Looking back at Nintendo’s consoles over the years, there are far more hits than there are misses. With everything from the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Nintendo Switch 2, the company has remained one of the biggest names in gaming for decades, but it has stumbled a couple of times. Notably, the Nintendo Wii U was an abject failure, but its sales figures are legendary when compared to Nintendo’s greatest fumble that almost nobody played: the Virtual Boy.
Released in 1995, the Virtual Boy only ever had 22 games and was quickly discontinued, having only sold 770,000 units. The Nintendo Virtual Boy completely flopped, but it didn’t entirely die out. Nintendo released a new version that works with the Switch and Switch 2, allowing modern players to enjoy the system’s small library of games. That’s not the only way to enjoy them, nor is it the best after you learn about VBoy Color, a new emulator that plays Virtual Boy games on the PC and other devices.
Not only does it emulate the games and is entirely free, but as the name implies, the VBoy Color takes the original games’ red-lined, nausea-inducing graphics and recreates them in vibrant colors. One of the main reasons that the Virtual Boy failed in the ’90s was how uncomfortable it was to play. The graphics caused eye strain and migraines in some people, so Nintendo had to slap a warning label on the console that cautioned users from letting younger children use the system. Fortunately, those days are long behind Nintendo, and now you can enjoy Virtual Boy games in full color.
VBoy Color redeems the Virtual Boy’s small library in full color
VBoy Color is the brainchild of yuk27, who released the emulation software for free on GitHub. While it’s playable on a PC, it works even better on a Meta Quest headset. The original Virtual Boy forced players to lean into the device on a tabletop, which was uncomfortable and as far from portable as you can get. Playing VBoy Color on a legit 21st-century VR headset brings the games to life the way they were idealized back in 1995, and it’s impressive in stereoscopic 3D and full color.
On Windows and Linux systems, it plays them in a window, which is perfectly fine, though like any emulation software, you must own the physical copies to legally play software backups. The emulator also works on macOS, and it’s an amazing emulator on Android, using touch controls to play the games, so it’s loaded with features. Color is rendered in one of four ways, depending on player choice. Using the Auto color option, the emulator shades each sprite based on where it is in the virtual world, and this is the easiest way to get going.
Selecting Multicolor takes the Virtual Boy’s original four shades and gives them each a different color from a set of palettes. Gradient adds six colors based on a game’s brightness, and Tint is the OG Virtual Boy look, though you can choose colors other than red on black. The emulator has more features detailed on GitHub, and it absolutely redeems the Virtual Boy’s library, which includes some good games like “Virtual Boy Wario Land,” “D-Hopper,” and “Jack Bros.”
