SPECIAL FEATURE

Virtual Boy only lasted about a year on the video game market, then it was considered "dead".

Welcome to the very first Exclusive Feature on Kyle's Nintendo Page. This particular feature will focus on the history and possible future of Nintendo's only 32-bit system: Virtual Boy.

People first started to hear about Virtual Boy back in November 1994, during the Shoshinkai show in Japan, and then also in December, during the CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in the US. At that time, Virtual Boy was known as VR 32. VR standing for Virtual Reality, which Virtual Boy kind of is. 32 standing for 32-bit. (Nintendo 64 is 64-bit, hence Nintendo 64) What games were featured at Shoshinkai? Not many. There was a Star Fox-like game shown--probably an early version of Red Alarm. There was also a Super Mario World-like game--this was supposed to be called Mario Clash, but was "cancelled".

What was featured at the CES? Well, more than the two already mentioned. There was Space Pinball--now called Galactic Pinball. There was Teleroboxing--now called Teleroboxer, not much of a difference in the name. There were two space flying games--one could have been Red Alarm, the other, well, I don't know. There was also the Mario game already mentioned above. This Mario game had both side-scrolling and overhead views. It looked like a mix between Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda. Virtual League Baseball was shown. Several games by T&E Soft were announced, one of them being Red Alarm. Several games by Hudson Soft were announced. And American third-party companies were also developing games.

There were also a few demos that showed off the graphics capabilities of Virtual Boy. One was showing a dolphin swimming around underwater. Another was showing a racer and another was showing a top-view shooter.

By June 1995, more games were being announced by different companies. In addition to the ones shown at the CES, several more games were announced. Nintendo announced Mario's Dream Tennis--now known as Mario's Tennis--and it was supposed to be released a month or two after the system was released. T&E Soft announced Golf, which is the sport that T&E Soft specializes in making. Kemco's Virtual League Baseball was announced to be a two-player game. Hudson Soft announced two games: Panic Bomber VB and Vertical Force. Bullet-Proof Software (BPS) also announced two games: V1-Tetris and Faceball--which was to be a two-player game. Ocean announced Waterworld--which was also supposed to be a two-player game. Atlus announced Devil Busters--now known as Jack Bros.. THQ announced that it was working on sports and adventure games. And Boss Game Studios announced that it was working on a game. Rare was also developing games for Nintendo. At that time, however, there were no game titles announced.

Games were also featured at the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) in the summer. They were Teleroboxer, Galactic Pinball, Red Alarm, Golf, Mario's Tennis, Panic Bomberman VB, Vertical Force, and Virtual League Baseball. The date of release was announced as August 14, 1995 and the price was supposed to be $179.95.

Mario's Tennis was the first game for Virtual Boy.

By August 1995, when Virtual Boy was released, people found out that Mario Clash was not going to be the pack-in game for the system. Instead, Mario's Tennis was the pack-in. And further than that, Mario Clash went from being a Mario adventure to being an action/arcade game that resembled the original arcade game Mario Bros., only in 3-D. Another game was announced that month: Wario Cruise.

By the end of 1995, a total of 12 games were released in North America. The first was Mario's Tennis, by Nintendo. This game was basically a tennis game with various Mario characters. After that, there was Galactic Pinball, by Nintendo. This game was basically a pinball game, in space. There was Teleroboxer, by Nintendo. This game was a futuristic Punch-Out!!-like game, with robots as the boxers. There was Mario Clash, by Nintendo. There was Red Alarm, by Nintendo and T&E Soft. This game was a Star Fox-like game that used vector graphics. There was Golf, by Nintendo and T&E Soft. This game was basically a golf game. There was Vertical Force, by Nintendo and Hudson Soft. This game was sort of like Gradius or R-Type. There was Panic Bomber, by Nintendo and Hudson Soft. This was the first puzzle game for the system. There was Virtual League Baseball, by Kemco. This game was basically a baseball game. There was Waterworld, by Ocean. This game was an arcade-like game. There was Jack Bros., by Atlus. This was an overhead action/adventure game with three original characters. And there was Virtual Boy Wario Land, by Nintendo. This game was the first full action/adventure game by Nintendo. It is also known as the best Virtual Boy game around. Also, the two-player game-link was not released, so Waterworld and Virtual League Baseball were changed into one-player games. (A two-player Waterworld may have made the game a little better.)

There were also two games in 1996: Nester's Funky Bowling (by Nintendo) and 3-D Tetris (by Nintendo and T&E Soft).