Virtual Boy

[Anonymous No.3924573]

What went wrong?

[Anonymous No.3924582]

>>3924573
It was made to early.

It's a interesting device, with some pretty neat games, but it has it's limitations.

Hell, even now VR pretty basic.

[Anonymous No.3924584]

>>3924573
It was too good for this world

[Anonymous No.3924585]

It's not virtual and it's not portable

[Anonymous No.3924597]

>>3924582
To expand on that, LEDs were still fairly expensive when the Virtual Boy was made, especially for colors other than red, so to keep costs reasonable, the display used only red LEDs.
Another way they kept the costs down was by using only a single column of LEDs and using a mirror scanning back and forth to create a full display (persistence of vision)

Most people who get headaches from the VB either have the Inter-pupilitary Distance set wrong, or are motion sensitive and get affected by the scanning mirror.

Given the VBs high price and limited display, it just didn't really catch on.

[Anonymous No.3924650]

>>3924573
Its complete & utter failure is what has made it so collectable nowadays.
An american copy of jack bros goes for like 400$

[Anonymous No.3924652]

>>3924573
It's very tragic.

[Anonymous No.3925573]

>>3924585
This

[Anonymous No.3925579]

>>3924597
Also, Nintendo oddly went with the "Boy" name for it, implying it was a portable. But I don't know if they ever meant it to be a handheld system, if anything it feels like they were trying to copy the success of the Game Boy by borrowing the name. Similarly to the Wii and Wii U, this confused people and led, in the Virtual Boy's case, to consumer perception of the device as a portable. In reality, being packaged with a tripod and having a wired controller imply it to be a home console, especially considering that the visor doesn't have any sort of straps. Only the "Boy" name and AA batteries imply otherwise.

[Anonymous No.3925587]

>>3924650
>collectible
I have three of them, and all together they couldn't have been more than maybe $100. Normalfags don't like things that are this obscure, thankfully

[Anonymous No.3925709]

>>3925587
Nowadays a complete Virtual Boy sells for a good $150. Back around 2005 when people started looking fondly at the library, prices were around $70.

[Anonymous No.3925713]

>>3924573
just awkward to play
rather do n64

[Anonymous No.3925734]

>>3925709
Except that it doesn't. Two of my virtual boys are fully functional and I bought them last year for about $30 each

[Anonymous No.3925761]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXaejFAtzNQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvpEuPncWfA

This YouTube channel does a great job of summarizing everything that went wrong with the Virtual Boy.

I was 12 in 1995 and still using a SNES since many of the games were really cheap due to the Sega Saturn's release and the impending Playstation release. 3d0 and Jaguar were both barely alive at this point and I couldn't even find a Neo Geo CD anywhere (I was interested, but heard about the horrible load times and the $400 price tag was too high). Cd-i was dead. 32X was dying too.

The mid 90's had too many damn gaming consoles. When Nintendo pitched this idea, it was at the wrong time. With half a dozen console failures already, people didn't want to go all in with the Virtual Boy. Most people either:

1. Were sticking with SNES until the release of the (Ultra) Nintendo 64.

2. Were still sega fans and on board with the Saturn that had launched before everything else in May of that year (not a huge group, but still significant)

3. Were waiting to buy a Playstation due to the promise of killer launch/near after lauch titles like Ridge Racer, Warhawk, Toshinden, Tekken, Twisted Metal, etc.

4. Were waiting until 1996 or later to buy a console after one had proven to be the winner of the generation and were not interested in the cartridge based N64. Once PlayStation began to dominate from 1995-1996, that was the console most people went for.

Virtual boy was nothing more than a possible add-on portable console for fans of Nintendo. It didn't have any killer-apps and most people who tried it at Sears or Toys R Us complained about headaches after playing for more than 5 minutes.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.3925791]

>>3924582
fpbp - It needed to be lighter and wearable with head tracking and white (or full color) leds

[Anonymous No.3926136]

>>3924573
Literally nothing, Gunpei's gift to mankind

[Anonymous No.3926147]

>>3926136
This.
It's not the VB that's wrong, it's the world.

[Anonymous No.3926159]

>>3925761
Those videos are absolute cringe

[Anonymous No.3926572]

In the end the virtual boy will have the last laugh.

[Anonymous No.3926637]

>>3924573
Honestly, I think the concept of using rotating mirrors to scan a pixel array (or even a single pixel with the use of two sets of mirrors, one for x and one for y) might be the way forward for VR. Built using modern technology you could create a display with CRT levels of low latency with 100+Hz refresh rates, and potentially very high resolutions. There's probably a bunch of reasons why this wouldn't work out, but I'm surprised nobody has tried it with this generation of CAR, especially considering there are commercially available scanning laser projectors.

[Anonymous No.3926754]

>>3924573
Absence of analog stick in the center of pad resulted in flop

[Anonymous No.3926764]

>>3925734
Well then buddy if they're so easy to get why don't you go out and get another few for pennies and I'll be more than willing to pay for one plus shopping

[Anonymous No.3927440]

Bump

[Anonymous No.3928773]

>>3924652
I want to fuck that carrot.

[Anonymous No.3931750]

Nothing.

[Anonymous No.3931752]

>>3931750
That's a pretty classy box art.

