That’s the most thrilling kind of instant—the rollout of an entirely new wave of hardware. It’s gaming Christmas. For me as a reviewer, it marks the start of a long-loved ritual: getting to grips with brand-new tech, putting it through its paces, and then letting you—our great readers—know whether this fresh device is actually worth opening your wallet for.
That said, don’t expect a Nintendo Switch 2 review here, because the answer is about to become obvious. The system I’ve been putting through its paces is Nintendo’s other wildly debated handheld: the Virtual Boy.
Yes, I understand. The Virtual Boy isn’t exactly new. In just over a month, it’ll reach the grand age of 30 years. Nintendo’s biggest misstep, the Virtual Boy, also carries the awkward distinction of being a console that got shelved less than a year after it first launched. Fewer than 1,000,000 units found homes. For comparison, the N-Gage moved 3,000,000—3,000,000 side-talkers! Anyway, I’m drifting.
That likely explains why I—an unapologetic retro gaming fan—had never owned one. In fact, I’d never even played one. The closest I came was stopping to watch a Virtual Boy demo station at the Nintendo Museum—which, in a twist only Nintendo could manage, is basically a Nintendo Switch with goggles attached, reproducing the VB’s most memorable strengths.
As you’ve probably guessed—nice work—that isn’t the case anymore. I bought one. Honestly, I got a phone call from a media relations contact who, quite carefully, told me Nintendo wouldn’t be sending media a Switch 2 unit well before release. So, there will be no Eurogamer review of the Switch 2 before release day. I cleared time on my work calendar to get as much play as possible with the Switch 2 and its 22 launch games, and yet I was left stuck. Still, that number kept echoing in my head—22. Another system had that many games…
Nintendo’s update landed late on a Friday, and shortly after, I was in a pub. After a few too many drinks, I ended up on an auction website and ended up spending far more than I’m comfortable admitting on the only Nintendo machine I’d never owned, plus most of the 22 games it released. So yes, you really are getting a review—just not the one you expected.
The Virtual Boy is… pretty decent, actually. That’s my main takeaway, stated plainly. The whole cycle of gaming tall tales—kept alive by older articles and videos that write it off as one of the worst ideas Nintendo ever put on shelves—didn’t fully prepare me for the realization that… yes, it has its flaws. But it also has that Nintendo magic. And a number of the games are genuinely enjoyable.
The range is broad, from experiences that lean heavily on the Virtual Boy’s 3D effect to more standard-style games that are simply enhanced by it. In my view, the second group tends to be the strongest. This doesn’t feel like the immersive virtual reality you see today, largely because—despite the name—this still isn’t really VR. You’ll want to recalibrate your expectations. Essentially, the VB is a way to deliver a 3D display in a manner closer to the Nintendo 3DS, and its best games were designed with that in mind.
Virtual Boy Wario Land, the second entry in that beloved series, is a traditional platformer that feels remarkably close to the 1994 Game Boy original—while pushing the 3D effect to its limit. Enemies pop in and out from the back to the front of the screen, and obstacles spin into and out of the action area in ways clearly aimed at maximizing that depth. If you’ve followed Nintendo’s newer releases, you may have already bumped into a title that borrows directly from VB Wario Land’s approach—the neat foreground-to-background transitions in Donkey Kong Country Returns were directly inspired by this less famous game.
Mario’s Tennis is another highlight here: the ball streaks straight at you, while the game uses depth perception to present a match from a slightly different angle than what was typical at the time, tilted a bit further down behind the player character. It’s also interesting to remember that, with the first Mario Tennis (and therefore the first Mario Sports game) already under its belt, the Virtual Boy left a longer-lasting mark on Nintendo’s franchises than the Wii U.
As someone who loves RPGs, I want to spotlight Jack Bros—a Virtual Boy exclusive that features Jack Frost from Persona and Shin Megami Tensei. Red Alarm is a shooter in the style of Star Fox that makes good use of the 3D effect and brings out some Tron-like energy. Teleroboxer is Punch-Out!!!, only with robots, and those punches come flying toward you in three dimensions. I also genuinely appreciate Vertical Force, a hidden gem from Hudson Soft, which uses the 3D layers to create a subtly different kind of shmup. With two separate Tetris releases, nearly ten percent of the Virtual Boy’s catalog is made up of versions of Alexey Pajitnov’s perfect game—and both are excellent. 3D Tetris puts a strange, distinctive spin on Tetris’s core ideas, though it can be hard at times to figure out exactly what’s happening.
