VirtualBoy

The Virtual Boy (Japanese: バーチャルボーイ, romanized: Bācharu Bōi) is a 32-bit desktop handheld video game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. Released in 1995, it was marketed as the first console capable of displaying stereoscopic "3D" graphics. The player uses the console as a head-mounted display, placing their head against the eyepiece to view a red monochrome screen with a black background. Games use a parallax effect to create the illusion of depth. Sales fell short of targets, and Nintendo stopped distributing and developing games in 1996, having released only 22 games for the system.

The development of the Virtual Boy lasted four years and began with the project name VR32. Nintendo signed a license agreement to use a stereoscopic LED eyepiece technology that had been developed since the 1980s by the American company Reflection Technology. He also built a factory in China to be used only for Virtual Boy manufacturing. Throughout development, the console's technology was scaled back due to high costs and potential health concerns, and an increasing amount of resources were reallocated to the development of the Nintendo 64, Nintendo's next home console. The game's lead designer, Shigeru Miyamoto, had little relationship with the Virtual Boy software. The Virtual Boy was released in an unfinished state in 1995 to focus on the Nintendo 64.

The Virtual Boy was panned by critics and was a commercial failure, even after repeated price drops. Its failure has been attributed to its high price, monochrome display, unimpressive stereoscopic effect, lack of true portability, and health issues. Stereoscopic technology in video game consoles resurfaced in later years with more success, including Nintendo's 3DS handheld console.

History

Development

Since 1985, Massachusetts-based Reflection Technology, Inc. (RTI) developed a red LED eyepiece viewing technology called the Scanned Linear Array. The company produced a stereoscopic head-tracking prototype called the Private Eye, with a game of tanks. Seeking funding and partnerships to turn it into a commercial technology, RTI demonstrated Private Eye in the consumer electronics market, including Mattel and Hasbro. Sega rejected the technology due to its single-color display and concerns about motion sickness. by movement.

Nintendo enthusiastically welcomed Private Eye, led by Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo's General Manager of R&D1 and inventor of the Game & Watch and Game Boy. He saw this as a unique technology that competitors would find difficult to emulate. Additionally, the resulting game console was intended to enhance Nintendo's reputation as an innovator and "encourage more creativity" in games. Codenamed the project "VR32", Nintendo entered into an exclusive agreement with Reflection Technology, Inc. to license the technology for its displays.; Nintendo's Development 3 (R&D3) focused on the development of the Nintendo 64, the other two engineering units being free to experiment with new product ideas.

Spending four years in development and eventually building a dedicated manufacturing facility in China, Nintendo worked to turn its VR32 vision into a health-conscious and affordable console design. Yokoi retained RTI's choice of red LED because it was the cheapest, and because unlike a backlit LCD, its perfect darkness could achieve a more immersive sense of infinite depth. RTI and Nintendo said that a color LCD system would have been prohibitively expensive, selling at retail for more than US$500. A color LCD system was also said to have caused "jumpy pictures in tests". With continuing concerns about motion sickness, the risk of developing vision problems lazy eye in young children and Japan's new Product Liability Act of 1995, Nintendo removed the head-tracking feature and converted its head-mounted goggle design to a stationary, heavy, precision-steel shielded, desktop form factor as recommended by the Schepens Eye Research Institute.

We experimented with a color LCD screen, but users did not see the depth, they only saw the double. Color graphics give people the impression that a game is high-tech. But the fact that a game has a beautiful screen doesn't mean it's fun to play.... Red consumes less battery and red is easier to recognize. That's why red is used for semaphores.

Gunpei Yokoi

Various technology demos were used to demonstrate the capabilities of Virtual Boy. Driving Demo is one of the more advanced demos; its 30-second clip shows a first-person view of driving past road signs and palm trees. This demo was shown at E3 and CES in 1995. The splash screen of the Virtual Boy prototype was shown at Shoshinkai 1994. A "very safe" of "Japan sales of 3 million units of hardware and 14 million units of software by March 1996". The demo of what would have been a Star Fox game it featured an Arwing doing various twists and turns. Cinematic camera angles were a key element, as they are in Star Fox 2. It was shown at E3 and CES in 1995.

As a result of increasing competition for internal resources alongside the flagship Nintendo 64, and little involvement from lead game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the Virtual Boy software was developed without Nintendo's full attention. According to the book David Sheff's Game Over, the increasingly reluctant Yokoi never intended for the ever-shrinking Virtual Boy to be released in its final form. However, Nintendo released it so that it could focus development resources on its next console, the Nintendo 64.

