Hi all, I’m just now getting into VB. I bought a broken unit off ebay, soldered it myself, and I’m hooked! While waiting for the VB and games to arrive, I did some research online to try and put together a ranked list of all 22 releases. I pooled scores across a bunch of review sites, giving more weight to aggregate scores, and less to individual reviewers to reduce bias. I can share the data if anyone wants, but here’s the ranked list I put together, from best to worst:

Virtual Boy Wario Land
Galactic Pinball
Mario Clash
Teleroboxer
Mario’s Tennis
Jack Bros
Red Alarm
Space Squash
Nester’s Funky Bowling
Vertical Force
Panic Bomber
V-Tetris
Golf
Virtual League Baseball
Virtual Bowling
3D Tetris
Space Invaders Virtual Collection
Insmouse no Yakata
Virtual Fishing
Virtual Lab
SD Gundam Dimension War
Waterworld

I’ve only played a couple of these titles, so I can’t weigh it against my personal opinion, but I’ll probably steer my purchasing decisions based off this list (at least to begin with.) Thought I’d share it in case anyone’s interested.

Yeah my list would be in a way different order. I don’t know how Baseball got way up there =P

My personal top three are Mario’s Tennis, Wario Land and Vertical Force. Probably in that order.

Ok, and I just now noticed that PlanetVB has its own reader ratings of each game! I went ahead and added them in, and it caused quite a few upsets. Jack Bros, Red Alarm, and Nester came up, while Golf and Baseball went down. Among other changes. No luck for Waterworld.

Virtual Boy Wario Land
Galactic Pinball
Mario Clash
Jack Bros
Red Alarm
Teleroboxer
Mario’s Tennis
Space Squash
Vertical Force
Panic Bomber
Nester’s Funky Bowling
V-Tetris
Space Invaders Virtual Collection
Virtual Bowling
Golf
3D Tetris
Insmouse no Yakata
Virtual League Baseball
SD Gundam Dimension War
Virtual Fishing
Virtual Lab
Waterworld

It’s so subjective. Personally, I’d put Waterworld in the top 5, but I know that makes me a bit of a freak. And as a pinball player, let me tell you just how bad Galactic Pinball is – why couldn’t they have made something that resembles real pinball???

Best of the best (in no particular order):
Wario Land
Mario Clash
Red Alarm (lousy graphics, but fun gameplay)
Virtual Bowling (more “professional” than the goofy Nester’s Funky Bowling)
Golf (awesome graphics, and some really good gameplay)
Waterworld (it’s like a 3D Space Invaders, and the challenge builds at the perfect rate)

Worst of the worst:
Panic Bomber
Space Squash (soooooooo slow – no challenge. If someone unlocks 2 player, could be fun)
Baseball (sprites are too small)
Gundam (incredibly boring – no challenge)
Virtual Lab (looks like someone made it as a junior-high project)

I don’t know how Mario Clash ranks so high. No matter how long I play it, I can’t enjoy it. Everyone says it’s like Mario Bros. with a foreground and background. That is a lie, where did hitting enemies from under the floor go? Where’s the POW block?? Instead, you have to jump on Koopas and throw their shells from across the foreground/background gap. The problem for me is the VB’s 3D video makes it extremely hard to gauge distance. I constantly miss targets because of that. Why couldn’t there be little markers on the floor to help? Even making the floor a pattern of blocks would have been an immense improvement.

My Virtual Boy retail top 5 looks more like this:

VB Wario Land
Mario’s Tennis
Galactic Pinball
Teleroboxer
Vertical Force

(Also Bound High, but it was never officially released)

I’d still love to find 3D Tetris… Or maybe just get a Flashboy finally.

Teleroboxer was always my ultime favorite, then Wario World, Jack Bros and Insmouse are now up there but I didn’t get to enjoy them until the Flashboy most recently because I can’t afford the cartridges.

pinmagic wrote:
And as a pinball player, let me tell you just how bad Galactic Pinball is – why couldn’t they have made something that resembles real pinball???

Yeah, why did they use a puck instead of a ball? Easier to see?

I’m afraid my experience so far has been quite a bit different. In fact, I’m curious if possibly the internet has influenced your opinions of some of these games, most notably Waterworld, which is basically 3D Defender except you don’t have to collect the humans. It’s not a bad game at all, in fact it’s very good, with some impressive perspective change effects that would have been very hard to accomplish on the VB. Honestly, I think the reason it gets so much hate is simply because of the IP that it’s attached to.

Other games you’ve listed as top titles I have do disagree on as well. Mario Clash is a terrible little title, that makes you think it’s something great to behold simply because it’s a Mario game made by Nintendo. Hours later, you can’t figure out why you loath it so much, and much like a previous poster mentioned, it’s simply not Mario Bros. The POW block is gone, verticality is gone, and something else of note, the controls are BACKWARDS. We’ve been taught since the NES how to control Mario, and this game flips it, and no matter how long I play I can’t seem to get used to that at all. That and, while the levels get harder, and while there’s 99 of them, I don’t feel they’re varied enough for me to care after some time.

Red Alarm, for me, is on the bottom of the pile, or damn well near it. As a HUGE Starfox fan (well, up until the Wii U….), let me tell you that this game doesn’t compare in the slightest. I can’t ever seem to figure out what’s right in front of me, or what’s several meters away, what’s a wall or what’s just decoration or whatever. It’s a horrid mess. I know that some pre-production games that never came out enabled filled polygons on the VB, so I know the system is technically capable of delivering this. Without this enabled though, it’s an uncontrollable mess. Back in the day, I would have rated it much higher as “oh my god 3D!” was about all that was going through my head during that era. But looking back, it’s a hideous mess that makes efforts on far less popular systems capable of rudimentary 3D look like masterpieces.

Lastly, you put Virtual Lab above Waterworld and Gundam? Regardless of your feelings on Waterworld and Gundam, come on…. Virtual Lab has to be one of the laziest attempts at a VB game, and that even includes homebrew The graphics look like they’re straight out of the NES, the game shows a password system that doesn’t actually exist, the gameplay is awful, and why is there a dancing girl next to intestine again?

Here’s my list. No one gives enough love for Panic Bomber. It’s by far the best version of the game, with a much more entertaining presentation, better music, a good use of the 3D effect for a puzzle game, and dual dpad control, which is always fun as so few titles dared to use them.

Teleroboxer (I don’t really love the game, but it deserves top billing as it’s the only VB game that feels like a 2D representation of what is “virtual reality”. A concept nearly every title for this system completely forgets the system is supposedly centered around)
Panic Bomber
Virtual Boy Wario Land
Space Squash
Waterworld
Insmouse no Yakata
Mario’s Tennis
Jack Bros
Nester’s Funky Bowling
Vertical Force
SD Gundam Dimension War
Virtual Bowling
Space Invaders Virtual Collection
Mario Clash
V-Tetris
Golf
Galactic Pinball
Virtual League Baseball
3D Tetris
Red Alarm
Virtual Fishing
Virtual Lab