nintendo claimed that a color display would have made the system too expensive and resulted in "jumpy" images, so the company opted for a monochrome display. to achieve a color display, nintendo would have used a combination of red, green, and blue leds. at the time, blue leds were still considerably expensive and would in turn raise the price of the final product. this in combination with the other drawbacks helped influence nintendo's decision to release the virtual boy as a monochrome device.