Launch

The New York Times previewed Virtual Boy on November 13, 1994. The console was officially announced via press release the following day, November 14. Nintendo promised that the Virtual Boy would "totally immerse gamers in their own private universe." Initial press releases and interviews about the system focused on its technological capabilities, avoiding discussion of actual games playing. would be released. The system was demonstrated the following day at Nintendo's Shoshinkai 1994 trade show. Nintendo of America displayed the Virtual Boy at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6, 1995.

Even with the cost-saving measures in place, Nintendo priced the Virtual Boy relatively high at US$179.95 (equivalent to US$310.41 in 2019). Though slightly less expensive and significantly less powerful than a home game console, this was considerably more expensive than the Game Boy portable game console. With seemingly more advanced graphics than the Game Boy, the Virtual Boy was not intended to replace the handheld game console in Nintendo's product line, as use of the Virtual Boy requires a stable surface and completely blocks the player's peripheral vision. Design News described the Virtual Boy as the logical evolution of the View-Master 3D image viewer.

Virtual Boy was released on July 21, 1995 in Japan and on August 16, 1995 in North America with the launch games Mario's Tennis, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer and Galactic Pinball. It was not released in PAL markets. In North America, Nintendo shipped Mario's Tennis with every Virtual Boy sold, as a bundle game. Nintendo had initially projected sales of 3 million consoles and 14 million games. The system came later than other 32-bit systems such as the PlayStation, 3DO, and Saturn, but at a lower price.

At the time of the system's launch, Nintendo of America was projecting hardware sales of 1.5 million units and software sales of 2.5 million by the end of the year. Nintendo had shipped 350,000 units of the Virtual Boy in December 1995, about three and a half months after its North American release. The system is number 5 on GamePro's list of "The 10 Worst Selling Consoles of All Time" 3. 4; in 2007.

Virtual Boy had a short time on the market after disappointing sales. The last game officially released for the Virtual Boy was 3D Tetris, released on March 22, 1996. More games for the system were announced at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in May 1996, but these games were never released. released. The Virtual Boy was discontinued that year without any announcement. In June 1996, Nintendo reported worldwide sales of 770,000 Virtual Boy units, including 140,000 in Japan. i>Next Generation reported that 13,000 Virtual Boy units had been sold in December 1996.

Promotion

Nintendo widely promoted the Virtual Boy, claiming to have spent $25 million in early promotional activities. Advertising promoted the system as a paradigm shift from past consoles; some pieces used cavemen to indicate a historical evolution, while others used psychedelic imagery. Nintendo targeted a larger audience with Virtual Boy advertisements, moving away from the traditional child-focused approach it had employed in the past. Nintendo portrayed the system as a type of virtual reality, as its name implies. Nintendo also focused on the technological aspects of the new console in its press releases, continuing to detail specific games.

Faced with the challenge of showing three-dimensional games in two-dimensional ads, the company partnered with Blockbuster and NBC in a coordinated effort. A $5 million campaign promoted NBC's fall lineup along with Virtual Boy. encouraged American viewers through television ads on NBC to rent the console for $10 at a local Blockbuster. This made it affordable for a large number of gamers to try out the system, and produced 750,000 rentals. Upon returning the unit, tenants received a coupon for US$10 off the sale of a Virtual Boy at any store. 3,000 Blockbuster locations were included in the promotion, which consisted of drawings with prizes that included trips to see tapings of NBC shows. The popular rental system proved detrimental to Virtual Boy's long-term success, allowing gamers to see just how unimmersive the console was. By mid-1996, Blockbuster was selling its Virtual Boy units for $50 each. The overall marketing campaign was commonly considered a failure.

Hardware

The central processing unit is a 32-bit RISC chip, making the Virtual Boy Nintendo's first 32-bit system. The Virtual Boy system uses a pair of 1 × 224 line arrays (one per eye) and quickly scans the array across the eye's field of view using flat oscillating mirrors. These mirrors vibrate back and forth at a very high speed, hence the mechanical hum inside the unit. Each Virtual Boy game cartridge has a yes/no option to automatically pause every 15-30 minutes so that the player can take a break before lesions appear in the eyes. One speaker per ear provides audio to the player.

Monitor

The screens of the Virtual Boy

Virtual Boy is the first video game console that was supposed to be able to display stereoscopic "3D" graphics, marketed as a form of virtual reality. While most video games use monocular cues to achieve the illusion of three dimensions on a two-dimensional screen, Virtual Boy creates an illusion of depth through the effect known as parallax. As with a head-mounted display, the user looks through an eyepiece made of neoprene at the front of the machine, and then a goggle-style projector allows viewing of the monochrome (in this case, red) image.

The display consists of two 384 × 224 pixel 2-bit monochrome red displays with a frame rate of approximately 50.27 Hz. It uses an oscillating mirror to transform a single line of LED-based pixels into a field full of pixels. Nintendo claimed that a color display would have made the system more expensive and resulted in "jittery" visuals, so the company opted for a monochrome display. To achieve a color display, Nintendo would have used a combination of Red, green and blue LEDs. At the time, blue LEDs were still considerably expensive, and would in turn drive up the price of the final product. This, in combination with the other drawbacks, helped influence Nintendo's decision to release the Virtual Boy as a monochrome device.