As I keep swapping cartridges in and out—and carefully working my way past the “this may harm your eyesight” message each time—I’m struck by how the more I play, the more I realize that many of the ways these games use the technology feel remarkably similar to several Nintendo 3DS implementations.
Only 16 years earlier, and monochrome.
What’s most compelling is that using the real hardware makes it obvious the Virtual Boy doesn’t quite achieve the same effect. Whether you watch footage from emulation or clips captured directly through a camera, everything looks intensely, well… red. Up close, though, the lenses and the way the screen is arranged help soften that broad crimson wash, revealing more nuance and distinct layers. In short, it works much better in person than any YouTube upload could ever suggest. But don’t rely on my take—let’s hear from the tech specialists at Digital Foundry, who are also keen to put a Switch 2 through its paces.
Now I’ll hand things over to DF’s own John Linneman:
The Digital Foundry Assessment
If you’ve been keeping up with Digital Foundry for the last few years, you’ll likely know about my long-standing admiration for the Cathode Ray Tube. CRT televisions deliver a level of motion sharpness that’s still extremely hard to match on flat panels. Even now, that experience feels remarkable. So, you might ask: what does that have to do with Virtual Boy? The answer is that the Virtual Boy’s distinctive display design includes a feature I didn’t fully understand until I bought my own unit in 2024.
As it turns out, the two oscillating mirror screens—aiming for a 384×224 resolution at 2 bits per pixel—can produce an image detail level that genuinely surprised me. To be blunt, it’s the closest I’ve personally seen to CRT-style motion clarity on a non-CRT display. As those red pixels ripple across the screen, there’s not even the smallest hint of ghosting or motion blur from persistence. It’s spot-on. Vertical Force from Hudson and Nintendo’s own Virtual Boy Wario Land demonstrate this particularly well. One interesting point: the display refreshes only at 50hz, so games run at 50 frames per second—matching the PAL TV standard. Still, because of the way the system is built, it isn’t a real concern.
Unfortunately, I think that same motion clarity may also play a role in the (slightly) heightened reports of eye strain that people jokingly bring up. “The Virtual Boy will give you headaches,” they claim. Nintendo even tells players to pause every so often. So what’s going on? Since the system effectively forms the image line by line while using oscillating mirrors to translate a 224-pixel-tall column into a complete 384-wide output, it can introduce a faint flicker that some viewers—especially those more prone to discomfort—may notice. That’s also the mechanism behind its motion clarity, since the operation is similar to an electron beam inside a CRT monitor.
There’s another advantage that often gets overlooked, though: the design lets the Virtual Boy present its bright red pixels on a true black background. Because it isn’t a backlit screen, it achieves excellent contrast—making it feel like you’re surrounded by darkness while red pixels appear to move in front of you. And while that alone would be impressive, even without stereoscopic 3D, the 3D effect is central to the Virtual Boy experience and lands with real impact.
By splitting the two 3D images for each eye, there’s no crosstalk, resulting in an effectively flawless stereoscopic view. Only standalone head-mounted displays can really compete with this, and the effect still holds up well today. The 3D looks bold and is used effectively to convey depth.
On top of that, the system’s built-in audio is excellent. The speakers are loud and clear, creating convincingly immersive 3D sound around the player. As you adjust your head position, the title screen of Galactic Pinball wraps around you, almost like it’s echoing inside your head. And speaking of Galactic Pinball, it’s worth noting that after finishing the superb Super Metroid, people from that same development team went on to build this new pinball release for Virtual Boy.
…and it’s that specific lineage that genuinely grabbed my attention when I played Virtual Boy titles. It feels as if Nintendo gave us a chance to step into an alternate timeline where it stuck with 2D pixel art rather than fully committing to 3D like the Nintendo 64. With the stronger VB hardware and the higher resolution it offered, the team could create larger sprites and add more animation frames than Nintendo had shown before. In that sense, it feels a lot like Nintendo’s take on Sega’s Saturn: a serious 2D powerhouse that stays fast and fun even decades later. And, thanks to the homebrew scene, we’ve even seen games like Street Fighter II return on Virtual Boy—and they look fantastic.
