10 Best Virtual Boy Games With High Replay Value

2 days ago 8

Ah, the Virtual Boy, truly the darkest of Nintendo’s black sheep. It was originally released in 1995 and touted as a tabletop portable game console; you stick your face into the eyepieces and experience the wonders of virtual reality. Except not really. It was pretty much just a 32-bit Game Boy that played about an inch away from your eyes, which frequently led to searing eye strain and brutal migraines.

While the Virtual Boy remains something of a cautionary tale, its games weren’t a complete waste of time and space. You’d certainly hope so, considering only 22 games released for the thing in total. This meant you really had to squeeze what entertainment you could get out of it, because you weren’t getting much more, so replayability was a must. Since Nintendo has made the… interesting decision to bring the Virtual Boy’s games back via Switch Online, it would be good to go in knowing which ones are worth booting up more than once, preferably from a safe viewing distance.

10 Nester’s Funky Bowling

Nintendo’s Forgotten Mascot

By the mid-90s, Nintendo Power magazine was in the prime of its life, with Nintendo faithful around the world encouraged to “Get the Power.” Nintendo Power had its own mascot character, a young gamer named Nester, who appeared in comics around the magazine. Nester himself only ever appeared in a single video game: Nester’s Funky Bowling.

One of the two bowling-themed video games on the Virtual Boy, Nester’s Funky Bowling is… bowling. Starring Nester, and to a lesser extent, his twin sister, Hester. There aren’t any particular tweaks or gimmicks to it, it’s just simple, albeit functional bowling. You could play regular bowling with a friend by passing the VB back and forth, though there’s also a challenge mode where you need to knock down complicated configurations of pins with a strike.

The big appeal of this game over the other bowling game is that, with every throw, you get to see one of Nester’s fun little animations, which gives the whole thing some personality. There are even special animations for things like splits and doubles, just like your favorite real-life bowling alley.

9 Virtual League Baseball

Like A Stadium On The Surface Of Mars

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Kemco

Virtual Boy

August 1995

As the classic American pastime, baseball has gone hand-in-hand with video games for decades, with even the simplest consoles rendering the sport to some degree. Even the Virtual Boy managed to check that box off, and in a surprisingly stable way with Virtual League Baseball.

Virtual League Baseball is a single-player baseball experience with simplified gameplay and controls, easy enough for anyone to pick up and play. You can play single matches against the computer, try an all-star game with top-ranking players from America, Asia, or Europe, or play through a series of matches in a race for the pennant. The Pennant Race in particular is meant to be a long-term game, with passwords given after every match to save your progress.

While it’s not exactly the definition of virtual reality, the game has a surprisingly nifty ambiance to it. When the batter hits the ball, your view switches to a spectator in the stands as you control your outfielders, allowing you to see how high the ball goes and watch it fly off into the distance. Hey, it’s cheaper than actually going to the stadium, and you can bring your own hotdog.

8 Space Invaders Virtual Collection

You Can’t Beat The Classics

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Taito

Virtual Boy

December 1995

The original 1978 Space Invaders was and remains one of the most well-known video games of all time. It was an absolute monster when it first launched in arcades, and did equally huge numbers on the home market via consoles like the Atari 2600. If anything is worth braving a VB-induced migraine for, it’s Space Invaders, especially when you get multiple Space Invaders games in one package.

Only released in Japan in 1995, Space Invaders Virtual Collection features both the original 2D versions of Space Invaders and Space Invaders Part II and remade 3D versions specifically for the VB. The 3D versions don’t change the gameplay, but rather swing the perspective back, having the invaders encroach from the background to the foreground while you shoot from the front.

Just playing Space Invaders is generally fun enough, though if you want a little extra, the collection also has time attack and score attack modes for clearing waves as quickly and decisively as possible. If you’re ever bored and want to channel the vibe of a darkened arcade in the late 70s, there were worse ways to spend your time.

