when Nintendo's biggest mistake almost destroyed the company

___________________
Diving into the history of Nintendo's creatively and financially worst console -- The Virtual Boy.

Listen to my D&D Podcast, Of Mice and Men and Monsters, right now by clicking here:

INSTAGRAM - @EntertainTheElk
TWITTER - @EntertainTheElk

[EntertainTheElk]

What's your favorite video console of all time? I think mine is the Nintendo 64. Mario 64, GoldenEye, Star Fox, Perfect Dark. So many awesome games.

[misedout]

Oh God, until this moment I'd forgotten all about this console. I remember using it exactly once, at Funcoland... if anyone remembers that store, lol

[PKFire]

Love that you're branching in to Videogames! Can't wait for more to come.

[MoviesPlease]

Hey. I'm the one person in the universe who loved Virtual Boy. Played it for hours every day.

[grambofirstblood]

The title had me thinking this would be about how Nintendo basically created PlayStation who went on to become their greatest competitor, but the Virtual Boy was so much worse lol

[Maqz]

I had one of these. It actually wasn't SO bad. I don't remember ever once getting a headache from it, but definitely a neckache when traveling and trying to use it in the car.

[CREEPINGIRON]

This, I did not expect, but I'm excited for it! Great intro too. 👍

[WILD__THINGS]

I remember when the Virtual Boy first came out. There was an electronics mega store down here in South Florida called Incredible Universe. It was literally the size of a shopping mall with every type of gadget you could imagine. We used to go there and play video games for hours on end. The first time I played Mario's Tennis my mind was blown. Of course now that technology seems very rudimentary but back in the mid 90s it was a big deal. I asked for a Virtual Boy for Christmas but never got it. In retrospect, the console was a fun and important stepping stone in the evolution of gaming.

[TBustah]

The Virtual Boy was a pretty big mistake, but did it directly lead to the rise of their biggest competitor? Their biggest mistake was backing out of the Sony deal, hands down.

[Inignot]

I love the editing on this one, perfectly on point

[garmanarnar]

I'm afraid I have to disagree.
Nintendo's biggest mistake was to work with Sony on a joint console that would play games on CD.
But at the same time, they were working with Phillips, who was also working on a console that would play CDs.
Sony found out about this and stopped working with Nintendo, took all the knowledge from the collaboration and invented the Playstation.
Nintendo then continued its collaboration with Phillips, but again, the result was not a console for Nintendo, but one for Phillips on which licensed Nintendo games would take place.

The Phillips console was a huge flop and Sony became Nintendo's biggest "enemy", so now Nintendo can't keep up with Sony and Microsoft and therefore puts out games and consoles that serve their own niche.

[loganlabach]

Well at least the virtual boy commercials will be used as an aesthetic 90s liminal space video!

[wstine]

I remember trying out this device at a local Blockbuster Video store. If it wasn't red and had a head strap, it could've worked.

[isaacdavidquesada]

Awesome! Please do more videogame video essays!

[BenjaminWhitley]

By calling it the Virtual BOY, Nintendo made everyone think it was a portable console like the Game BOY, when in fact it was very much not portable what-so-ever. You had to sit there hunched over to play it, as the headset was too heavy to wear. That's the number one reason it was a failure. I'm continually surprised how many people either miss this fact or just gloss over it. The games library wasn't that bad, and the 3D depth effect was stunning and quite revolutionary for 1995. But the console lacked a killer, must-have game.

This was a really well-done video, with fantastic animation work. Great job.

[jasonblalock]

7:00 The Pokemon Mini almost certainly sold even fewer than the VB. That one's so obscure most people haven't even heard of it. Although the VB is probably still the bigger flop, since Nintendo put a lot more resources into it.

[FunFactFilms]

I loved the split screen style for the video. Really fun and creative.

[reecord]

Chiming in here to say Galactic Pinball absolutely slaps and is one of my favorite pinball video games of all time. It was made by members of the Super Metroid team, and the quality shows in the game.

[Misan_M]

Such a great editing, very inspiring !

[rockoorbe]

I got to play this at a Target when it came out. That was back in 1995 and just looking at the footage brings me back to memories of migraines.