Actually GBA is probably a pretty good comparison in terms of capability.
Technically speaking, how “powerful” was the Virtual Boy?
- Thread starter Orange Piccolo
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Wario Land VB has killer sprites. Not sure if they look better than the best of the SNES or due to hardware or art direction, but I love them
Here's a colorized screenshot of Wario Land VB. I don't know if this is exactly what you'd get if VB had color screens, but I think you can see that the system was probably more powerful than the SNES.
Ah, odd, mine NEVER had a battery option, only the plug into the wall option.
Sure, but it would still be monochrome because the art was all made in monochrome palettes. Coloring them would basically make it a remaster.
Heads up in case anyone wants to give it a try: you can sideload a Virtual Boy emulator onto an Oculus Quest and play VB games! It actually works really well. Obviously you've still got the all-red color palette, but if you've got a Quest and never got to use a Virtual Boy, there ya go.
Jeremy Parish did a full series on Virtual Boy including reviews of every released game.
Episode 00 focuses on the hardware.
Episode 00 focuses on the hardware.
I could be wrong, but I want to say that they're higher resolution than your average SNES game, but yeah, it looks great.
full playlist:
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woops, you beat me to it haha
This is great! Big fan of Parish but I've somehow never seen this. Great recap of the VB history.
I recently played through Wario Land using my Oculus Quest and it kind of ended up being one of my favorite experiences with my headset. Some interesting mechanics and typical Nintendo polish was kind of refreshing. Also kind of felt weird playing a "retro" VR game. 3D worked perfectly, controls are pretty good using the Touch controllers.
Would highly recommend giving it a try if you have a headset.
Would highly recommend giving it a try if you have a headset.
You don't have the battery compartment in the back of the controller?
Edit: found the optional mains power adaptor! Maybe yours came with one of these and not the battery compartment? Was it preowned? https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Virtual_Boy_AC_Adapter_Set
I actually had a VB when it launched and I vividly remember thinking the graphics were relatively impressive, and not just from the 3D.
Even at like, 14 years old, I could tell the Wario Land sprites and animation looked super impressive and smooth. It was really responsive as well.
I still have that system with most of the games, and have an odd fondness for it.
It has a lot of weird ass design decisions, but it was mostly wrong place and wrong time.
It gets a lot of "school yard bullying group mentality" hate - some of it for good reason, most from people who haven't actually played it - but it definitely is an interesting system and I'm bummed we didn't get to see the full potential.
Oh, and the controller is legitimately great. Namely the d-pad(s).
Even at like, 14 years old, I could tell the Wario Land sprites and animation looked super impressive and smooth. It was really responsive as well.
I still have that system with most of the games, and have an odd fondness for it.
It has a lot of weird ass design decisions, but it was mostly wrong place and wrong time.
It gets a lot of "school yard bullying group mentality" hate - some of it for good reason, most from people who haven't actually played it - but it definitely is an interesting system and I'm bummed we didn't get to see the full potential.
Oh, and the controller is legitimately great. Namely the d-pad(s).
I think the VB was more powerful than most people realize. One thing I am unclear of... was the Virtual Boy rendering games twice (One rendered frame for each display?)
That's a good question. I supposed for true 3D games, it would have to, but sprite-based games probably use some parallax trickery
For sure! It was such an obvious concept and probably the last time they would have a chance to do proper 3D games too. Wario Land VB, Jack Brothers and maaaaaybe Mario Clash would have been top sellers on the Nintendo 3DS eShop, I am sure.
Farmer with a rifle.
2 gameboys duct-taped together
0,0025 gamecubes
Honesty though, it was a powerful enough system to develop 3-D, 2-color mapping at that time and to keeping at a "low cost" system to fill the thirst between the SNES and the delayed Nintendo 64.
2 gameboys duct-taped together
0,0025 gamecubes
Honesty though, it was a powerful enough system to develop 3-D, 2-color mapping at that time and to keeping at a "low cost" system to fill the thirst between the SNES and the delayed Nintendo 64.
I thought the technology was pretty good in terms of graphics for the type of machine it was. But like others have said, it was the eye strain/headache inducing that really brought the experience down. I owned mine from 1997 to 2017 and it got less playtime than all my other game systems because of that despite enjoying Wario Land, Mario's Tennis, Red Alarm, Golf, Tennis, Baseball, Space Squash, Teleroboxer, Mario Clash, Panic Bomber, Vertical Force, etc. Nintendo always does a good job at sweeping their hardware failures under the rug to avoid a Sega-style backlash.
If I remember correctly, the Virtual Boy relied solely on true frame buffers rather than a tile-based system plus sprites like earlier game consoles. The SNES did have a frame buffer mode but with the comparatively weak CPU it wasn't used by games that needed to animate a ton of the screen. The Virtual Boy CPU was quite decent, especially for a battery-powered system, running at 20MHz and being a true 32-bit CPU. I don't remember ever seeing anything concrete about the GPU and what tricks it might have up its sleeve.
