Nintendo Virtual Boy

[drewprops]

Despite its Pedobear sounding name, the Virtual Boy was a cutting edge video system in its day... almost inconceivable that the company released such technology on an unwitting populace. Still, after the smoke had cleared and the awe died down, it became apparent that the damned thing would give you a Grade Five Cluster Headache due to the ALL RED display and the eye-searing graphic delivery.

Still, the VB that I picked up on clearance at KayBee Toys must surely be worth a small fortune in today's collector market.

Robo, how much is this thing worth and what can you say of this nearly-alien technology?


...

[Yontsey]

Actually, I saw on Pawn Stars someone was trying to sell one and they were only offering $25 or so. I was kind of surprised.

[SpecMode]

A cursory search on eBay shows (working) systems being listed for anything from $75 to $750 (depending on condition and number of games included). Pretty wide range. I remember playing one of these once (rented from Blockbuster, I believe) and thinking it was pretty badass. One doubts that impression would still hold today, though.

[Brad]

A childhood friend of mine actually owned a Virtual Boy. We were big Nintendo buffs at the time. ("At the time"? HA!) I don't know if he still has it, but I remember seeing he still had the box in his house as of a few years ago.

I didn't own it, but I do remember renting it twice from Blockbuster (man, those were the days!!). I remember thinking it was really cool and wishing there were more games for it. I feel like the moaning about headaches had to have been overblown, like people wrecking their TVs by throwing their Wiimotes at them. In the couple of weeks that I had it, I played it a ton and don't remember once getting a headache from it.

[Robo]

I'm with Brad; the noise of the thing (the rotating mirror made a whirring sound, or at least mine did) bothered me more than any headaches.

It's actually not worth very much money unless it's in particularly good condition (with intact box, &c.) or has an unusually large library of games. It was a failure by game platform standards, but they did still ship nearly a million of them. The most wanted games these days are Jack Bros., 3D Tetris, Wario Land, and the appropriately named Red Alarm. Everybody has Mario's Tennis (which was a pack-in) and Teleroboxer, god knows why.

Trivia: Kid-friendly spinoff Jack Bros. was actually the first Shin Megami Tensei game to be released outside of Japan. The main series is, uh, decidedly less kid-friendly :lol: