Of course, several of the games weren't worth the plastic they were printed on, as the Angry Video Game Nerd can tell you. Other interesting applications of the Virtual Boy's 3D technology (which was invented in Massachusetts, not far from PAX East) include Teleroboxer, a boxing game with an intuitive control scheme that uses both D-pads and Vertical Force, a shmup in which the ship can descend and ascend. It's the first game I played after getting home from PAX, and it lasted me a good hour. Mario Clash's 40 levels challenge players to knock enemies off ledges in multiple dimensions, sometimes requiring throwing shells "into" and "out of" the screen to hit fiends on the Z-axis. game that has Mario romping through the sewers, jumping on turtles. My favorite is Mario Clash, a variation on the original Mario Bros. No one country enjoyed all 22 games, but several of those released in the USA were actually quite a bit of fun. It and two other Virtual Boy games, Waterworld and Nester's Funky Bowling, were exclusive to the United States, while eight other games were never ported from Japan.
VIRTUAL BOY SOFTWARE
But its lack of portability, weak software library, screenshot-free nature, and antisocial design combined to make it a faster failure than even the Sega Dreamcast: the Virtual Boy was discontinued 15 years ago this month, on March 2, 1996.īut it wasn't until three weeks later, on March 22 - today - that the system's official death knell sounded with the release of its final game, 3D Tetris. The Virtual Boy, released on August 14, 1995, was Nintendo's only 32-bit system and the supposed successor to the overwhelming success of the Game Boy line. When I got home, rather than pre-order the 3DS in anticipation of its March 27 release, I dusted off Nintendo's previous 3D system. With so much else to see at the convention, waiting hours to try a system that would be commercially available in mere weeks seemed a poor investment. At PAX East, the line to try the Nintendo 3DS handheld wrapped around Nintendo's meager booth.