While games did indeed render two distinct frames for the two eyes, the computational burden was eased dramatically by the lack of color. What I've seen describes the format as using 2-bits per pixel with the resulting palette of four shades of red being selected by the title from 32 different available brightnesses. So yes, it was rendering 384x224 (resolution) x 2 (screens) x 2 (bits per pixel), but any game rendering in color elsewhere would be moving at least as much data because 4 bits-per-pixel would be required for even a 16-color palette.
While games did indeed render two distinct frames for the two eyes, the computational burden was eased dramatically by the lack of color. What I've seen describes the format as using 2-bits per pixel with the resulting palette of four shades of red being selected by the title from 32 different available brightnesses. So yes, it was rendering 384x224 (resolution) x 2 (screens) x 2 (bits per pixel), but any game rendering in color elsewhere would be moving at least as much data because 4 bits-per-pixel would be required for even a 16-color palette.
That's false.
VB was supposed to open a new market for Nintendo, one based on the concept of a console being wearable.
"Yokoi's plan was to have the Virtual Boy become a hit, then to help build up Nintendo's main products into three categories: consoles, mobiles, and wearables. Then, he wanted to leave the company." - Takefumi Makino
I predict that, despite the big failure VB was back in the '90s, Nintendo will associate it to new projects some time in the future, as happened around the launch of the 3DS.
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The secret with VB is the thing that makes many of its games ugly is the painful to the eyes color scheme. As I've seen recommend by a few anyone looking to learn more about the VB and potentially gain a greater appreciation for the visuals of the games for the VB should watch Jeremy Parish's video series on the complete VB library. I believe he modded a VB to record footage directly from but something he had to do was essentially change the color scheme of the videos he recorded off of his VB from the VB red and black to GB black and white because youtube's compression could not handle the red and black. because of this it really lets you appreciate some of the amazing sprite work in Nintendo's first party offerings for the VB.
It's too bad Nintendo maybe didn't hold on the concept for a couple of years until full color, 3D polygonal graphics were possible with the tech.
I think it would have done OK, maybe if it launched around 1998? By then I suspect it would have been cost effective to release such a machine.
I think it would have done OK, maybe if it launched around 1998? By then I suspect it would have been cost effective to release such a machine.
Or, alternatively, imagine if it were an add-on for the N64 that allowed you to see the same games in full stereoscopic 3D. I think people would have gotten more of a kick out of it.
Remember, they were also planning some sort of 3D lcd screen for the GCN as well, but shelved it. But I think the N64 was when people would have been most open minded about such a thing. It could have been a perfect compliment to that hardware and really differentiated it from the competition.
Yeah or that. I remember even thinking this in like 1995 when I rented a unit from Blockbuster, it actually wasn't an idea without merit, it was just way too far ahead of its time if they couldn't afford to sell a model that had full color graphics at least.
That's false.
VB was supposed to open a new market for Nintendo, one based on the concept of a console being wearable.
"Yokoi's plan was to have the Virtual Boy become a hit, then to help build up Nintendo's main products into three categories: consoles, mobiles, and wearables. Then, he wanted to leave the company." - Takefumi Makino
Turns Out The History Of The Virtual Boy Is More Interesting Than The Console Itself
"I don't recall anybody literally throwing up in the office, we were lucky"www.nintendolife.com
That may have been Yokoi's vision, but come on; the Virtual Boy, as released, was not "wearable". And the name itself screams "remember the Game Boy?".
Yokoi was not in charge. Nintendo pushed this out the door and told us it was a new "portable" (even though it barely qualifies). It was widely reported in the gaming press that this was supposed to be the "new Game Boy", although absolutely everyone was perplexed at how anyone could think it would catch on.
He requested a ban, seems he hit his limit on hot takes ppl made to him while not listening + coupled with the harrasment he had from posting here from ppl offsite.
I really have no idea. The games still weren't very impressive looking back then, and I disliked the red and black.
I'm sure it was more powerful then a SNES though. Maybe on the level of a 32X in performance.
I'm sure it was more powerful then a SNES though. Maybe on the level of a 32X in performance.
It wasn't wearable due to a series of technical constraints but that was the initial aim and even when the project changed it still become a special kind of tabletop console.
It shared nothing with the Game Boy line and wasn't meant as a replacement, in fact Project Atlantis (the true Game Boy successor) was under development around 1995/1996.
It was a new thing, a third pillar if you wish and this emerge from the company report too (see below).
I'm sure there was, but not even Miyamoto could have told Gunpei Yokoi no at the time. The only person that could was Yamauchi.
