Nintendo’s FAILURE - Virtual Boy 3D Gaming Console

so I'm actually really stoked about this yeah you've told me before that you have a Virtual Boy yes this that's it and you actually offered to let me use it before yes I don't know if you remember but I refused to do it I don't know I don't know so the reason was that if I was ever going to try a Virtual Boy I wanted to do it on cap on camera right okay and I didn't want to do it on camera unless we were gonna do it right so thanks to Robert from retro RGB yeah we are doing it right today we have not just one yeah but two of Nintendo's failed Virtual Boy consoles and not only will we be playing them we will be playing the multiplayer yes my friends head to head and with screen capture because right here thanks to some favors that Robert pulled in is a Virtual Boy that has been modded with a VGA output so cool and this video is brought to you by Ridge wallet Ridge wallet is the sleek way to keep wallet bulge down with its compact frame and RFID blocking inner plates use offer code LTT to save 10% and get free worldwide shipping [Music] so let's kick off with some things that you probably don't know about the Virtual Boy because people don't know a lot about the Virtual Boy yeah it was released in the summer of 1995 and marketed as the first gaming console capable of displaying stereoscopic 3d graphics that's right my friends the 3ds wasn't Nintendo's first stupid 3d game the Nintendo 64 would be released just one year later and that's important to this story because it's part of the reason that the Virtual Boy was pushed to market in a basically unfinished state so that Nintendo could just focus on the n64 actually unfinished state though like really unfinished it literally came with a game Mario's tennis yeah not to be confused with Mario Tennis yeah it had features that were coded into the game but that weren't enabled like once that Nintendo promised like multiplayer so the Virtual Boy was panned by critics and it was a commercial failure due to its high price monochrome display unimpressive 3d effect lack of true portability its it's heavy actually seems pretty portable to me dude you could just you know just hold it like this to your face and it's fine it's fine no problem not to mention the health concerns and the low quality games not helping this matter was the price the launch price was a hundred and eighty dollars and that's about three hundred dollars by today's money so the Virtual Boy is Nintendo's second lowest selling platform after the 64dd which even fewer people anyway Nintendo hard bailed on this thing and by early 1996 they had seized distribution and game development with a total of only 22 games ever released for the system most of those were only depend not most a considerable amount I think there was only 18 in North America which is a real shame because they actually spent four years developing that bloody thing and they even built a factory in China to be used exclusively for Virtual Boy manufacturing so let's talk multiplayer during development Nintendo promised the ability to Lynx for competitive play but the systems EXT or extension port was never officially supported and no official link cable was ever released however you want to go ahead and plug them thank you and busiest began creating virtual boy Link cables like the one that I'm holding here to finally enable multiplayer on the console but you could only play homebrew games like hyper fighting 3d battle snake and tic-tac-toe which were never officially released now fun fact you can actually make a link cable by modifying two Nintendo AV cables now let's talk about Mario's tennis you got a copy there yeah Mario's tennis here not Mario Tennis Mario's yeah Mario is it's actually very important was intended to be a multiplayer game and it carries dormant code on it that a user on the planet VB forums was able to use to issue a patch to the game enabling two player doubles matches which is so cool it requires the use of a flash boy so what that is is it's like a fake Virtual Boy cartridge that you can just sort of flash a ROM onto and then actually insert in your official real Virtual Boy hardware that is like the coolest story ever I mean you're going through what you're just going through lines of code being like oh yeah just turn this on and see whoa Wow wait they did a multiplayer yeah so let's talk through the hardware of this thing the CPU is a 32-bit risc chip making the Virtual Boy actually Nintendo's first 32-bit system risk is good it's got stereoscopic 3d that uses a pair of 1 by 224 linear arrays so that's one per eye and then it rapidly scans the array across the eyes field of view using flat oscillating mirrors so you can actually hear them because they like buzz sort of as they flip around there they're vibrating back and forth at this high speed so the virtual way creates its illusion of depth through the effect known as parallax which is a precursor to the Nintendo 3ds a--'s audio stereoscopic 3d visuals there's one speaker per ear and they're just in the Virtual