It’s that most thrilling time, the dawn of a new hardware generation. It’s gaming Christmas! As a critic, that means it’s time for that finest tradition – an intense period of bedding in with a new piece of hardware, vigorously road-testing it so that we can inform you, our delightful readers, if this thrilling new piece of tech is worth your money.
But this isn’t a Nintendo Switch 2 review, for reasons that will become clear. The new hardware that I’ve been testing is Nintendo’s controversially expensive handheld – the Virtual Boy.
To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Virtual Boy reviewDeveloper: NintendoPublisher: NintendoPlatform: Played on Virtual BoyAvailability: Out on August 14, 1995.
I know, I know. The Virtual Boy isn’t new. In a little over a month’s time it’ll be 30 years old, in fact. Nintendo’s greatest swing and miss, the Virtual Boy holds the dubious honor of being a console discontinued within a year of its release. Well under 1,000,000 units were sold. For comparison’s sake, The N-Gage sold 3,000,000. 3,000,000 side-talkers! I’m getting sidetracked.
All of that probably speaks to why I, an incorrigible retro game anorak, had never owned one. Hell, I’d never one. The closest I’d ever come is peering into a Virtual Boy demo station at the Nintendo Museum – which in a bizarre twist is actually a Nintendo Switch with some goggles grafted on, emulating the VB’s best.