I had one at the time, got it for my birthday as a teen. It's terrible. It caused nausea, the "headset" was uncomfortable and if the stand broke or was lost you were screwed. The controller was clunky and hurt my knuckles. The screen wasn't an issue for me though. In fact I really loved the deep red, but then I used to spend hours in a darkroom printing pictures so the red felt like home. That said, some of the games were amazing especially because of the depth. Worth it? Not a chance. But it worked. It did what it said on the tin and the part that sucked wasn't the image, it was everything else related to interacting with that image.

I'd love to see someone take the lo-fi VR concept further with modern tech. It's proof that VR doesn't require color to be functional. There were ideas there we haven't fully explored.

The big question it opens up for me is:

- What happens if we ditch color and focus on clarity?

  - lower memory and compute requirements.

  - Dot pitch on screens can be smaller since no sub-pixels.

  - Optics can be tuned to a specific wavelength instead of having to fight with chromatic aberration due to the compressed optical pathway.

So much of VR today is focused on veracity, reproducing vivid worldly images. But what if we look elsewhere, the artificial and abstract. I want to see the kinds of sci-fi UIs and VR experiences brought to life pulled from the minimalism and simplicity of a time when cpu budgets per frame counted in understandable integers of cycles and color palettes you could count on your fingers.

Several reasons:

1. Nintendo is releasing Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics in February 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVvaCe4esCQ

2. Nintendo are also releasing a Virtual Boy shell compatible with the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 which will allow you to view the games in 3D, although I'm guessing it won't look as sharp or bright as the original. https://www.nintendo.com/en-ca/store/products/virtual-boy-fo...

Yeah, definitely this. It was just not a compelling platform.

When Virtual Boy first came out, Blockbuster Video allowed you to rent the system with some games. We played it a few times and got sick of it before the brief rental period even ended.

I really liked Red Alarm but it was a really tiring game to play. But overall I agree with you about the Virtual Boy. It's not a system that was received fondly for very good reasons.

I have nostalgia for Wario Land, because I played it for 5 minutes in a Toys'R'Us, and it's a good game which I never got to play in full until decades later. But I never owned one, so everything else you said rings true to me.

For me it is like an appendix - or a route we could have taken.

As a child of the 80s and 90s, all things VR held a special place in my heart, even if they were terrible.

I never had one, never even played the real hardware, but owning one would excite part of my psyche for sure!

I think there is also a Virtual Boy emulator for VR headsets.