So why exactly did the virtual boy die?

Was it because Gunpi died?

Because personally, I LOVE the virtual boy. It doesn’t suck one bit!

Has your mother seen you playing? Im 21 years old, but my mother once saw me playing that thing and she told me that I was like “addicted” and that “these things” make you crazy,etc… Just because it’s red, makes noise, and you actually have to look inside it.

Yea when I got it, my mom was like “I can see why it….died.” XD

Poor Virtual Boy…

I’m pretty sure that if any one thing killed the Virtual Boy, it was the general notion that the thing would give you headaches or seizures. (Bad advertising didn’t help, either.)

I don’t recall getting any headaches from playing Teleroboxer back in the day, though, so I’m willing to actually give it more of a chance. (Perhaps the headaches only set in if you play it for too long.)

Also, I don’t think that the VB had a particular killer app that would have compelled people to buy it. If games like Dragon Hopper, Bound High!, and ESPECIALLY some sort of Wolfenstein 3D or Doom port were released, most gamers actually might have regarded the VB as actually having a good game or two.

When the VB First came out I played it at a SEARS department store. I was totally blown away and thought holy crap this is the future of gaming!!! I begged and pleaded for one but my Dad was like no it’s too expensive you have to much crap as it is. Well then when the Super Nintendo came out I was like… Virtual what? The wha… huh who cares SUPER NINTENDO YAY!!! So besides all the BS rumors about it hurting you and all that junk, it was the poor marketing skills that killed it. I mean think about it. When the SNES came out it shrouded everything else on the market. Nothing and I mean nothing could touch the SNES not even any other Nintendo product. It was poor timing. Damn imagine what we would have today if it would have been a success. Well… I still think it was a success but I mean in the corporate eye. -sigh- 🙁

Deadly-D wrote:
When the VB First came out I played it at a SEARS department store. I was totally blown away and thought holy crap this is the future of gaming!!! I begged and pleaded for one but my Dad was like no it’s too expensive you have to much crap as it is. Well then when the Super Nintendo came out I was like… Virtual what? The wha… huh who cares SUPER NINTENDO YAY!!! So besides all the BS rumors about it hurting you and all that junk, it was the poor marketing skills that killed it. I mean think about it. When the SNES came out it shrouded everything else on the market. Nothing and I mean nothing could touch the SNES not even any other Nintendo product. It was poor timing. Damn imagine what we would have today if it would have been a success. Well… I still think it was a success but I mean in the corporate eye. -sigh- 🙁

You tried the Virtual Boy before the Super Nintendo came out? And Donkey Kong Country was its first game, right?

Yeah, what are you talking about Deadly-D? The SNES came out at least 2 years BEFORE the VB 😛

Either way, he still has a point.

Everytime I look to my left and see it [The Virtual boy], I love it even more… 🙂

Bruno wrote:
You tried the Virtual Boy before the Super Nintendo came out? And Donkey Kong Country was its first game, right?

Well before everyone attacks me for trying to prove a point that the VB couldn’t stand up to the SNES’s popularity at least for me anyway all I remember was Super Nintendo being drilled into my head. As for not getting on Wikipedia for example and looking up dates to make some sort of a confirmation on what came first I was just typing based off my own memories. Oh and uh no Donkey Kong Country was not the first… Stunt Race FX was. 😛

I just remembered another possible factor in the VB getting sidelined-the Nintendo 64. That console was released in the same year that the VB was dropped, and the Big N probably saw that 3D games would work better on the N64, stereoscopy be damned.

(I’m starting to think about something, though…what if the VB had modern HMD tech, with full color and no flickery, headache-inducing visuals, yet it still remained at its original 180 US$ MSRP? Would it have failed if that were the case?)