Sure, Virtual Boy has its downsides, which we discuss in this deeper review, but it still manages to deliver something genuinely distinctive in Nintendo’s history—something you really can’t fully understand without putting your face up against that gaudy red visor and its dual oscillating screens. If you get the chance, I recommend trying it for yourself.
That’s the gist of it. Thanks, John. I’m genuinely impressed by how closely it echoes modern 3D, in a way. Maybe it truly was ahead of its time after all. I can also add that across several multi-hour sessions, I never ran into the severe headaches or migraines I’d been warned about—though, naturally, that’s a very personal experience. The main issue I noticed was sore back pain from bending over to fit into the headset, and that’s where my complaints start.
Looking back, it’s easy to be wise after the fact, but it’s still fair to say this surprisingly fun setup comes with obvious red flags. First off, it’s a “portable” device that’s enormous, and it burns through six double-A batteries for only about four hours of play—putting it in the same realm as the Sega Game Gear. The portability claim falls apart even more when you realize it has to be used at a table on a stand, which meant my posture felt like it was hurting as my intervertebral discs seemed to start degrading in real time. There’s also no head strap.
Once I adjusted it for my eyes, I was genuinely impressed by how clear the screens looked, and the sharpness of the red-and-black monochrome display is commendable for a device from this era. I’d always assumed the visuals were poor because of grainy footage, but aside from the whole red-and-black look, it’s actually quite acceptable.
Leaning awkwardly toward the tabletop and holding a controller that’s ergonomically fine yet far too heavy (credit the batteries here—they’re in the controller, not the headset), it becomes easy to see why it would be a struggle. Overall, it’s a shockingly impractical device, and the idea that it’s genuinely portable may be Nintendo’s biggest oversight of all time.
Arguably the worst part is how ridiculous you look using it. The same is true of modern virtual reality. In the last
…after twenty-five years, we still haven’t solved that dilemma.
Spending time with the Virtual Boy also brings Nintendo’s wider story to mind. When I toured the Nintendo Museum, I was surprised to find the Virtual Boy displayed alongside other systems, complete with a similar level of confidently presented merchandise. Now that I own one, I see what it represents: it’s an essential, standout chapter in Nintendo’s history, even with all its flaws. So, as a new chapter is getting underway, it feels right to revisit this well-known failure.
What’s especially interesting is that, after putting in a lot of playtime, I’ve come to regard the Virtual Boy much the same way I see the Wii U—as another misstep. It was unquestionably the more serious commercial letdown, yet the Virtual Boy includes several promising technical ideas that its games bring to the surface, even with a comparatively small library. You can clearly see Nintendo’s core focus on making gameplay the star, and in this case that approach really holds up. There are genuinely admirable elements here that don’t translate easily anywhere else, and that matters. I also expect I’ll return to my Virtual Boy sooner than I ever will to the Wii U. Even though the Wii U, as hardware, was undeniably more polished than the awkward two-tone look of the Virtual Boy, it still comes off rather drab. The Virtual Boy, though, feels different—it’s a slice of history that deserves to be celebrated.
It’s also a reminder of Nintendo right now: some people criticize the company for launching a system that’s essentially a refinement of earlier concepts. I’ve mentioned this before, but Nintendo doesn’t have to roll out a brand-new novelty act with every release just to keep interest alive. Too many gimmicks turn into stumbling blocks, and all we have to do is look at the VB and Wii U to see that. The real challenge is the careful craft of a platform leader—finding the right balance between attention-grabbing new features and leaning on what has already worked, while keeping games front and center.
We’ll just have to see how well the Switch 2 holds up once it’s possible to try it beyond tightly controlled preview conditions. Naturally, that window is closing quickly. By the time you’re reading this, the process has likely already started. Whatever the results, it’s unlikely to become another Virtual Boy. In a way, I’m glad my Switch 2 review plans fell apart—because it left me with a genuinely enjoyable history lesson.
A Virtual Boy was purchased by Alex, at his own substantial cost, for review instead of the Switch 2.