Boy no headphones or anything I guess you can plug in headphones ok yeah there's a phone all right well I know and no controller this is a freaking interesting controller so it's got 2d pads two buttons on the back they look there okay so mine has the battery pack yours has the direct to wall so you work because it requires actually a lot of batteries the one potential downside of the director wall is they're fairly notorious for just like coming out especially if you rest the controller God and the controllers are fairly heavy so you just lose your progress in your game now aside from that it's actually fairly modern looking and kind of reminds me of like like if if the PlayStation Dual Shock controller had a great great grandpa log sticks and it's it's super weird that there's 2d pads but it actually feels fairly natural yeah especially now that we're used to that so yes they put 2d pads on it was because of the consoles emphasis on 3d movement and that's it for the notes that we have on this so all that's left now is to fire these puppies up the on/off switches right here and I get to try a Virtual Boy for the first time so are we kicking off with Mario's tennis is that the plan are we gonna start single-player Go Go multiplayer cuz I've never even tried this thing maybe should I start singing practice a little because I didn't either has it stopped no well for like five minutes alright oh we can play together doubles oh cool okay ah sweet can we play against each other - yeah I mean they seem likes really there's questions but like look this is a lard way okay there's I don't remember if it's hyper fighting or a different game but there is a game on here that supports nine person multiplayer sort of because it's designed for like an in-house roundtable tournament where you play one by one and then you go for high scores like they had some really interesting aspirations for truth yeah okay now hold on a second you don't have a shroud should be trying to fashion you something I just brought a shirt gaff tape it's a it's an LT t-shirt it's the Rambo is the RAM stick one store.com by shirt heck yeah but yeah you can just throw it over my head okay I don't know all right yeah you know what the stereo effect is actually not bad yeah it's decent for like a thing that would sit on your table I think it's a little bit louder than a gameboy no no it's real stereo okay automatic pause oh right so so the Virtual Boy was extremely notorious for giving people headaches and stuff like it like the 3ds had a lot of backlash early versions of modern VR like the early rift and stuff had a lot of backlash this thing the people that bought it there was a wild amount of backlash they knew it was coming so they built in these automatic pause features or it pause every like 15 or 30 minutes so you wouldn't like damage your eyes there's not even like headache it's like hellfish legitimate health issue alright you only live once Luke okay Mario's tennis he just served at me whoa the 3d is actually pretty easy not that bad right Wow yeah okay so there's a doubles option let's do this holy crap okay so one into player versus computer and computer I can see you controlling everything I'm going straight for hard cuckoo how about normal okay I mean I don't even know the controls we're probably gonna get dunked yeah holy crap is Princess Peach shakin it oh wow you can like oh god she's shaking boys don't sorry go for it did you hit it oh wait you didn't oh crap this is pretty hard remember when games were hard oh geez hey very nice that's something oh yeah dang it these normal computer players are a little challenging actually no oh you got it you got it oh you can we're lobbing it at them every time boom you can smash other button which button are you pressing ah I don't know it's the left or the right one okay so left is like to lob it and then the right one is to yeah I've been pressing the right one the whole time oh my god we scored okay you ready for vs. sure I'm ready for vs. all right all right bring it on oh I feel like we don't it's not always over they have it okay okay okay okay I want to try out the Shroud though how rough it's gonna make them which is but I want to try out the trip you know what I'm happy to do it because the last thing I want is for you to have any excuse what we're done here well I mean now I'm Mario so I'm winning right I am playing with the t-shirt though oh I guess technically you are this is my plan all along Oh interesting well wait a minute is your right side dead dead yeah oh wow yeah you have way more filled with you than me wait what yours isn't even 3d link maybe that's why I said the 3d effects sucked yeah that's a bit of a disadvantage is so much better oh shoot this is nuts so you've never actually properly experienced mine has never looked like this so mine has never worked that is hilarious roads like not the better part at all no it's really not so what you were saying before about how would this be any different just playing it on the TV does that make more sense yeah given you were watching