[Anonymous No.3931773]

>>3924573
boring red and black graphics and it hurts the hell out of your eyes. Also not portable AT ALL despite being marketed as a portable system

t. someone who has played a virtual boy

[Anonymous No.3931775]

>>3931773
>it hurts the hell out of your eyes
>t. someone who didn't bother to adjust the DPI and Focus switches


ftfy sempai

[Anonymous No.3931776]

>>3928773

[Anonymous No.3931783]

>>3931775
you're probably right. The system really only has two good games though wario land and teleroboxer. the rest range from mediocre (red alarm) to awful (waterworld)

[Anonymous No.3931787]

>>3931783
Red Alarm is cool if you like wireframe graphics, and the gameplay is actually surprisingly responsive, only problem is that it's a bit disorienting.
The rest of the games are pretty decent for the most part, only Waterworld is really bad.

[Anonymous No.3931814]

>>3931787
> it's a bit disorienting.

also looks like a half finished game to me. Mario's tennis is about as bland as you can get. I mean it's an interesting system overall but meh

[Anonymous No.3931819]

>>3931814
Mario's Tennis is a pretty nice Tennis game, very simple but is pretty well made.
I agree it's an interesting system but it does have its issues, mostly ergonomics. And the small library, but again, compared to most other failed systems, the VB has a pretty good ratio of good to bad games, most of them can be passed as good, even if they're nothing special outside of the ones you mentioned before.
also, VB has a very dedicated scene that is making content for the VB via flashcart. Such as unreleased games or ports.

[Anonymous No.3932637]

I feel it needed more piloting/FPS games on it. The games on it are actually not that bad to look at and the 3D works quite well. Teleroboxer is hella fun and Mario Clash looks crisp and clean. Its unfortunate that a lot of E-celebs trash it making it garner this mediocre system. Not to mention, most people who trash talked it probably never really played it anyway. Its a fun experience but the development, design of the system, and lack of a library in the west kinda destroyed the system. To early of an idea and you couldn't even show the games in advertising due to it being such an anti-social device.
TL;DR Could of been amazing if it was designed better.

[babbage's gramps !RATGzMALLY No.3932713]

>>3926637
The reason it wouldn't work out is that the LED line would have to have a frequency of the perceived display frequency multiplied by the number of times it was being duplicated per frame. A system like that is good for when you want to increase the resolution in exchange for decreasing the frequency. Technologically we're currently at a point where it's harder to make shit more powerful (increasing frequencies, clock speeds etc) than it is to make it smaller (increasing resolutions, decreasing weight and energy consumption) that's why everything is just more cores, more memory, more storage all while not using any more power or getting more expensive.

It just now occurs to me that you COULD increase frequency this way by for example dividing a 4k display into 4 1080p sections and using some kind of optics to focus and flicker them for a single viewer so... We'll see, I guess.

[Anonymous No.3933445]

I would love if there was some way to capture this game's music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzjM1fSevEI

[Anonymous No.3934021]

>>3932713
Stop talking out your ass.

Assuming you want a 4k/100fps scanning LED display, then the LEDs need to be refreshed at about 380 kHz (100Hz*3840).
That's easily achievable.

LEDs can tun on in a few nanoseconds, and turn off in a few tens of nanoseconds.
Running these LEDs at 380 kHz means that the leds are being refreshed every 2,600 nanoseconds, approximately a one hundred times longer than the minimum refresh time.

[Anonymous No.3934023]

>>3933445
Did you check on virtual boy planet? These guys have ripped VB games soundtracks.

[Anonymous No.3935198]

Bump

[Anonymous No.3936336]

>>3924573
Not enough Jack Bros sequels

[Anonymous No.3938810]

>>3936336
word

[Anonymous No.3938936]

Nintendo wanted to make the 3DS but were about 2 decades too early

[Anonymous No.3938961]

>2017
>Still no VB Wario Land on the 3DS Virtual Console
Holy shit, Nintendo, this is your best Wario Land!

[Anonymous No.3940689]

>>3924573
its a gimmick like the switch to pad the console for people who had more money.

[Anonymous No.3941810]

>>3931776
The head is so big

[Anonymous No.3942854]

>>3938961

>bi plane crashes
>all those poke-y things
>hidden rooms
>gambling with bats
>dragon hat
>spear-chucking cookie bears
>spikes errywhere
>POKE
> Du-doo-do Do-dwupe

This game was made to have AAs sacrificed to it.

[Anonymous No.3943272]

>>3924573
without taking marketing/finances into account, the worst about the virtual boy was that it needed batteries. The power adapter was not included, so it ran out of power and you needed to get more batteries/recharge etc too frequently.

I think most people that talk against the virtual boy didn't really play it much. Even games that wouldn't be special on their own, become a totally different experience in that dark "sensory deprivation" blindfold where you can only see the game in red 3d. After playing for a while it feels like you're dreaming, transported to a parallel world. Especially noticeable when you "come out to the real world"; it is similar to the feeling after coming out of a long movie in the cinema but even stronger.

[Anonymous No.3945207]

>>3924652
>>3931776

[Anonymous No.3945212]

>>3924573
It's an uncomfortable piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.3945897]

>>3938810
This and the robot boxing game was amazing.
Its weird how they haven't tried to put any of it on 3DS virtual console yet.

[Anonymous No.3946948]

>>3926159
Jesus anon, your cringe threshold must be incredibly low. They aren't stellar videos but they're better than at least half the vidya content on youtube that tries to be informative or educational.