Technologies

Virtual Boy Review: Nintendo’s Oddest Switch Accessory Yet Is an Immersive ’90s Museum

No one needs a Virtual Boy. But I always wanted one. And now it’s living with me at last.

On my desk is a Nintendo device that looks like equipment stolen from a cyberpunk optical shop. It’s big, it’s red and black, it sits on a tripod, it has an eyepiece, and it has a Nintendo Switch 2 nestled inside. Hello, Virtual Boy, you’re back.

Nintendo has made a lot of weird consoles over the years, but the Virtual Boy was the weirdest. And the shortest lived. Released in 1995 and discontinued a year later, it lived for a blink of an eye during my final year in college. I never really had time to consider buying one.

It would have been perfect for me, a Game Boy fan who was in love with the idea of VR even back then. Nintendo has been flirting with virtual reality in various forms for decades, and the Virtual Boy was the biggest swing. But it wasn’t VR at all, really. It was a 3D game console in red and black monochrome, a 3D Game Boy in tripod form.

I’m setting the stage because right now you can order a $100 Virtual Boy recreation that’s a big, strange Switch accessory. It’s staring at me now, taking up a lot of space. It’s too big to fit in a bag. It’s a tabletop console, really, and Nintendo has created this Virtual Boy viewer as a way to play a set of free-with-subscription games on the Switch and Switch 2.

Is it worth your money? I’d call it a museum-piece collectible, not a serious piece of gaming hardware. Still, my kid stuck his head in, played 3D Wario Land, and came out declaring it was really cool. He loves old retro games. But I don’t know how often he’ll pop his head back in.

Nintendo’s first stab at 3D now feels like a museum piece

For comparison, I pulled my old Nintendo 3DS XL out of the drawer where it had been tucked away and booted it up, marveling again that Nintendo actually made a glasses-free 3D game handheld once upon a time. The 3DS is a far more capable and advanced game system, but consider the Virtual Boy an ancient attempt to get there first.

The Virtual Boy was a monochrome red-and-black LED display system, a tabletop-only device that was neither handheld nor TV-connected. The Nintendo Switch’s tabletop-style game modes feel like a bit of an evolutionary link to the Virtual Boy, so it’s poetic that the Switch pops into the new Virtual Boy to power the games and provide the display.

The plastic Virtual Boy is just an odd set of VR goggles for the Switch, but with a red filter on the lenses. Also, you can’t wear it. You keep your head stuck in it.

Awkward and easy to use

All the trappings on this recreation look like the old Virtual Boy but don’t work: You can see a simulated headphone jack, controller port, a sort of knob on top. I just unsnap the plastic case and slide the Switch in, carefully, and then snap it back over. That’s all it is.

To control it, you use the Switch controllers detached or another Switch-compatible controller. Launching the Virtual Boy app — free on the eShop, but you need a Switch Online Plus Expansion Pack account, which costs $50 a year, or $80 for a family membership — splits the Switch display into two smaller, distorted screens. In the Virtual Boy, it looks properly 3D. When I’m done playing, I pop the Switch back out.

As I said in my first hands-on, the big foam-covered eyepiece is more than wide enough for big glasses, and was fine to dip my face into. Getting a comfortable angle to stay playing for a while is another challenge. The Virtual Boy’s included tripod-like stand can adjust the angle, but not as wide as I’d like. I’m sort of hunched over while playing, which gives me a bit of pain. Leaning on the table with my controllers in hand helps.

The red-lensed front eyepiece can be removed, and a later software update will allow Virtual Boy games to be played in several color mixes beyond red and black. Also, you can unscrew an inner bracket to hold the Switch 2 and swap in an included Switch-sized bracket instead. The Switch Lite doesn’t work with the Virtual Boy, however.

The weirdness is my type of indie

All you get right now are seven of the 16 games Nintendo has promised to release for the Virtual Boy. Believe it or not, there were only 22 games ever released for this system. The 16 will include two that were never released before, which is a fun collector’s novelty.

But what’s amazing to me now is that, sinking into these oddball retro games with their pixelated NES-slash-Game Boy aesthetics in red and black, they feel weirdly timely. The janky, oddball, almost-parallel-universe Nintendo vibe feels like the indie retro aesthetic that’s been big for a while now. After all these years, is the Virtual Boy now finally awesome?

Games like UFO 50 (a compilation of new indie games made to feel like an archive of ’80s games for a console that never was) and indie consoles like Panic Playdate (still my favorite black and white mini handheld, a home for all sorts of homebrew retro games) match my feeling diving into these Virtual Boy games and figuring them out.

Wario Land is probably the best: A side-scrolling Wario game with multiple depth levels, it gives me Game Boy Mario game vibes. Golf has multiple holes and an aiming system, and it’s relaxed and basic (and hard to perfect). 3D Tetris has you dropping blocks down a well to fill in layers, with a Tron-like puzzle feel. Red Alert’s wireframe 3D shooter design is like Star Fox, but boiled all the way down to simple vector lines. Galactic Pinball has several tables, and it’s some lovely, very old-school 3D Nintendo pinball fun. Teleroboxer is Punch-Out with robots, with a style that also reminds me of the early Switch game Arms. And The Mansion of Innsmouth is a creepy 3D dungeon-crawling game (in Japanese) where you try to get to exits before time runs out… or monsters get you.

The remaining games coming this year include Mario Tennis, another Tetris game, a wireframe 3D racer, a 3D reinvention of the original Mario Bros. game called Mario Clash and a 3D Space Invaders. By the end of Nintendo’s release schedule, a good chunk of Virtual Boy’s catalog will be there.

A novelty that’s niche as hell

Worth it? Again, if you love weird and retro, and are intrigued by lost Nintendo 3D games, then yes. But if you’re looking for cutting-edge, then no.

Keep in mind: You can buy a cheaper $25 cardboard set of goggles for the Switch that lets you play the Virtual Boy games, too (or use the old Labo VR goggles Nintendo made in 2019, if you have them). That’s a more sensible path. There are even unofficial emulators for Virtual Boy games on the Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro. But who said the Virtual Boy was sensible?

A Nintendo game system that’s a big set of red goggles on a tripod is inherently absurd. And I welcome its weird footprint in my home, because that’s exactly who I am. But it’s also a testament to Nintendo’s perpetual interest in the bleeding edge of gaming. VR, glasses-free 3D, AR, modular consoles… Nintendo’s poking around the edges.

Is the Virtual Boy a sign that Nintendo could make its own VR or AR game system again someday soon, or as an extension of the Switch 2? Who knows? Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo’s legendary video game designer, sounded intrigued and elusive about it when I asked him last year. But there’s never any real way to guess where Nintendo’s heading. The Virtual Boy is a museum-piece reminder of that.

Technologies

Trump warns ‘we’re going to hit them hard’ after Iran targets U.S. forces in Jordan: Report

The latest attacks prompted oil prices to climb above $90 a barrel, as energy market participants monitored the prospect of renewed supply risks.

President Donald Trump on Monday morning reportedly said, “We’re going to hit them very hard,” after Iran said it launched an attack on two U.S. bases in Jordan in response to an American strike on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend.

“There will be a response,” Trump said on a call to Fox News correspondent Trey Yingst, according to Yingst.

The president also reportedly told Fox that U.S. air defense systems intercepted all but one of the missiles launched at the bases by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and that the remaining missile was allowed to pass through after it was determined that it would not strike anything significant.

The Guard said the U.S. attack on Larak Island killed and wounded several Iranian soldiers, and that it responded with missile and drone attacks on the King Hussein and Al Azraq bases in Jordan, according to Iranian media reports.

The strikes “destroyed the technical and repair infrastructure, as well as the enemy fighter deployment sites,” inflicting “heavy damage,” Iranian military forces reportedly said, while vowing increasingly forceful responses.

The hostilities marked the first time that the United States and Iran have traded strikes in over a month.

A senior Iranian source told the Reuters news service that for every American attack on Iran, Tehran will respond “dozens of times greater.”

“No target in the region is beyond Tehran’s reach,” the source told Reuters.

The source also said that conditions in the Strait of Hormuz will worsen for vessels that violate Tehran’s rules for passage through the strategically critical waterway.

American forces hit two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island on Sunday after the U.S. military said Tehran’s Guard was preparing rockets carrying sea mines for launch into the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Central Command confirmed to MS NOW.

“Earlier today U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz,” Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, said in a statement to MS NOW.

“Last week, CENTCOM completed clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping routes. U.S. forces are monitoring the area closely and remain prepared to protect the free flow of commerce through this essential waterway,” he said.

