Virtual Boy Works

The book arrived well and safe, in perfect condition, it was boxed nicely and protected. The quality of the content is 5 start, not only goes into detail on each game but also has a great layout with art made for the game. Recommended.

Deeply engrossing, fully-fleshed-out, historical perspective of the short-lived, highly obscure, yet exciting Nintendo table-top 3D console. It’s not unbelievable that I could afford the entire library of games as a teenager in the Spring/Summer of 1996, given that WalMart had reduced games to $5 and the console price to $50. Needless to say, my friends and I were devastated knowing the final game released in the US was 3D Tetris and that we had exhausted all game options in less than six-months time. This included a few import games to the likes of V-Tetris and Space Squash down the road. Nonetheless, my brothers and friends stuck with the system, switching off in Nester’s Funky Bowling (Nester and Hester) going for the elusive perfect game, wiping out each other’s high scores in Galactic Pinball and going the completionist’s route in Wario Cruise, er, Wario Land VB. Unbelievable so, and to this day, the records and names are still saved on the Galactic Pinball cartridge! To my knowledge, no other cartridge had a battery save pack feature, minus Wario Land VB so one could save multiple game files. Anywho, what a ride and homage this book is to the late and great Gunpei Yokoi (Virtual Boy, Game Boy and Wonderswan). Let’s call it like it is: creative-types and geniuses are often decades ahead of their time, pushing the limitations of technology and mystifying simpletons (consumers) in the process. Did the red LED’s permanently damage our eyesight? Surely. Was there anything virtual about the games minus Teleroboxer’s first-person brawling experience? Nah, just a lot of 3D fun. However, the memories it etched (scarred) in the back of our eyes and minds now makes me realize how spectacularly-odd and entertaining this system was before N64 and PlayStation would rule our weekends for the next five-plus years. Truly makes me appreciate the fact that nothing great, or perhaps charmingly-flawed in this case, is meant to last, nor sometimes should it. Appreciate what you have in the moment, because you never know when a million-plus Virtual Boys along with their unreleased offspring (games) will added to a landfill never to be seen again.

A few years ago, I found myself down a YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled across Jeremy Parish's "Works" series of videos detailing the history of video games. Specifically, he was making videos that chronologically documented the games released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Super NES, and Sega Genesis. One system that I was able to watch all the way through was his series on the Virtual Boy, Nintendo's oft-maligned 32-bit console. This book is a written-down version of the scripts from that series.While I enjoyed the bite-size chapters on each of the 22 games for the system, the few additional chapters on fan games were a nice addition that wasn't part of the YouTube series. The book also included a pair of blue/red 3D glasses so readers could catch a glimpse of what these games might have been like (it works OK, but it's no Virtual Boy emulation on a VR headset). Also having some background on the technology between chapters that talked about the games was a nice respite and made me realize how innovative this failed console was for its time.For what it's worth, Virtual Boy Works (the book) really just is a printed-out version of the scripts that went into the YouTube videos. Unfortunately, this also meant the formatting wasn't the greatest for this full-color book. I understand the Virtual Boy aesthetic was very much about red and black, but printing an entire book with this color scheme made it a little hard to read—which was ironic given the Virtual Boy's notorious eye strain issues. The formatting of the text also didn't feel quite polished despite the high-quality photos of the games that were included in each chapter. Still, it's a nice book to have with my video game collection even if I don't actually own anything from the Virtual Boy.A nice collection of YouTube scripts about one of gaming's most spectacular failures, I give Virtual Boy Works 3.5 stars out of 5.