Mario Tennis was top notch. I would play it so much that my eyes would be burning when I was done and my thumb would be sore from smashing the A and B buttons. (even as a kid I was mixing pain with pleasure) I don’t remember my back hurting tho. Eventually the stand that holds it up broke, so it was useless. Then someone stole it.
drudill Damn dude. I can't believe I finished reading your story. Hahaha.
drudill ...so the virtual boy didn't give you seizures??
C Lopez nope, just dry red eyes from not blinking and sore thumbs from smashing them buttons.
Remember demoing this at a Toys R Us in the 90's and wanted one so bad. Parents never bought me one. Glad they didn't now
Alex J You deserve more likes
I was 12 in '95. I played it at Toys R Us, HATED it, especially since it made my eyes red.
My first one was June 11 1996 my birthday my batteries exploding then got the last one for Christmas that same year at walmart it was the last one and found out it was cancelled and walmart was getting rid of all the games mad me sad then a year latter it was stolen
I kept mine and it's worth a pretty penny now even though it's a steaming pile of dog shit
This video is probably going to get more views than sales of the Virtual boy.
Imposter! I am the chosen link.
LOL
LightningRota NO, I AM FOREVER THE TRUE, CHOSEN LINK!
*THEY SPEAK LIES TOO YOU, BOY!*
LightningRota *NEVER! I WAS THE CHOSEN LINK SINCE 2015, YOUNG ONE*
28 YEARS AGO NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY WAS RELEASED IN UNITED STATES ON MONDAY AUGUST 14, 1995.
Begged my mom for this. Had 3 games. Gave me headaches. Stand broke. Used it for 2 months. Good times.
I bought a game from Gamestop. The girl handed me the bag and said, "Hope you enjoy it! It's a really fun game." and smiled at me.
I said, "You too."
Waitress brought over my food and said "enjoy". I said "you too".
Mi wut
I was buying bullets for my school shooting plan and the person at the till was from my school he said enjoy that and handed me the bullets
I said you too
Connn Orrr Please leave!!😂😂😂
Dude delivered my pizza and said "Enjoy!".....and I replied "You too".....
The Virtual Boy system also had a rather tragic epilogue. Gumpei Yokoi, the system's designer and one of Nintendo's most celebrated imagineers, was forced to resign over the whole debacle, and a few years later he was hit by a car and killed. This incident might not have happened if not for the system's failure and his subsequent forced retirement. So not only was the Virtual Boy a terrible system, but it also took from us the creator of Metroid, Kid Icarus, and the original GameBoy. Sure, the Atari Jaguar sucked but at least it didn't kill people.
cadman2300 That’s so depressing 😭
He was not forced to resign. Here is what Gunpei Yokoi said: “Actually, I didn’t leave for the reason of ‘taking responsibility for the failure of the Virtual Boy. Since before, I’ve thought about becoming independent after turning 55. That’s why I don’t have any hate or ill will towards Nintendo.”
He then went on to form his own company Koto Laboratory and partnered with Bandai to create the WonderSwan (handheld game console).
Saying the Virtual Boy killed him is a far fetched claim, it was more of a series of indirect events caused by the Virtual Boy, and even that is debatable
How does a system kill somebody who wasn't playing on it or even near it
Good thing we have Virtual Reality now.
Current gen virtual reality is a near failure imo
Jarred Brown what do you mean, ps5 or the next xbox will focus more on vr
Yes but having played vr its applications are extremely limited. Most games are not practical with vr as the motion sickness it induces can put you down for a night. You actually have to first acclimate and train your mind to use vr in certain games that have walking and other motion in them and even then you will have a limited play time until intense nausea takes you. That being said games where you remain stationary work extremely well in vr and can be outstanding but they are often limited in game play. Current gen hardware is still not powerful enough to push vr to its full potential with larger games such as fallout vr take severe hits to distance rendering and quality to get a stable near required 120 fps and most vr headsets have a fairly low pixel density. Of course another issue is the price. The price is slowly going down though so i wont get into that too much. Why it is a near failure though is that unless something changes it most likely will not last kind of like the wii. fun at first then boom no one even has one anymore.
VR was just a fad the only thing currently saving VR is the porn industry.
WHY ARE YOU EVERYWHERE
I still have mine, and I love it to pieces. One of my all-time favorite games was released on the system (Mario Clash)
Have you tried any of the homebrew games? Are they any good?
Owning one today, its pretty exciting. The screen rendering method is incredibly clever. Unfortunately it released in an unfinished state.
