Sunday, April 4, 2010

Console Flops: Virtual Boy

With all the talk about the Nintendo 3D I thought it would be good to talk about an awful system known as the Virtual Boy. This system was the worst thing that ever came from Nintendo. Here is a commercial for the Virtual Boy.



I remember wanting this as a kid just because of what I heard, but when I saw a price tag of $179.99 I said to myself my parents will never buy me this. Before I knew it I had forgotten about the Virtual Boy because it came and went in less then year. I never played a Virtual Boy and I'm happy I never did seeing the games was enough. This system was suppose to be cutting edge so it should have been in full color. The only colors it had was red and black the main color was red. I heard that if you played it to long you wouldn't be able to see Red for a while. Another thing was that this system was marketed as a portable system and it was not a portable system. The Virtual Boy was created by Gunpei Yokoi the man who created the game and watch games and the Game Boy. Nintendo gave him the go ahead to make the Virtual Boy because of his success with the Game Boy. When the system flopped he was put in a cubical in the back of Nintendo and pretty much wasn't aloud to do much of anything. In 1997 he died in a fatal car accident. When the Game Boy advance was released he was honored and remembered for his accomplishments. The Nintendo DS was taken from his original design of the Game and Watch systems. He also was the mastermind behind the Metroid series. Super Metroid inspired the game designers over at Konami to give Castlevania: Symphony of the Night the same level layout and the fans of Castlevania: SOTN commonly referred to this game as "Metroidvania". Gunpei Yokoi had many great accomplishment and one major flop overall he was an amazing game and console designer. This also shows that even the greats can make mistakes. The Virtual Boy was a great concept but the execution was horrible. The Virtual Boy was able to sell just under 800,000 copies of the system in its short life time but it went through many price cuts before it made it to that number. The Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed this system and pretty much all the games and if you would like to see what he thinks please watch his review below. This video contains explicit content and language viewer discretion is advised.


To see more of the Anger Video Game Nerd's reviews click here.

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