Control

The Virtual Boy Control

The Virtual Boy was intended to be used while sitting at a table, though Nintendo said it would release a harness for players to use while standing.

The Virtual Boy's heavy emphasis on three-dimensional movement requires the controller to operate along a Z-axis. Its controller is an attempt to implement dual digital D-pads to control elements in the 3D environment. The controller is shaped like an "M", like a Nintendo 64 controller. The player holds onto either side of the controller, which has a unique extendable power supply that slides out the back and houses the system's six AA batteries. Batteries can be replaced by a wall adapter, via a "slider" for constant power.

In more traditional 2D games, the two directional pads are interchangeable. For games with a more 3D environment, such as Red Alarm, 3D Tetris or Teleroboxer, each pad controls a different function. The controller's symmetry also allows left-handed players to reverse the controls, much like the Atari Lynx.

Connectivity

During development, Nintendo promised the ability to link systems for competitive play. Nintendo was working on a Virtual Boy link cable as late as the third quarter of 1996. The system's EXT (extension) port, located on the bottom of system below controller port, never officially supported as no 'official' multiplayer games were ever released. Although Waterworld and Faceball were intended to use the EXT port for multiplayer play, the former's multiplayer features were removed and the latter game was cancelled. playback link cable.

Games

Nintendo initially showed off three games for the Virtual Boy. He planned three launch games and two or three per month thereafter. Given the system's short lifespan, only 22 games were released. Of those, 19 games were released in the Japanese market and 14 in North America. Third-party support was extremely limited compared to previous Nintendo platforms. According to Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi had dictated that only a select few third-party developers be shown the Virtual Boy hardware prior to its formal introduction, to limit the risk of shoddy software appearing on the system.

When asked if Virtual Boy games would be available for download on the Virtual Console for Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said he couldn't answer, as he was unfamiliar with the game. with the platform. He noted that given his lack of familiarity, he would have a hard time making a case for including the games on Virtual Console.

The Virtual Boy software has been developed by the community of Planet Virtual Boy fans. Two previously unreleased games were released, Bound High and Niko-Chan Battle (the Japanese version of Faceball).

Reception

Person using the Virtual Boy eyepiece

Virtual Boy has garnered negative reviews from critics for being a commercial failure. It failed for various reasons, including "its high price, the discomfort caused by the game [...] and what was generally considered a poorly managed marketing campaign".

Gamers who previewed the system at the Shoshinkai trade show in 1994 complained that the Mario demo was not realistic enough, was not in full color, and did not follow the movement of the image when players returned head. In Electronic Gaming Monthly's lead editorial after the show, Ed Semrad predicted that Virtual Boy would have poor launch sales due to the monochrome display, lack of true portability, unimpressive lineup of games seen at the Shoshinkai show and the price, which he argued was as low as possible given the hardware, but still too expensive for the experience the system offered. The editors of Next Generation They were also dubious about Virtual Boy's prospects when they left the program, concluding their article on the system by commenting: "But who will buy it? It's not portable, it's awkward to use, it's 100% anti-social (unlike multiplayer). SNES/Genesis games), it's overpriced, and more importantly, the 'VR' is too expensive. (i.e. the 3D effect) doesn't add anything to the game: it's just a novelty".

After its release, Virtual Boy reviews tended to praise its novelty, but question its ultimate purpose and long-term viability. The Los Angeles Times described the game as "both familiar and strange." The column praised the quality of movement and immersive graphics, but felt that the hardware itself was tedious to use and not portable. A later column by the same reviewer found the system somewhat asocial, though it offered hope for the console's future. Reviewing the system shortly after its North American release, Next Generation said: &# 34;Unusual and innovative, Virtual Boy can be seen as a gamble in the same way that the Game Boy was, but it's much harder to see VB succeeding in the same scope of world conquest that the Game Boy did". They explained that while the sharp display and unique 3D effect are impressive, aspects such as the monochrome display and potential damage to young gamers' vision severely limit the system's appeal. They added that the software library was decent, but couldn't capitalize on Nintendo's best-selling franchises (the Zelda and Metroid games were absent, and the Mario games didn't have any). the same style as the most successful installments in the series) and lacked a system vendor to compare it to the Game Boy's Tetris.

