About The Nintendo Virtual Boy Console

The Virtual Boy is a 32 bit console developed and released by Nintendo originally in 1995. This strange looking device was ahead of its time and was Nintendo’s first dive into virtual reality gaming. The player would place the console up to their eyes similar to how gamers use VR headsets today except the VB only output a red monochrome colored display.

Games on the system used a parallax effect to simulate depth and gave the illusion of an immersive somewhat virtual reality like experience. The Virtual Boy was not the commercial success that Nintendo hoped it would be. There was a total of only 22 games released for it before it was taken down off of store shelves in 1996 just one year after its initial release.

Nintendo developed the system over the course of 4 years leading up to its release and it was code named VR32. The console’s technology changed multiple times during development for various reasons. Some say it was due to reducing costs where possible where others claim it was potential health issues related to the tech. Ultimately, one thing is certain, Nintendo at the time was pouring a lot of resources into the development of the Nintendo 64.

The Virtual Boy eventually was released to store shelves in a somewhat unfinished state in terms of vision. By all counts the system failed to gather market share even after continuously having its priced decreased. The Virtual Boy sold less than 1 million units total, becoming Nintendo’s worst selling console to date. The next worst selling console would later be the Wii U which sold just 13.6 million units.

How To Emulate The Virtual Boy

Emulating the Virtual Boy is rather easy these days and can be done using the RetroArch Virtual Boy core, Beetle VB. RetroArch is an emulation frontend that lets gamers install various different cores for systems they want to emulate. It runs VB games very well and considering how small the library is, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the developers were able to optimize most of the games.

The cool things about Beetle VB is that you can choose different colors schemes to use instead of just red. The following color palettes are available using the Analglyph presets with the palette core option set to black and red:

• Anaglyph preset off

• Anaglyph preset red and blue

• Anaglyph preset red and cyan

• Anaglyph preset red and electric cyan

• Anaglyph preset red and green

• Anaglyph preset yellow and blue