Rented it as a child and now I have a lazy right eye at times
Windows 95 and Virtual Boy Release: August 24, 1995
Nice video. I wish you would have talked for a minute about the homebrew scene, though. In the description you mention Planet Virtual Boy, but it would have been cool if you mentioned that they now can make link cables, controller-to-USB adapters, and the flash cart that you are playing on. They're even close to making entirely new carts for homebrew games. And then there is the awesome, but expensive, Street Fighter II port.
Why don't Nintendo try to bring it back. Now we have technology for it.
(@0:32) Back in the day , Paul Rudd's face was used to sell SUPER NINTENDOs . FACT .
the guy doing the voice over is my favorite male of insider
But the important thing is,
Can it run FALLOUT 4 VR??
Nintendo say blink you'll see red .
Is that Paul Rudd at the beginning? Lol
In conclusion: no one wanted a game system that gave them a headache every ten minutes
The virtual boy might be successful if the screen is color green instead of red.
I was 11 years old when the Virtual Boy came out. I don't remember there being a lot of hype about it at school at the time. The first time I tried it out was at a Blockbuster, even at 11 years old I wasn't very impressed. I at least thought it would be in color or "actual virtual reality" which was becoming a big thing back then. "Remember those 3d pictures you had to put your nose against and figure out what the image was" Yes it was uncomfortable, yes it did hurt your eyes over time and was awkward to play. I will say that games were actually not that bad, Mario Tennis is pretty fun. I knew a friend that had one but it was just sitting on his bedroom table with other junk. I was more into Super Gameboy at the time and I was already reading in Nintendo Power about there next console "Project Dolphin" which looked pretty exciting.
When he's playing the Virtual boy the host sounds so much like Ed Helms from The Office/The Hangover movies it's scary.
0:31 was--was that Paul Rudd? WTF lol 😅
Haha
"Remember Nintendo's Virtual Boy? Probably not."
Hey, dude, that's the best game system ever dude. The Wii U can't even touch the power of it.
in September of 1995 just one month after Virtual Boy came out, i bought one. My biggest regret isn't buying it, its giving it away 1 year later.... if only i had held on to it. 😔
I remember playing this game back in the day in sears, while waiting my turn to play the Super Nintendo that was right next to it, and even as a kid it wash so wack, but I played anyway lol
it burns the eyeballs out of whoever plays it! That's not what you want a gaming machine to do don’t buy the VB
I don't remember any virtual boy coz It died before I could know about it.
Same bro I died in 1981
I think if it was In color and a lesser price
the clips of the games hurt my eyes
mogieymouse when I first saw the game, I thought they were horror games.
It was known for causing eye Damage,Seizures and Migraines.
I remember the Virtual Boy,back when the electronic department would have demo systems.
0:44 Nintendo was dominating the market??? Did you know there was a company named Sega?
I got one and loved the tennis game
was that paul rudd?
Marc Vincent Arcilla yes it was
Everyone has to start somewhere
Ben Affleck
no black and red, the virtual boy could only show red because black isn't a colour in itself it was just 3d screen with a 16 bit red shade in a 32 bit system
Virtual boy didn't actually fail it actually in today's time actually paid the way of VR and more and more research that we do for VR thanks to the virtual boy and thanks to Nintendo for paying the way for virtual reality so if you think of it this way Nintendo kind of paid the way of VR because of the virtual boy
Ya I remember this, my rich cousins had it, but when I visited them it looked like the toy was abandoned for 10 yrs LOL. It was kind of dumb, since I was looking at red outlines on the screen and you had to be in a fairly dim room to see what was on the screen. It didn't feel that different from playing those super retro handheld games with red outlines. Basically, it felt like you were holding those retro handheld games up to your face; that's literally what it was. I think it was too early for gaming world at that time. On top of that, virtual boy felt very outdated since my family owned an SNES which had vibrant colored games, comparatively. This whole experience was coming from a kid in 2nd grade. If Nintendo had let any child test out their system, he probably would've threw it against the floor in anger, or told them how lame it was, lol. In essence, the kid wouldn't have sugar coated his opinion like a young adult, so they would've had some good business advice at no cost.
Never tried an actual virtual boy but I played the wario game on a retropie arcade and it was really fun! I've heard there is alot of good homebrew games outside of the few commercial releases.
I remember I was eight years old and riotously heckled my Dad at Service Merchandise to buy me this! He did, but beyond playing Batman Forever a couple of times I never touched it again.
And I’m trying to sell mine
Well I use to put my hands behind the Virtual boy when I played.
Now that is modern.
i remember seeing that on clearance only to buy it...then return it...though now i wish i still had it.
I think changing the red ("screens") into white (so black and white) would've made it a lot better, as simple as it seems.