Although Nintendo had promised a virtual reality experience, the monochrome display limits the Virtual Boy's immersive potential. Reviewers often considered the three-dimensional features to be a gimmick, added to games that were essentially 2-o even 1 dimension. The Washington Post said that even when a game gives the impression of three-dimensionality, it suffers from "hollow vector graphics". Yokoi, the inventor of the system, said that the system worked best with action and puzzle games, although such games provided only minimal immersion. Multiple reviewers lamented the absence of head tracking on the Virtual Boy hardware. Critics found that players were unable to immerse themselves in the worlds of Virtual Boy games as a result. Instead, they simply interacted through a controller, just like in any traditional 2-dimensional game. Boyer said the console "struggles to merge the two distinct forms of media of home consoles and virtual reality headsets." Although the device employs some basic VR techniques, it does so like a traditional home console without body feedback built into the gameplay.

Many reviewers complained of painful and frustrating physiological symptoms when playing Virtual Boy. Bill Frischling, writing for The Washington Post, experienced "dizziness, nausea and headaches." Reviewers attributed the problems to both the monochrome display and awkward ergonomics. Several prominent scientists concluded that long-term side effects could be more serious, and articles published in magazines such as Electronic Engineering Times and CMP Media of TechWeb i> speculated that the use of immersive headsets such as the Virtual Boy could cause illness, flashbacks, and even permanent brain damage. Nintendo, in the years since the Virtual Boy's demise, has been outspoken about its failure. Howard Lincoln, president of Nintendo of America, said flatly that the Virtual Boy "just failed."

Legacy

According to Game Over, Nintendo directly blamed its creator, Gunpei Yokoi, for the machine's failures. Members of the gaming press said that the Virtual Boy's commercial failure was a This was a contributing factor in Yokoi's departure from Nintendo, although he had planned to retire years earlier and finished another more successful project for the company, the Game Boy Pocket which was released shortly before his departure. According to his Nintendo colleague and Koto, Yoshihiro Taki, Yokoi had originally decided to retire at age 50 to do what he wanted, but had simply pushed it back. Nintendo maintained that Yokoi's departure was "absolutely coincidental"; the market performance of any Nintendo hardware. The New York Times noted that Yokoi had a close relationship with Nintendo. After leaving Nintendo, Yokoi founded his own company, Koto, and collaborated with Bandai to create WonderSwan, a portable system that competes with the Game Boy.

The commercial failure of the Virtual Boy reportedly did little to alter Nintendo's development approach and focus on innovation. While the console itself is said to have failed in many respects, its focus on peripherals and technology Haptics resurfaced in later years. The original inventor, Reflection Technology, Inc., was "devastated" financially from the performance of the Virtual Boy, with operations dwindling in 1997.

With the release of the Nintendo 3DS system in 2011, Nintendo released a handheld game console with autostereoscopic "3D" images; which means that the console produces the desired depth effects without special glasses and is portable. In the lead up to the release of the Nintendo 3DS, Shigeru Miyamoto discussed his views on the problems with Virtual Boy. One was the actual use of three-dimensional effects; While it was designed to render wireframe graphics, the effects are generally used to separate two-dimensional games into different planes separated by depth. Furthermore, Miyamoto stated that the graphics are not that appealing, and while developing the Nintendo 64, he had ruled out the use of wireframe graphics as too sparse for drawing player characters. Finally, he stated that he perceived the Virtual Boy as a novelty that should not have used the Nintendo license so prominently.

In February 2016, Tatsumi Kimishima stated that Nintendo was "investigating" reality, but he also explained that it would take them more time and effort to evaluate the technology, and in a February 2017 interview with Nikkei, he claimed that the company was "studying" it. virtual reality and would add it to the Nintendo Switch once it figured out how users can play games for long periods without any problems. Nintendo introduced a virtual reality accessory for the Switch as part of Labo, a line of cardboard toys assembled by gamers taking advantage of console hardware and Joy-Con controllers. In this case, the console is used as a display for the headset, similar to smartphone VR headsets like Google Cardboard.

Hobbyist Virtual Boy emulation has been ported to other displays: modern stereoscopic glasses like Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR in 2016 and Oculus Rift in 2018, and older NTSC TVs in 2020.

Nintendo has referenced the Virtual Boy in other games, such as Tomodachi Life, where a trailer for the life simulation game included a scene of various Mii characters doting on the console. In Luigi's Mansion 3, Luigi uses a device of Professor E. Gadd known as the "Virtual Boo" to access maps and other information in the game (succeeding the use of devices that refer to the Game Boy Color and the first generation Nintendo DS in previous installments). This interface is rendered in the console's red and black color scheme, while E. Gadd is optimistic that the device would "fly off the shelves".

Further reading

• Yokoi, Gunpei; Makino, Takefumi (May 1997). Yokoi Gunpei Game House ( ン 井 井 井 井 井 井 井 井 井 井 井。, 'Yokoi Gunpei Gēmu-kan'^?). ASCII. ISBN 978-4-89366-696-3.