Virtual Boy

The Virtual Boy was a fifth-generation system developed by Nintendo and released in 1995. It consisted of a red box on black legs, with a black visor that players would look into in order to see gameplay. It was developed by Gunpei Yokoi, who previously made the Game & Watch and Game Boy, alongside Reflection Technologies, who had previously pitched the idea to SEGA before they turned it down. It was able to generate 3D imaged by using mirror-scanning technology inside the visor, which oscillate with the player's eye movements to create the thickness of an image. Due to the limited hardware, images could only be shown in four shades of red, including black, and stereo sound emitted from the self-contained speaker system found on either end of the visor. It would also automatically pause gameplay every 15 minutes in order to mitigate potential eye problems.
The Virtual Boy was released in 1995 in order to tide fans over for the release of the Nintendo 64, which released a year after its competitors, the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. However, it was a commercial failure and a fiasco when it released, only selling 770,000 units in its lifetime before being discontinued the following year. Many consumers were not willing to invest more money into such an experimental system with the N64 on the way, and those who did buy it complained about the lack of portability and headaches that gameplay caused after a matter of minutes. Due to its failing, it was never released in Europe or Australia, and various games planned for it, including a proof-of-concept Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest remake, were cancelled.
While the Virtual Boy was far and away Nintendo's biggest console failure, today it and its library have become collector's items. Years later, Nintendo would successfully implement 3D effects on a handheld with the Nintendo 3DS. It has also become a joke among the Nintendo community, and even Nintendo themselves poke fun at its failure from time to time, with it making cameos in various games, the most notable example being Luigi using the Virtual Boo in Luigi's Mansion 3, which is designed right after the Virtual Boy.
==List of Virtual Boy Games==
Any page that has Category:Virtual Boy Games on them will be added here automatically.
==Boxart gallery==
3131 virtual-boy-prev.png|Virtual Boy Cover Example
Category:Handheld Consoles
Category:Portable Consoles
Category:Nintendo Consoles
Category:Non-fanon Systems