Virtual Boy - Development

Development

The Virtual Boy was first announced via press release on 14 November 1994. Nintendo promised that Virtual Boy would "Totally immerse players into their own private universe." The system was formally unveiled the next day at the Shoshinkai (初心会) Show. Nintendo of America unveiled the Virtual Boy at the Consumer Electronics Show on 6 January 1995.

While Nintendo's Research & Development 3 division (R&D3) was focused on developing the Nintendo 64, the other two engineering units were free to experiment with new product ideas. The Virtual Boy was designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the general manager of Nintendo's R&D1, and the inventor of the Game & Watch and Game Boy handheld consoles. He saw the Virtual Boy as a unique technology that competitors would find difficult to emulate.

Initial press releases and interviews about the system focused on its technological capabilities, avoiding discussion of the actual games that would be released. The company entered into an exclusive agreement with Reflection Technology to license the technology for the Scanned Linear Array displays.

Problems emerged when Nintendo attempted to turn its vision into an affordable console, searching for low-cost hardware components. Yokoi opted for red LEDs because they were the cheapest; Nintendo said a color display would have been prohibitively expensive. Color was also said to have caused "jumpy images in tests." LEDs were also chosen for having the lowest drain on batteries, and for being the most striking color to see. In addition, LCDs at the time had low refresh rates, and were often blurry. They also consumed more power than LEDs. Even with cost-saving measures in place, Nintendo priced the Virtual Boy at a relatively high US$180. While slightly less expensive than a home console, this was considerably more costly than the Game Boy handheld.

While more powerful and with seemingly more advanced graphics, the Virtual Boy was not intended to replace the Game Boy in Nintendo's product line, as use of the system requires a steady surface and completely blocks the player's peripheral vision. According to David Sheff's book Game Over, Yokoi never actually intended for the console to be released in its ultimate form. However, Nintendo pushed the Virtual Boy to market so that it could focus development resources on the Nintendo 64. Design News described the Virtual Boy as the logical evolution of the View-Master 3-dimensional image viewer.