swing-and-a-miss. Shigeru Miyamoto himself stated in a recent interview that the Virtual Boy situation was mishandled.

“It was the kind of toy to get you excited, and make you think, ‘This is what we can do now!’ I imagined it as something that people who were on the lookout for new entertainment, or who could afford to spend a bit of money, could buy and enjoy even if the price was a little expensive. But the world treated it like a successor to the Game Boy system.” As such, the Virtual Boy overpromised and underperformed.

It was also an embarrassment, especially for those centrally involved. Some maintain Gunpei Yokoi—creator of the Game Boy, producer on Metroid, mentor to Miyamoto—resigned due to guilt over the Virtual Boy’s disaster, though numerous officials within Nintendo report otherwise. Regardless, Yokoi’s story remains incomplete. A car accident ended his life in October 1997, taking away an innovative genius while a high-profile mistake loomed over a lifetime of accomplishment.

But was the Virtual Boy, then, a mistake? In the years since its untimely demise, the machine has gained something of a devoted following. Used systems sell on eBay for many times their final sticker price. Planet Virtual Boy is an enthusiast site—one of its taglines reading “home to Nintendo’s lost son”—that somehow adds new content regularly. A burgeoning homebrew community even exists. Stick your head into that black foam visor and you may well find yourself among the converted. The experience of playing the Virtual Boy is unlike any other.

Despite its name, the Virtual Boy overlaps less with our collective notion of VR than it does with arcade cabinets of the early 1980s. Contemporary consoles hook to our television at home, and we play them on the couch or the floor. But the Virtual Boy is a self-contained unit: hardware, screen, and speakers in one, much like an arcade cabinet. Moreover, many arcade games featured not just a screen, but an entire environment in which the player would enter the gaming world—think of After Burner’s cockpit or Hard Drivin’s deluxe seat or SubRoc-3D’s periscope. To participate, the player would have to leave the exterior world and enter the game’s interior, to be surrounded by simulated landscapes and sound. The Virtual Boy goes one step further: A visor covers your peripheral vision, blacking out all external stimuli that might distract from the action on-screen. Even the most immersive arcade cabinet could not block out the electrical storm of flashing light and throbbing music blasting from nearby games. What appears to be a central design flaw in the Virtual Boy, then, actually perfects the unmet goals of a prior generation.

The problem was that players in 1995 were not looking for the platonic Arcade Experience—they were looking for Super Mario 5, or Sonic 4, or the coming onslaught of polygonal 3D games promised by Sony and Sega (and eventually Nintendo itself) with the impending next generation of consoles. Gamers who saw to Eidos’ Tomb Raider and Sony’s Battle Arena Toshinden, both featuring complex character models and full three-dimensional movement and control, did not want to revisit the sprites found in Virtual Boy games such as Mario Clash, an update of the original Mario Bros., or Nester’s Funky Bowling. When the Nintendo 64 finally released in September 1996, and with it, the revolutionary Super Mario 64, the transition was complete. The Virtual Boy, once ballyhooed as the Next Big Thing, was left to die an ignoble death. A scant 14 titles were released in North America.

Today, 3D is everywhere. Nintendo has re-entered the 3D fray, launching its Nintendo 3DS handheld across all major markets. Again, hopes are astronomical. Doubters whisper “Virtual Boy 2.0” in dismissive tones. But maybe this time, things will be different. Maybe Yokoi’s vision will finally be realized. Maybe Becker’s promise will live on. Maybe those 14 Virtual Boy games were just a hint of what is now being fully realized: Like the stones of Ryoan-ji, hiding the invisible 15th stone until the viewer is ready, able to see what is not seen, willing to imagine the impossible.