Nintendo’s new Virtual Boy is more fun to look at than to play
Although Virtual Boy was both a commercial and critical failure, the console’s infamy is part of what has made it such a fascinating part of Nintendo history. Original units still go for hundreds of dollars on auction sites, and hobbyists have spent years keeping the Virtual Boy alive through emulation and homebrew games. For a long time, it seemed like Nintendo just wanted the public to forget the Virtual Boy existed. But over time, the company became more comfortable acknowledging and even joking about the system through references in games like Super Smash Bros. Melee, Tomodachi’s lifeAnd Luigi’s Mansion 3.
Looking at the Nintendo 3DS and more recent experiences like the Nintendo Switch and Labo, it wasn’t really surprising to learn that the Virtual Boy was being resurrected as a Switch peripheral designed for use when playing classic Virtual Boy games on Nintendo Switch Online. There’s an artful poetry in Nintendo’s worst-selling console being reimagined as a sophisticated peripheral for its most successful system ever. Everything about the release of the new Virtual Boy shows that Nintendo is confident enough to revisit one of its biggest failures and turn it into a flex literally designed to support the Switch family of consoles.
However, when I recently spent some time playing with the new Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s reliance on this $100 side quest didn’t seem entirely justified. The headset/stand combo is a beautiful piece of retro tech that’s comfortable enough to slide your face into. And although I was somehow hoping to experience some disorienting visual strangeness, the console’s stereoscopic lenses didn’t leave me with a headache. But there’s an awkwardness to the way Virtual Boy’s games play that makes the device feel more like an old novelty rather than a system I could see myself spending a lot of time with.
The main selling point of this console is that it faithfully recreates aspects of the original console that worked while smoothing out some of the rough edges that led to its failure in the ’90s. But if retro nostalgia isn’t really your thing, you might want to ditch the plastic model and consider dusting off your old Labo kit.
As someone who never played the original Virtual Boy and tends to find VR headsets uncomfortable to wear, I was pleasantly surprised at how well my face fit into the new peripheral, which is meant to stand on a table and be used with a controller after inserting your Nintendo Switch or Switch 2 into it. Unlike my cardboard Labo headset – which tended to let in external light – the plastic Virtual Boy was able to plunge me into complete darkness while I sat in a well-lit event space.
This darkness brought out the redness—which can be customized with other colors—of Virtual Boy’s monochromatic game selection screen as I browsed the limited library of 3D titles. Nintendo says that by the end of this year, it plans to release 14 different Virtual Boy games through its Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription plan, which costs $50 per year for individual accounts and $80 for family plans. The first batch of Virtual Boy games is scheduled to release on February 17, when the $100 peripheral and its cheaper $25 cardboard counterpart go on sale.
During my time with Virtual Boy, I found myself charmed but a little disappointed playing games like Galactic Pinball, Teleroboxerand a new port of Innsmouth Manor — a title that was previously only released in Japan. The games ran flawlessly and looked like what you’d expect from a time in Nintendo’s history where the company was experimenting with a new way to make its games immersive. As impressive as this lens technology was when the original Virtual Boy released, it pales in comparison to what Nintendo managed to accomplish with the 3DS, and it never managed to make my eyes believe I was playing a game in 3D.
Ironically, these were more aesthetically simplistic games with vector graphics like 3D Tetris And Red alarm it was like they were really attracting me with their new approach to presenting three-dimensional space. There’s also something to be said for the fact that playing these games, in any form, has become much more difficult over the years. This new peripheral might not exactly spark a new wave of preservation of Virtual Boy games, but it will make them infinitely more accessible, especially to people who weren’t around during the original console’s brief lifespan.
Although Nintendo didn’t give me any hands-on time with the cardboard Virtual Boy, I came away much more interested in trying it out and seeing what these games might look like on a Lab. The plastic model definitely looks cool and will probably scratch a certain itch for those who wished they could own a Virtual Boy in the 90s. But in 2026, these kinds of 3D games seem a bit Also dated to justify the price of entry if you don’t already pay for an NSO subscription.