Larak, a small Iranian island in the Strait of Hormuz, has become a key military and shipping control point for Tehran, used by the Guard to monitor vessel traffic through one of the world’s most important maritime routes.

Sunday’s attack was the first publicly acknowledged U.S. strike on Iranian positions since late July.

The back-and-forth strikes come as the U.S. Defense Department on Monday announced that it had reached seven-year procurement contracts with General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin to increase production quantities and speed up delivery schedules for “critical subcomponents” for systems used to intercept ballistic missiles.

The systems are Terminal High Altitude Area Defense and Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement.

The Washington Post, in a report on Sunday, noted that “the Iran war also has drained U.S. supplies of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors — vital not only to the protection of American assets in the Middle East but to regional allies as well — and long-range Tomahawk missiles.”

“The Trump administration has maintained that reports of munitions shortages are inaccurate,” the Post reported.

The war has dragged on for six months and sharply disrupted vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global energy shipments.

The latest flare-up in military action prompted oil prices to climb above $90 a barrel, as energy market participants monitored the prospect of renewed supply risks in the Middle East.

International benchmark Brent crude

Trump on Monday extended his military threats against Iran to Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export terminal.

Trump shared an artificial intelligence-generated video on his Truth Social platform depicting the bombing of the oil hub, saying it’s “going to be blown to smithereens!”

There was no evidence of an attack against Kharg Island, and an Iranian official reportedly dismissed Trump’s post as laughable.

On Monday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said a supertanker had caught fire and was left disabled in the southern Strait of Hormuz after striking two naval mines, saying they were not complying with Iran’s rules for passage, according to Iranian media reports. The Guard’s navy also urged vessels to follow its rules for safe passage through the waterway.

Separately, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that the U.S. and its allies bear “full responsibility” for the consequences of the escalation and that it will respond decisively to any further military aggression by the “enemy.”

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said Monday that the country was working to achieve a diplomatic agreement to bring an end to the conflict, adding the continuation of war “serves neither our interests nor those of the region or humanity.”

Speaking alongside Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kyrgyzstan, Pezeshkian said Monday that the U.S. side “has not fulfilled its commitments,” state media reported.

The U.S. Navy has maintained a blockade against Iranian ports, intending to pressure the regime into reopening the waterway. Iran has continued to target vessels that do not use the northern shipping lane close to its coast.

Another tanker was struck by an unknown projectile while transiting inbound in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, using the southern lane along the Omani coast, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations Centre. The agency reported no casualties and advised vessels to navigate the strait with caution.

Technologies

Brent crude exceeds $90 following U.S.-Iran hostilities flare-up

Oil prices jumped after U.S. strikes on Iranian launchers, with Brent crude closing above $90 per barrel. The escalation has heightened tensions, disrupting energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

Oil prices surged Monday after U.S. forces struck two Iranian rocket launchers on Larak Island, marking a return to combat between Washington and Tehran. Brent crude futures for September delivery gained 2.7% to close at $90.49 a barrel, while front-month U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures added 2.8% to settle at $85.76 per barrel. Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins, a U.S. Central Command spokesperson, confirmed in a statement that U.S. forces struck two Iranian launchers on Larak Island, with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the Strait of Hormuz. According to the Associated Press, Sunday’s attack was the first publicly acknowledged U.S. strike on Iranian positions since late July. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps reported that the U.S. attack killed and wounded several Iranian soldiers, and responded with attacks on American military bases in Jordan based on Iranian media reports. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump extended his military threats against Iran to Kharg Island, the country’s main oil export terminal, posting on Truth Social that it’s “going to be blown to smithereens!” Vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a key route for global energy shipments, has been severely disrupted by the Middle East conflict, which has entered its sixth month. “Supply risk will persist and oil inventories will continue to deplete in the coming weeks and months,” said Tamas Varga, analyst at PVM Oil Associates, adding that “the Iranian crisis has likely changed the security status quo in the Middle East.” “Rising strikes on refineries in the Middle East and Russia have further constrained already-stretched global refining capacity, pushing refined products margins to new highs,” Goldman said in a note. —Verum’s Anniek Bao contributed to the report.

Technologies

Trump warns ‘we’re going to hit them hard’ after Iran targets U.S. forces in Jordan: Report

The latest attacks prompted oil prices to climb above $90 a barrel, as energy market participants monitored the prospect of renewed supply risks.