>50 years ahead of its time.
Imagine a Metroid or Castlevania like this, in black and red. Or a submarine survival game. The ambience, claustrophobia, the horror.
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>50 years ahead of its time.
How expensive would it really have been to add green and blue LEDs to make it full color? That was the only major issue. The games themselves were good.
Blue LEDs weren't even commercially available until a year after the VB came out, and they were expensive as shit at first. A red-green bichromatic display may have been doable in 1995, but apparently green LEDs at the time were much dimmer than red and consumed more power, so powering it with batteries would have been out of the question (remember, they were trying to make it "portable"). If they'd waited a couple more years for the technology to advance, it might have been doable.
>blue LEDs
I suggest you google it. Blue LEDs are still a problem to this day.
>That was the only major issue.
>not the fact that the thing was horrible as hell when it comes to being even remotly comfortable to play with
It was fine. Just lay down on a sofa and balance it on your head/chest.
It permanently tinted my vision though.
I tried, but the damn thing is to bulky for that, face it, the biggest issue is the thing itself
IIRC it wasn't a cost issue, it was a tech issue. Their first concept prototypes did have full color, but the LEDs required for that were far too slow to update the screen in time and were a blurry mess.
That is completely not how it works at all.
>That is completely not how it works at all.
The way it's implemented is irrelevant, it's functionally a monochrome 3d monitor.
nta The idea of 3D displays being monochrome or needing shutter lenses is proof old 3D displays were 50 years ahead of their time. 3D displays were always ahead of their time including now, though I'd say they're more like 10-15 years ahead rather than 50.
Bruh, what are you even talking about? Shutter glasses predate the VB and weren't monochrome. Are you thinking about anaglyph? The point is that the VB wasn't ahead of its time, it was just an application of a concept which was already commercially available, its only real benefit being that it was less jank than PC options and it had full games designed specifically for it.
I'm talking about "the idea of 3D displays", the very first subject of my first sentence; When people say "ahead of its time" they mean a figurative anachronism not a literal one. Nobody is debating the existence of 3d display technology, they're saying 3d display technology is still jank even today because modern 3d display technology
is still ahead of its time just like the Virtual Boy and other existing contemporary 3d display technology. Does that clear up your confusion?
This thing was my autistic hyperfixation 20 years ago. I've already imagined it multiple times.
It's doable. There's a lot of development resources out there and still a surprising amount of people making Virtual Boy homebrew. I got about 5% into making my own VB game, successfully wrote a JRPG-like text box renderer before realizing I'm too moronic to actually finish anything.
Virtual Boy Wario Land is objectively the best game in the series
And it's much better to emulate it in grayscale. Frick that ugly ass red. What an idiotic idea.
Out of all games, you decided to get angry about the color scheme in VBWL??
I played it on real hardware and I thought, if there is one game on the system that actually benefits from the red and black scheme is this one. Feels like it was designed with it in mind, as the whole game is spent in underground caves, only lit by torches or candles on the wall. Definitely enhances the atmosphere.
The killer app this thing needs is 3d gameboy emulation. Everyone would want one if it could do that
I'm surprised they didn't do this. Make it backwards compatible with Game Boy (not 3D obviously) and then starting around that time add special Virtual Boy 3D support to GB games the same way they did Super Game Boy.
There should have been a Terminator game set in the future where you are the evil Terminator that kills all the humans as opposed to goody two shoes T2 Terminator on the Virtual Boy.
The Virtual Boy does red and black. Those are the colors The Terminator sees in, so it makes sense.
Actually is a good idea
Nintendo not releasing a Virtual Boy collection on the 3DS was their biggest omission on that thing. I know they want to forget it exists but the library was really good. Teleroboxer is great.
I don't think it's possible to emulate it due to the combination of being advanced technology + primitive 90s technology, make it alien for modern hackers.
I ended up selling mine during the retro game scalping boom recently and regret it. There might not be that many games but pretty much all of them are good and something about putting your head into that thing and entering a red and black world is just a cool vibe. Theres some cool homebrew available too if you have a flashcart. Someone even made a gameboy emulator for it which is pretty neat even if its not hitting fullspeed. Its a shame it sold so poorly, with some more games and the right mindset it could've been a classic system.
I have a VB emulator for my VR headset so I can still play the games in 3D but it just isnt the same.
Theres been virtual boy emulators for a long long time.
>Theres been virtual boy emulators for a long long time.
VB emulated on a modern VR headset is unironically better than the real thing. I own both.
I own(ed) both too and theres just a level of clarity, sharpness, and smoothness of motion on the real thing that you just don't get on a VR headset, even one with a 4K display.
Not really. I use a Quest 3 and everything about it is better.
You can literally emulate it right now on Oculus/Vive/Index/Quest
Only Wario Land and maybe that Fatlus game are well liked VB game, the others are alright at best.
honestly I wish modern vr devs would take some lessons from the vb, all games don't have to be first person waggle simulators...
Same, my favourite modern VR Game is Moss, go figure.
How about a white led and a fricking blue lens. Or just really any led color and a blue lens, the one that looks the bluest and brightest physically possible through the plastic with low power
>50 years ahead of its time
It was just a glorified 3d monitor and shutter glasses for PC were already a thing long before the Virtual Boy
for me it's Mario Clash and trying to go out of my way to throw koopa shells across the stage
here's my story with the VB.
>buy a used VB off a local craigslist-like site
>go meet the seller to make the transaction in person
>arrive to the place, see one of those weird tiny modern cars parked
>car door opens, it's an attractive dark haired woman calling me to enter the car
>sit next to her
>she pulls out the Virtual Boy
>starts telling me how she had it as a kid and doesn't really want to let it go but she needs the money and she isn't really using it anymore, but has a sentimental attachment to it
>I test the system and the games to make sure it works
>she gets all nostalgic while hearing the sounds coming out of the VB
>working fine, so I pay her for the system and games
>tells me that she hopes one day she can buy it again from me
>we chit chat a little bit more and then I leave
She was a belly dancer and very talkative. I was a loser who had a gf at the time so I didn't make any further moves, regret it.
The good thing is that, while most other Virtual Boy units were probably used by spergy kids, I have one that was used by a hot girl. This is important because you have to place your face "on" the VB.
Read it
3DS is the only system where the 3D works
I had this thing and couldn't play it for more than 30 minutes at a time or else my eyes would start to hurt. Other than that I don't remember much. I think I hurt my aunt's feelings because I didn't like it that much.