Nintendo Virtual Boy hands-on: the 3D game console of your childhood dreams is back
$99 for the best piece of 1990’s Nintendo nostalgia
📣 The Virtual Boy is back as a $99 Switch Accessory
📦 Also available as a $25 cardboard version
🥽 Uses any Switch (except the Switch Lite) screen to recreate the stereoscopic 3D gaming experience
🎮 Seven games are available on the February 17 launch
👾 Nine more Virtual Boy games announced as on the way
🕹️ Playing Virtual Boy games is the ultimate nostalgia trip
🧊 Seeing Nintendo’s pioneering 3D gameplay is a revelation
🫣 Nintendo hasn’t fixed the eye strain, unfortunately
If you grew up in the 90s like me, the Virtual Boy was the console you probably saw at Toys “R” Us or EB Games but never actually owned. Well, now for $99 you can finally own that 3D console of your childhood dreams, as Nintendo has revived its stereoscopic 3D console as a Switch accessory. With it, you’ll finally be able to play all the Virtual Boy games you most likely missed, or reminisce about them dearly if you were lucky enough to buy the console in the single year it was originally on sale.
I played the Virtual Boy for over 30 minutes at a Nintendo Switch 2 preview event last week, and it delivers on the red-tinted 3D graphics of the original 1995 console. There are seven games ready to play from the Nintendo Switch Online service, and another nine on their way. It’s a trip to see how Nintendo’s original take on 3D gaming decades before the Oculus Rift or the new influx of 3D gaming monitors.
If you pined for a Virtual Boy as much as I did as a child – and you already own a Switch console with the Online Pass + Expansion Pack – you owe it to yourself to get this $99 Virtual Boy accessory and experience the stereoscopic 3D gaming you missed out on in 1995.
🥽 The original VR headset. Before the Apple Vision Pro, Oculus Rift, or HTC Vive, Nintendo pioneered 3D gaming in 1995, and now it’s come full circle. It’s awe-inspiring to see how innovatively Nintendo added depth to its games when Wario suddenly jumps from the foreground to the background. Alternatively, Tetris is transformed into a whole other game when you’re moving blocks in three dimensions.
🎮 Games on demand. Nintendo has brought a small collection of Virtual Boy games back, including Teleroboxer, Galactic Pinball, Red Alarm, Golf, Virtual Boy Wario Land, and 3-D Tetris. The small library also includes games that were never released in the US, such as The Mansion of Innsmouth.
There are also more titles on the way as Nintendo has teased future releases, including Mario Clash, Mario Tennis, Jack Bros, Space Invaders Virtual Collection, Virtual Bowling, Vertical Force, V-Tetris, and two more previously unreleased games: Zero Racers and D-Hopper. That’s 16 out of the Virtual Boys’ 22-game library, and hopefully it’ll be complete by the end of the year.
🟥 It looks like Darth Vader’s bathroom. As much as I love the blast from the past Virtual Boy graphics, Nintendo hasn’t solved the eye strain issue, unfortunately. Within 10 minutes of playing, I had to give my eyes a rest and look away from the bright red world of the Virtual Boy. The good news is Nintendo plans on adding a feature that lets you change the color of Virtual Boy games, so you can get away from purely bright red graphics. From launch, you can also remap controls and rewind Virtual Boy games played through the Switch Online service.
💳 It’s just plastic. Right as I was getting too excited about the return of the Virtual Boy, I realized that this “console” is actually just a plastic accessory. Admittedly, it’s a really elaborate piece of plastic with a pair of optics inside, but there’s nothing electronic about the new Virtual Boy. The whole thing works by simply standing it up and then opening the top to insert the Switch 2 that acts as the display.
🎛️ The knobs, they do nothing! Since the new Virtual Boy is just a piece of plastic, the knobs on top of the console that used to adjust focus and IDP don’t actually work. It’s a bit of a letdown, but Nintendo tells me this was intentional, as the Virtual Boy’s optics are already locked in with the precise focal distance for anyone to just peer through the binocular eyepiece and start playing.
🪃 Backwards compatible. The Nintendo Virtual Boy works with the Switch OLED and original Switch console on top of the Switch 2. That means you could convert almost your old Switch – except the Switch Lite – into a permanent Virtual Boy console if you also own a Switch 2. The Switch OLED should work especially well since its OLED screen will display perfect and true blacks that blend perfectly with the Virtual Boy’s red-tinted graphics.
💸 The cheaper option. If $100 is too much to simply play Virtual Boy games, Nintendo has also released a $25 cardboard version. It’s not nearly as comfortable as the standing binocular eyepiece since you’re basically using a head-mounted Switch 2, but it gets the job done.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.