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It’s been a long wait
Nintendo says 14 Virtual Boy titles will be made available to Switch Online Expansion Pack subscribers over time. The eventual software list includes cult-classic Nintendo first-party titles like Virtual Boy Wario Land and Mario’s Tennis, as well as extremely hard-to-find third-party games like Jack Bros. and Virtual Bowling, which can command hundreds or thousands of dollars for an original cartridge.
The fact that Nintendo is officially acknowledging these games at all is a bit surprising after all these years of neglect. Even the 3DS Virtual Console—which would have seemed like a natural place for a Virtual Boy resurgence—never got official support for the retro system. Instead, fans of Nintendo’s least successful console (it’s estimated to have sold fewer than 800,000 units) have either had to track down rare original hardware and software or resort to unofficial emulators (one of which recently added full-color support beyond the usual red tints displayed by the original console).
The Switch-docking strategy Nintendo is using for stereoscopy here is more than a bit reminiscent of 2019’s Nintendo Labo VR, which slotted the original Switch into a lens-equipped cardboard sleeve for a low-resolution, bare bones introduction to the idea of VR. At the time, we called that experiment a “fine, serviceable, decent” introduction to virtual reality seemingly designed for small children.
Today’s Virtual Boy announcement, of course, comes with a hefty added dose of nostalgia and represents a long-overdue official recognition of an often-ignored part of Nintendo history. For all its faults, the Virtual Boy was a prime example of Nintendo designer Gunpei Yokoi’s philosophy of “lateral thinking with withered technology,” as Ars’ own Benj Edwards laid out in detail when contributing to a book-length treatise on the console.
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