7 Vertical Force

Goin’ Up, Goin’ Down

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Hudson Soft

Virtual Boy

August 1995

Rather than actual 3D, the majority of the Virtual Boy’s games created its signature illusion of depth through parallax scrolling, rendering images on multiple layers and scrolling them along the background at different rates. It’s the same visual rendering trick that the SNES used. One of the VB’s games that took the best advantage of this trick was Vertical Force.

Vertical Force is an old-school vertically-scrolling shoot ‘em up. You move your little ship around, enemies fly in from the top, and you shoot ‘em down. The twist is that both enemies and your ship can change altitudes, flying down into the background or up into the foreground. By changing altitude, you can avoid obstacles and attacks, as well as pursue enemies who are too high or low for your shots to hit otherwise.

It’s a pretty fun and fast-paced game, especially when you pick up power-ups like shields and stronger weapons. The altitude switching can take a little getting used to, as it’s not always clear where your ship is sitting at a glance. I guess that was one of the perks of having the VB screens pressed right up against your eyeballs.

6 Mario’s Tennis

The Console’s Hallmark Title

The initial launch of the Virtual Boy came alongside five launch titles, one of which was a pack-in you got with the console. That game was Mario’s Tennis, which is both one of the only two Mario games in the entire console library and the first time the plucky plumber ever picked up a racket. One of Mario’s most recurring sports spin-offs started on the VB of all things; life is funny like that.

Mario’s Tennis is a fairly straightforward tennis game with a Mario-themed coat of paint. You can choose from Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, a Koopa, Toad, or Donkey Kong Jr., and play on a court with the signature rounded hills of the Mushroom Kingdom off in the distance. Despite what you may expect based on modern Mario Tennis games, there are no wacky gimmicks or power-ups here. It’s just good ol’ fashioned tennis, with the use of stereoscopic 3D allowing you to better perceive the depth of the flying ball.

Mario’s Tennis doesn’t feature a multiplayer component, unfortunately, but you can ramp up the challenge from the computer players with difficulty-increasing cheat codes. Hey, you could always take turns with a friend, though you wouldn’t exactly be able to watch while they’re playing.

5 V-Tetris

Keep It Simple

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Locomotive

Virtual Boy

August 1995

Any good portable console should receive at least one version of Tetris, and the Virtual Boy actually managed two. One of these games, 3D Tetris, tried to lean more into the Virtual Boy’s gimmick by having you arrange Tetrominos in a 3D plane, though unfortunately, it didn’t really pan out. The other was V-Tetris, which kept things much more faithful to the proper Tetris formula and became more replayable for it.

V-Tetris has three gameplay modes to choose from: A, B, and C. Mode-A and Mode-B are more or less just regular Tetris; the Tetrominos fall in, you arrange them, clear out full lines. Mode-B requires you to clear a certain number of lines to progress, but that’s about it. Mode-C, though, is where things get a little more interesting. In Mode-C, the playing field has a pseudo-cylindrical shape, allowing you to rotate and clear lines on multiple planes simultaneously. It’s a small gimmick, but a much more intuitive one than 3D Tetris’s approach.

10 Games To Play If You Love Tetris

If you love spending time playing Tetris, these games may scratch that same itch.

V-Tetris was supposed to have two-player multiplayer via a link cable that would connect multiple Virtual Boys together. Unfortunately, that cable never came out, so you can only play this game by yourself. Still, Tetris is Tetris, and Tetris is always fun to play.

4 Jack Bros.

Technically The First Western SMT Game

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Atlus

Virtual Boy

September 1995

The Megami Tensei franchise, origin point of the Persona series if you didn’t know, has been around since 1987, though most of the franchise’s early games and spin-offs were Japan-exclusive. The first mainline MegaTen game to release in the west was Shin Megami Tensei 3, but that technically wasn’t the first western release in the franchise. The first, strangely enough, was Jack Bros. on the Virtual Boy.

