I’m very cautious when it comes to handling my Virtual Boy. I guess it’s always good to be cautious but, how delicate is the Virtual Boy, really?

(Break = being unable to play it, not cracks in the plastic)
Does it break if you should drop it and it hits the floor? (probably)
Does it break if you shake it while it’s on? (I would think so, due to the mirrors inside and stuff)
Does it break if you travel and have it in you bag?
Does it break if you should hit it slightly?

I have 4 VBs, and all came from the other side of this world (!)
I am Greek and I had all four machines shipped from US.
This is a long journey, including lot of shaking and tossing. I can say that all 4 machines survived this crash test !
The one and only REAL problem is that damn glue, Nintendo used to their displays >:(

I used to think they were very fragile. Vibrating mirrors, left/right eye ribbon cables.

About a month ago my JPN VB (in the 133k serial range) took a drop 4 feet onto a shallow stiff carpet. I thought it was done for.
Powered her on, she works fine, no glitchy eyes even.

I think I was just lucky, the parts seems very sensitive in nature. I have 3 VBs at my house, so I just tried to pretend it didn’t happen.

I have a NOS VB unit that I de-virginized that got a glitchy eye in less than 48 hours with nothing but pure pampering. If You have a NOS VB unit, please take serious care with the IPD adjustment knob.

I would say in general it is more fragile than most game systems because of the vibrating mirrors. Even if dropping it doesn’t damage anything it might screw up the alignment somewhere, because there are a lot of steps in the image creation that could get messed up. And of course we already know about the glitchy displays.

I think the external case of the VB is not fragile, but it’s the internals you should be worried about.