The Nintendo Virtual Boy

Much red.

I have moved from Patreon to Floatplane!

[acatacho]

That boxing game looks insane for the age. You could pass that as a modern indie game with how detailed and polished it looks.

[thedjgamer-productions]

We all wish we had a friend like James

[YokiDokiPanic]

fun fact about the break warnings. When they were developing the Virtualboy, there was a Japanese study done to see if extended play is bad for your eyes, especially for young children. The results were actually very positive and the conclusion was that this was pretty good eye exercise as long as it's calibrated correctly. BUT the study took a bit longer than anticipated and Nintendo wanted to be safe from lawsuits and covered the damn thing in warning labels and programmed a break warning anyway, branding it as a danger to kids' health for no reason.

[JDBennett]

About a decade ago, I found one of these for $30 at a flea market in the middle of nowhere Delaware. I made my poor father drive around to gas stations looking for an ATM with me because the guy took cash only. Its in perfect condition, its one of my favorite things to pull out at parties. Its really hard to describe what that screen actually looks like in person.

[choppercove]

I've been anticipating a video on this horrible amazing device.

[chrisfratz]

If you have an Oculus quest 2, there is a native virtual boy emulator you can get from the side quest Homebrew store allow you to play games in their proper stereoscopic 3D, there's awesome a virtual boy emulator on PC designed for the Oculus rift headsets. Speaking of I need to go back and play more of VB Wario Land, that's a genuinely good platformer, and the stereoscopic 3D in that game is pretty good for a 2D sprite based platformer.

[Jakefiz]

Man ive seen tons of videos about this guy over the years mostly avgn style roasting it for being a failure and eye straining but none of them actually opened it and explained the really cool technology behind it and helping the world appreciate it for what it is! Great content as always James :)

[Jawmsie]

The realization that the virtual boy's display operates on an overengineered version of the principle that the fans with the LEDS in them that made funky patterns worked on may have just blown my mind.

[piratebear]

Someone else pointed it out, but playing Wario Land on the Oculus Quest was mind blowing. The treasure rooms use the stereoscopic 3D to essentially have full 3D environments. Great game to emulate anyway, but it’s awesome to see the full 3D effect on a decent screen in 2023.

[Trygon]

This is amazing. I thought I knew what the virtual boy was, but seeing it pulled apart, mirrors spinning, and display nakedly showing it's only scanline was REALLY informative. What an absolute little marvel.

[coonyman]

James will just come in with one of the most comprehensive videos on a 30 year old piece of obscure tech like it's nothing. I love it.

[SeJoHu]

I will never forget the virtual boy my parents got me and my brother. We both had huge 90s glasses and couldn't fit them into the eye shade, and if we played without our glasses, we got horrible headaches, which was apparently not unique to our experience. We had it for like a week before my parents returned it.

[MrBarcode]

I had a virtual boy and most of the games growing up. I think my dad got it in a bundle on clearance from KB toys before they were discontinued. I loved the console but sadly had to get rid of it while moving some years ago. Warioland, Redalarm, Teleroboxer were all the best games for the system. I had the mains adaptor as well. I used the controller like you mentioned but the mains lead cable was resting on the table too much and the clips holding it in place broke so by the end I had to hover it off the table to play. it had the added benefit of being forgotten by my parents every time I was grounded from the genesis or PS1 so I could dig it out of the closet and go nuts with it for a week or so

[theSam]

When you took it apart and showed the insides was amazing. The fact they produced that thing in 1995 to an affordable(?) price point for the masses is astonishing to me. The single line of LEDs for the display is genius.

[ForgottenChronicler]

I actually managed to get my hands on one of these with the Blockbuster rental case but unfortunately the glue on the lenses came off and I haven't been brave enough to try soldering it myself lol. But as someone born years after it came out and owning multiple VR headsets it does amaze me how ahead of it's time the V Boy was, definitely a shame it couldn't succeed

[Chris]

5:38 fun fact, there was gonna be a traditional Bomberman game for the virtual boy, and was even gonna make use of the cancelled 2 player adapter, but the game didn’t last long before being cancelled, due to the virtual boy’s failure

[Kramburger]

Quick bit of advice/minor nitpick for future videos: try not to have any CRT monitors on in the background while recording, since they make a super high-pitched buzz that's a bit annoying for people like me who can still hear it (although this sound might be from the VB in this case). Maybe roll off the audio frequencies above 10kHz when recording a CRT to mitigate this as well. The content is still enjoyable regardless. Keep it up! (Nice cheeky "James Channel" in the magic eye image, btw!)

[houstoner]

I had one as a kid in the 90s. My dad got the unit and all the available games for like $50 at a KB Toys clearance. If I had to guess, I probably spent at least 100 hours playing it, maybe more. It was def before it's time. I found the best, most comfortable way to play it was laying down with the kickstand on chest. I wasn't allowed to have a TV in my room until I was 16, but I had this lol. Thanks for sharing, the nostalgia hit pretty hard.

[Xomby]

I got one of these on clearance in winter of '95. wish I had gotten more of the games, but the ones I had I recall putting quite a few hours into. I remember actually playing it on long car rides using the battery [shrug] a system I enjoyed, but years later everyone poops on things that "look bad" or "have bad graphics". at the time, it was way better than the "R-Zone" headmounted game (also had it). Teleroboxer is brutal. love it to pieces.

[Zanpaa]

Shank Mods has an amazing video on making a portable Virtual Boy from a defective unit, and it has great technical explanations about the whole thing (including what each chip does)!
Low Spec Gamer has a great history of how the Virtual Boy came to be, including why you don't strap it to your face like it was originally meant to.