Jack Bros. is a top-down maze exploration game starring the MegaTen mascot Jack Frost, as well as his brothers Jack Lantern and Jack Skelton (AKA Jack Ripper). You control your Jack of choice as you navigate a series of mazes, defeating enemies to find keys and opening the way forward. Interestingly, each phase of a maze has you dropping down from above, a fun way to show off the parallax effect.

Jack Bros. isn’t a particularly long game, with only six stages to run through, but it does stand out amongst the rest of the library for being one of the more challenging VB games. It was a game you could really put some time into figuring out, whether you’re playing it for the first time or running through again.

3 Mario Clash

Classic Mario, New Perspective

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Nintendo

Virtual Boy

September 1995

The original Mario Bros. arcade game released in 1983 is probably the most plumbing-centric adventure we’ve ever seen Mario and Luigi get up to. In ways subtle and major, it has influenced the overall vibe of the franchise years on. For an example in the latter category, the second Mario game to release for the Virtual Boy, Mario Clash is a deliberate reimagining of Mario Bros.

Mario Clash has the same goal as Mario Bros., that being to clear all the critters out from the level. Some can be jumped on, but others can only be defeated with projectiles, like thrown shells. The gimmick here is that, by entering the pipes, you can switch between the foreground and background, then chuck shells at enemies on the opposing side. It’s a pretty neat view, throwing a shell from the background and seeing it fly right into your face.

Also like Mario Bros., Mario Clash is a strictly arcade-style affair, with 99 levels and no continues. While you can’t save your progress or high score, it's still one of the console's better games, and the later levels do get surprisingly hectic with the volume of enemies that pop out.

2 Teleroboxer

The Coolest-Looking VB Game

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Nintendo

Virtual Boy

July 1995

The Virtual Boy wasn’t exactly at the height of graphical fidelity. Its graphics were fuzzy, not helped by the unpleasant viewing angle, and everything was rendered exclusively in shades of red and black. If there were a single game that managed to look really cool despite these limitations, it was Teleroboxer, which is also a really cool title.

Teleroboxer, out of just about all the VB’s library, leans hardest into the virtual reality concept, giving you a first-person view of one of the titular robotic boxers. Despite the fantastical premise, it’s a pretty technical boxing game, requiring you to duck and guard against your opponent’s attacks, then counter with quick jabs and hooks on their blind spots. The robots all had creative designs with distinct body parts and expressive faces, which both helped you read their movements and just generally enjoy the experience.

There are eight opponents to fight in total, kind of like a lighter version of Punch-Out. Much like with Punch-Out, it’s quite fun to try and optimize your playstyle and go for the fastest, cleanest knockouts you can manage.

1 Panic Bomber

Parallax Puzzles

Developer

Platforms

Release Date

Hudson Soft

PC Engine, Super Famicom, Virtual Boy

August 1995 (Virtual Boy)

Good puzzle games are the backbone of the portable console market, even for platforms like the Virtual Boy that are really more portable in name only. When you have a quick moment to kill and need something to boot up, it’s the puzzles that provide. If we’re talking about perfect time-killing games, nobody does it better than Bomberman, particularly with his spin-off puzzle game, Panic Bomber.

This Japan-exclusive game was originally released on the PC-Engine, followed by the Super Famicom, before making its way to VB in the summer of 1995. It’s a head-to-head falling puzzle game like Puyo-Puyo, but with a Bomberman twist. As you stack, arrange, and match icons on your field, you’ll receive bombs, which can then be detonated with a lit bomb that drops from the top of the screen. When the lit bomb drops, all of your current bombs fire off in sequence, clearing large swaths of your field and dumping a bunch of junk onto your opponent’s.

Again, this game was supposed to have link cable-enabled multiplayer support, but the Virtual Boy died out before that could happen. On the bright side, you get four difficulty levels to choose from when progressing through the single-player mode, so there’s plenty of room to challenge yourself.