a TV yeah I guess that makes sense but you know what honestly speaking oh no it just doesn't make a difference at all like I'm not having more fun now than I was before or less fun rather oh yeah yeah yeah the novelty is still there that's why I think I never really noticed that much it sounds like okay the 3d effects probably just terrible well honestly I just I'm enjoying this game I think it's fun oh yeah the margin this is great I've never played my chance I have never played a mario tom yeah bowties is awesome oh you got a little hasty there yeah gonna catch me looking out of the headset come on boy don't lose your cool oh that was a quick one that was a really quick one Oh fine you know what we're tied right now next set wins okay all right let's do it get back oh yeah you like that every time I miss it like goes through my face I miss cuz I'm like trying to hit the ball with my face playing a little bit too much contact sports oh shoot oh my goodness the comeback oh are you in here I'm 2p I don't see your little logo do you see mine Raven no just select yours and let's see what happens okay I don't know it's three for you cuz mine froze after I select the character so maybe it'll just have you selected you press Start yeah got it yeah I think I think after you did your thing mine loaded oh you picked all same too I don't know okay you're just spamming yeah and you're losing Oh God oh so useful sees both the iPads do stuff Fergie Wow there is pretty much zero value whatsoever to this game being on Virtual Boy basically did you wanna try this one sure Alice wait I think the just playing this one though I don't know what they would add like Mario Tennis oh is cool being able to see the depth but basically all you get is the floor kind of coming out towards you and then you get a bit of a 3d effect of the crowd being behind the cage you know what the stupid thing is about this one is like the game itself is 3d enough that the the stereoscopic nosov it contributes quite literally nothing yeah it's not better over here Mario Tennis was definitely better over you I mean it's it's dead Wow it's definitely not notably worse over there yeah it's like but it's not notably better over here fine where's the one where he does is like hansung oh yeah Wow yes meat so that was actually a really fun thing that I never need to experience again yeah I think I've had the whole I mean I could have I could have more fun yeah me too a little bit I could have more fun playing more Mario Tennis yeah but I'd say just fire up Mario Tennis on the switch we could do that thanks and it would probably still be really fun I I think I wanted one really bad because I wanted to see it and I eventually wanted to take mine apart which now that I know it's broken yeah you might as well it gives me more reason to do so but I think honestly homebrewing it getting these flash boy kits and playing Mario Tennis multiplayer is like the way to experience for a tool boy yeah because having both people in these weird odd experiences trying to compete is fun well that's one of the things I mean we've talked about this some of the most fun gaming experiences I've had are not the ones where everyone's really good at the game and is really extract where nobody has any idea what the heck they're doing and it becomes more of a like it's more of a war of attrition actual skill you can stay focused while like shove it into this weird thing probably a really weird commercial controller with a headache which is probably why ii said commercial instead of controller with like a t-shirt over your head or like some weird shroud yeah I don't know so I think in summary guys the Virtual Boy cool yeah yeah ahead of its time Oh certainly deserving of all the hated ever got yes a very much so double yes if you guys enjoyed this video you'll probably enjoy the one where Luke and I went back in time again and checked out apples game console what was it called Pippin yeah that mark Tipton at Merck perfect it's even weirder than this I will say I'm a little disappointed that we're not in a 90's family room this time that was pretty fun yeah this plate makes magnet mounted metal prints that are durable and don't require any power tools in order to hang them they've got over a quarter million different artwork spanning a bunch of different styles and influences and with their easy magnetic mounting there's no holes in the wall and you can easily replace them they plant 10 trees for every display purchased and you can use code LTT to save 15% through the link in the video description so I think that pretty much wraps it guys see you later bye except him he won't see you later know unless you watch one show yeah in which case we'll see you five minutes yeah

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 1,927,030

Keywords: virtual boy, nintendo, 3d, retro, retrospective, let's play, stream, game, mario, tennis, street fighter, wario, 3ds, gameboy, hdd, n64, unboxing

Id: Po5iEqDDv3U

Length: 20min 3sec (1203 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 05 2019