I used that. My mom rented it once from Blockbuster, it was awesome.
i think its one of the coolest systems now becouse its kinda cool
If you get past the horrible blinding effect of the console,the head set had some fun games,like pinball,Wario Land,and Tennis;no console has only bad games;even the 32X add on console had some fun games.Road Rash and MK2 were on 32X.
My friend's highschool classmate used to own one of these. He read in the manual that says this hardware is only intended for boys, which I think contributed to very low sales. True story.
The reason for the red color is to reduce the cost
I had one when I was 12. I kinda liked but I hated the monochrome red and black colors. And it was extremely fatiguing on my back, neck and eyes. Wish I had mine till this day including my SNES, NES and my collection of games.
Who would win?
A very important organ used to see
Or
One virtual boy
Its only 2 colors black and red that hurts our eye so many cable plugins make it complicate
Good thing we have 3ds
0:41 oh, no it wasn't! The Genesis took the title from the SNES during the early to mid-90's! The SNES only barely beat Genesis, they didn't "dominate" when they're losing marketshare!
Virtual Girl would have been a success 😉
I didnt hear about it till AGVN. I was a 5 and my brother 11. We hadnt even got a SNES till the Christmas before. We weren't wealthy enough to get new consoles till a year or so into its lifetime VB was dead by then.
My brother and I got one for Christmas and played it all the time!
Used to have one when I was young. That thing gave me headaches and made me unable to process certain colors for a while after playing. I do remember having fun with the Wario game though and only that game.
This shows the meaning of learning from your mistakes
Fun fact about virtual boy:it uses red colour because there was only one variant and also to stop battery draining
Ironically I got a Ready Player One ad.
I just bought a virtual boy. Living the child dream.
If they were not so expensive I'd pick one up now to try it out. Would be cool if they did something with the labo vr to play some of the virtual boy games.
@@IrieIslandGaming brought one for 200$ today complete in box with extra battery pack
@@bayfinest1938 You are so lucky! Awesome find! They don't have a second one do they? haha
@@IrieIslandGaming just missing the menu and bag
@@bayfinest1938 great deal! I just got one last week and paid 250 without the box ... Pretty clean though so not complaining
The good ol days when games came with the system.
I had an ad that asked me how a steel pipe would put a smile to an Indian child's face. And I though of a different way on how.
FireFox Tezuki How?
The 3DS has a similar issue, but it's not a failure and nothing looks blood-red.
00:35 Paul Rudd!
Try playing a virtual boy with the power glove
Ever wonder why nintendo's consoles go 8 bit to 16 bit all the way to 64 bit? Well this was nintendo's 32 bit console.
5:12 is that a USB port in that thing?? Why does it need that
My goodness....... A VOICE with No text narrator
*_the virtual boy has so bad graphics and it's red color only when you play some games and it catches massive headaches for people_*
I DO!!!!
Virtual Boy was HIGHLY UNDERRATED
Gunpei Yokoi (pronounced 'goon-pe-i yo-ko-i') doing a barrel roll in his casket...
The first Nintendo console I got was the dsi. I still have it.😇😇 It is amazing. Although I don't use it anymore, duh.
I remember my dad buying multiple batteries for the console and a 9volt battery for the control cause we dont have the ac adaptor
And almost 30 years later Apple would faceplant with the Vision Pro.
And this sucks tho
0:31 Paul Rudd sighting
I didn't know vr has been around this long!
It's been around a lot longer look up the sword of damocles
Young Paul Rudd at 0:35!
0:34 wasn't that Ant-man!
Bende oyunu var sadece kaset
I think I want the Virtual Boy now...
is it bad I want to play on a virtual boy
I actually bought one in the 90's it was a terrible experience.
Interesting
Psvr>virtualboy
Stfu PSVR is a rip off of oculus rift and virtual boy
I have 1 my step dad brung 1 back when he was working in us. I live in uk what are they worth as would consider selling as cex doesnt have sellers price
I got my virtual boy for 250 us
Sees *controller input* *inserts PS4 Controller* LETS ROLL!!
Constantly sample top entirely cheek contribute budget cable comfort.
WE. DONT. EVER. TALK. ABOUT. THIS. AGAIN.
I played one as a kid. It's was weird and it was way to bright for me 4 year old eyes
I guess I'm one of the few, but when I got this I loved it.. After so long it would hurt my head though.
Yeah this fail and the Power Glove was also a epic fail.
Actually , Nintendo's best failure was the Wii U,not Virtual Boy
The wii U got WAY more sales
And it was actually good
This looks better than my gaming pc
my neighbor had a virtual boy, it sucked.