Yeah, I used a VB modded with Furrtek's Virtual Tap adapter (there's also a consolizer option now that I would love to own!). We discovered early on, when I did a test stream of the Virtual Tap and cycled through its color output options, that YouTube's compression algorithm absolutely annihilates red-and-black video. I was OK with creating my videos in greyscale, because as you say, it really highlights how much of a successor to Game Boy the system was in terms of its basic graphics output.
Unfortunately, even in red, the VT still wouldn't have accurately reproduced the visual output (3D effect notwithstanding), because the LED-and-mirror array could output multiple levels of light intensity that aren't represented in the basic four-shade monochrome GPU output. It's a tricky system to reproduce and capture. I even attempted to jury-rig something that would let me film off the internal lenses with a macro DSLR lens, but the results were awful...
Yamauchi was favourable of the VB project.
Not only it followed his philosophy called "dokusou" (focus on releasing unqie products) but he had a kink for things that jump out (see following exchange from an Iwata Ask).
Itoi
Nintendo—and Miyamoto-san above all—has tried all this time to bring us the fun of 3D.
Miyamoto
Yes. But that was a theme (Hiroshi) Yamauchi-san always focused on.
Itoi
Oh, okay.
Miyamoto
Whenever he had the chance, he would say, "What about 3D?"
Iwata
And "Can you make it jump out?" (laughs)
Itoi
Yamauchi-san liked Virtual Boy.
Miyamoto
He liked it when things jump out.
Everyone
(laughs)
Itoi
Oh, I see… So 3D has been a theme for Yamauchi-san and Miyamoto-san all this time.
Iwata
That's right.
Miyamoto
Yeah. But come to think of it, our efforts in 3D got sort of pushed aside after the release of the Nintendo DS and Wii systems, but during that time we did try to achieve 3D visuals at Shigureden.19
Iwata
Shigureden is the hyakunin isshu (100 poems by 100 poets) theme park that Yamauchi-san made and Miyamoto-san produced.
Itoi
Uh-huh, right.
Miyamoto
When we were making Shigureden, Yamauchi-san expressed his earnest hope that we could make something "jump out." (laughs)
Everyone
(laughs)
Itoi
Oh.
Miyamoto
We got pretty far along with regard to the methodology, but didn't have enough time to develop it and gave up. But we did get to do a lot of research with regard to the liquid crystal and other matters involved.
Iwata
So you happened to learn about 3D.
Itoi
When I hear that, I think Yamauchi-san has played a big role.
Miyamoto
Very big.
Itoi
If not, none of this—meaning our whole company—would be what it is.
Iwata Asks
It wasn't wearable due to a series of technical constraints but that was the initial aim and even when the project changed it still become a special kind of tabletop console.
It shared nothing with the Game Boy line and wasn't meant as a replacement, in fact Project Atlantis (the true Game Boy successor) was under development around 1995/1996.
It was a new thing, a third pillar if you wish and this emerge from the company report too (see below).
The DS wasn't supposed to replace the GBA, either, if you believe Nintendo. Maybe don't believe everything they say. The truth is probably that they didn't know what to do with this thing. I mean, who would? And we all know that the DS was a hedged bet: if it succeeded, it would replace the GBA (as it did), and if it failed, then it wouldn't. But Nintendo never said that, and would probably deny it even now.
And, despite details that came out years later, the fact remains that this was immediately associated with the Game Boy, due to the name, and due to Yokoi's name, and reported by the game press as such. It was never talked or written about without mention of the Game Boy.
I don't know why you want to argue about this. It's right there in the name.
And the only point that I was making, in the first place, was simply that the Virtual Boy didn't have the power of home consoles of the time, that it was more comparable to a portable in terms of power.
i picked up my virtual boy when toys r us was doing a mass sale on them for like $49.95 and had so much fun with the damn thing.
the headaches were real, but it was fine in short sessions--- i really wished ninty stuck with this for a little longer. I remember reading of a rumored Cruisn' USA port way back when but i guess it was just an idea.
i still have it around here and it's one of my favorite collectibles still
the headaches were real, but it was fine in short sessions--- i really wished ninty stuck with this for a little longer. I remember reading of a rumored Cruisn' USA port way back when but i guess it was just an idea.
i still have it around here and it's one of my favorite collectibles still
Maybe the 3DS was not powerful enough to emulate Virtual Boy and with the 3D especially. Even Snes emulation was limited to the New 3DS systems with beefed-up hardware and wasn't available for the OG models.
Powerful enough to make you see red hours after playing it
But I love the balls on Nintendo for releasing this even though it was a year before the n64 came out but it was a neat idea for the time.
But I love the balls on Nintendo for releasing this even though it was a year before the n64 came out but it was a neat idea for the time.
"Awkward" is the word I associate most strongly with it. That's a funny image, trying to use it on a bus. But, honestly, it's still awkward to use even on a tabletop.