 So I'm actually really stoked about this. You've told me before that you have a Virtual Boy. And that's it. And you've actually offered to let me use it before. I don't know if you remember, but I refused to do it. No, I don't remember that part. So the reason was that if I was ever going to try a Virtual Boy, I wanted to do it on camera. 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, we are doing it right today. We have not just one, but two of Nintendo's failed Virtual Boy consoles. And not only will we be playing them, we will be playing them 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. 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. 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 gimmick. 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. Like actually unfinished state though. Like really unfinished. It literally came with a game, Mario's Tennis. Not to be confused with Mario Tennis. That 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. It's heavy actually. Seems pretty portable to me, dude. You can 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. Oh God. Not helping this matter was the price. The launch price was $180 and that's about $300 by today's money. So the Virtual Boy is Nintendo's second lowest selling platform after the 64DD. Which even fewer people I think have heard of. 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 in Japan. 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 the 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 link systems for competitive play. But the system's EXT or extension port was never officially supported and no official link cable was ever released. However, I wanna go ahead and plug that in. Thank you. Enthusiasts 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 Battlesnake 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's, 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 to see, oh wow. Wait, they did a lot of this? 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. RISC is good. It's got stereoscopic 3D that uses a pair of one by 224 linear arrays. So that's one per eye. And then it rapidly scans the array across the eye's field of view using flat oscillating mirrors. So you can actually hear them because they like buzz sort of as they flip around. They're vibrating back and forth at this high speed. So the Virtual Boy creates its illusion of depth through the effect known as parallax, which is a precursor to the Nintendo 3DS'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. Can you? Yeah, there's a phones jack. All right, well, thank you. It shows you what I know. And the controller. This is a fricking interesting controller. So it's got- Two D-pads, two buttons on the back. They look different. Okay, so mine has the battery pack. Yours has the direct to wall. Got it. So you work, cause it requires actually a lot of batteries. The one potential downside of the direct to wall is they're fairly notorious for just like coming out, especially if you rest the controller. Got it. The buttons are fairly heavy. So you can 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 the PlayStation DualShock controller had a great, great grandpa who remembers when you didn't need analog sticks. And it's super weird that there's two D-pads, but it actually feels fairly natural. Yeah, especially now that we're used to that. So the reason they put two D-pads on it was because of the console's 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 switch is 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 going to start single player, go multiplayer? Cause I've never even tried this thing. I think we should start single player. Can I practice a little? Because, I didn't either. Because it stopped working. Was it working? No, well for like five minutes. All right. Why not just start the same team? Oh, we can play together? Doubles. Oh, cool. Okay. Sweet. Can we play against each other too? Yeah. I mean, these seem like really quaint questions, but like, look, this is old hardware, okay? 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 round table tournament, where you play one by one and then you go for high scores. Like they had some really interesting aspirations for virtual play. Yeah, well. Okay. Now, hold on a second. You don't have a shroud. Should we try to fashion you something? I just brought a shirt. We have gaff tape. What kind of shirt is it? It's a, it's an LTT shirt. It's the ram. Lttstore.com. It's the ram stick one. Lttstore.com, buy a shirt. Heck yeah. But yeah, I can just throw it over my head, maybe? Okay. I don't know. I'll try it. 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 Game Boy. Is it stereo mono? No, no, it's real stereo. Okay. Automatic pause. Oh, right. So the Virtual Boy was extremely notorious for giving people headaches and stuff. Like, 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 where it would pause every like 15 or 30 minutes. So you wouldn't like damage your eyes. It's not even like headache. It's like health issues, legitimate health issues. Great. I'm going to turn that option on. On, yeah. That's a good idea. I'm turning it off. All right. You only live once, Luke. Heck yeah. Mario's tennis. He just served at me. Whoa. The 3D is actually pretty 3D. It's not that bad, right? Wow. Yeah. Okay. So there's a doubles option. Let's do this. Holy crap. Okay. So one and two player versus computer and computer. I can see you controlling everything. I'm going straight for hard. Oh God. Now how about normal? Okay. I mean, I don't even know the controls of the game. We're probably going to get dunked. Yes. Okay. Holy crap. Is princess peach shaking it? Oh, wow. You can like. Oh God. She is shaking it. But so is Yoshi. Go for it. 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. I got it. Hey, very nice. That's not mine. I got it. I got it. Don't you worry baby. Oh yeah. Dang it. These normal computer players are a little challenging actually. No. Oh my God. That was a really long really. 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? Uh, I don't know. It's hard to- The left or the right one. Okay. So left is like to lob it. And then the right one is to smash again. I've been pressing the right one the whole time. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. We scored. Okay. You ready for versus? Sure. I'm ready for versus. All right. All right. Bring it on. Oh, I feel like I'm gonna get dunked. Ah! Yeah! Woo! It's not over. It's not over. God damn it. Boom! Plink! No! Yeah! Oh! Come back over the century! Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I want to try with the shroud though. I don't know if it's gonna make that much of a difference. But I want to try with the shroud. You know what? I'm happy to do it because the last thing I want is for you to have any excuse when we're done here. Okay. 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. I bet. This is my plan all along. Oh, sort of crap. Oh, interesting. Well. Wait a minute. Is your right side dead? Dead? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. You have way more field of view than me. Wait, what? Yours isn't even 3D, Luke. Maybe that's why I said the 3D effects sucked. Yeah. That's a bit of a disadvantage. This 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. Yeah. The shroud's 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 a lot more sense now? Yeah. Given you were watching in 2D. Yeah. I guess that makes sense. But you know, like honestly speaking, 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. Yeah. The novelty is still there. That's why I think I never really noticed that much. It was like, okay, the 3D effects probably just terrible. Well, honestly, I just am enjoying this game. I think it's fun. Well, yeah. But Mario Tennis is great. Have you never played Mario Tennis before? I have never played a Mario Tennis game. Yeah. Mario Tennis is awesome. Oh, you piece of- Whoa. Whoa. Oh, got a little hasty there. Yeah. You're gonna catch me looking out of the headset. Come on out. I missed that. Oh boy. Don't lose your cool. Oh. 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. Let's do it. Oh. I'm up. Get back there. Yeah. You like that? Every time I miss, it like goes through my face. I miss cause I'm like, trying to hit the ball with my face. Playing a little bit too much contact sports. Oh shoot. Oh no. Oh my goodness. The comeback. Oh. No. No. Are you in here? I'm 2P. I don't see your little logo. Do you see mine moving? Nope. Just select yours and let's see what happens. Okay. I don't know Street Fighter. Cause mine froze after I selected a character. So maybe it'll just kick in. How do you select a- You press start. Yeah. Start. Got it. Yeah. I think, I think after you did your thing, mine loaded. Oh, you picked Delceme too? I don't know the characters. Okay. You're just spamming. Yeah. And you're losing. Oh God. Oh, so you're supposed to use both D-pads. Both D-pads do stuff. Funky. Some of my own medicine. Oh, you suck. Wow. There is pretty much zero value whatsoever to this game being on Virtual Boy. Basically, do you want to try this one? Sure. Here, let's switch. I think the, just playing this one though, I don't know what they would add. Like Mario Tennis, it was 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. As it, I don't know. Have a look at it. Sure. Have a look at it. Let me know what you think. You know what the stupid thing is about this one? Is like the game itself is 3D enough that the stereoscopicness of it contributes quite literally nothing. Yeah. It's not better over here. Mario Tennis was definitely better over here. I mean, it's, 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 his like hand thing? Oh yeah. Wow. Nice. Neat. So that was actually a really fun thing that I never need to experience again. I think I've had the whole- I could have more fun. Yeah, me too. A little bit. I could have more fun playing more Mario Tennis. Yeah. But we could also just fire up Mario Tennis on the Switch. We could do that. And it would probably still be really fun. 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 Virtual Boy. 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 experienced at the game, but rather 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 than anything to do with actual skill. Who can stay focused while like shoved into this weird thing while they're henhersed. Using a really weird commercial controller with a headache, which is probably why it 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 hate it ever got? Yes. 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 Apple's game console. What was it called? Pippin. Yeah, the Apple Pippin. The Atmarque Pippin. Atmarque Pippin. It's even weirder than this one. I will say I'm a little disappointed that we're not in a 90s 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 artworks 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. No. Unless you watch WAN Show. Yeah. In which case he'll see you. Five minutes. Yeah. Watching it sequentially. Yeah.