VIRTUAL BOY · PLATFORMER · DEEP CUT
The Virtual Boy is gaming’s most famous failure — a red-tinted headache machine that lasted less than a year and sold to almost nobody. But buried in its tiny library of fourteen North American releases is a genuinely great game, and it’s the one starring Nintendo’s greediest anti-hero. Virtual Boy Wario Land is the best reason to own the system’s strangest hardware, and one of the most interesting platformers Nintendo ever made.
What it is
On paper, it’s a sequel to Wario Land on the Game Boy: run, shoulder-bash, stomp, collect treasure, get rich. In practice, the Virtual Boy’s stereoscopic 3D transforms it. Foreground and background layers aren’t decoration — they’re gameplay. Enemies lurk in the back layer, secrets hide in the depth between planes, and jumping “into” the screen to dodge or grab is a mechanic no other platformer of the era could do. It’s a gimmick that earns its place.
The Wario of it all
This is peak Wario — not the minigame mascot, but the greedy, brawling treasure hunter. The game understands its star: levels are built around smashing through things, every treasure chest is a little dopamine hit, and the whole thing has a mischievous energy the Mario games never allowed. The transformations when Wario gets hit — tiny Wario, bubble Wario — add slapstick to the challenge.
The treasure hunt
The game’s structure deserves praise: it’s a treasure hunt first and a platformer second. Every level hides stashes of coins and artifacts, and your ending depends on how much loot you haul out. This reframes the whole experience — you’re not just surviving levels, you’re casing them, learning where the valuables are and plotting routes. It gives the game a replayability most platformers of the era lacked, because a perfect run and a rich run are different skills.
The Virtual Boy problem
Let’s address the headache in the room. The Virtual Boy is uncomfortable. The red-on-black display causes eye strain, the “portable” system needs a table, and sessions longer than thirty minutes are an act of endurance. Virtual Boy Wario Land is a great game trapped in a terrible console — and the console’s limitations genuinely hold it back. Shorter play sessions suit it, but you’ll always feel the hardware fighting you.
Emulation helps enormously here. Played in 3D on modern displays or in VR, the game shines without the physical punishment, and the depth mechanics finally get the presentation they deserve.
A great game trapped in a terrible console — but the depth mechanics are genuine, and Wario has never been better.
Score: 7.5/10. The game itself is an 8.5 or better; the hardware tax is real. As a piece of Nintendo history and a genuinely inventive platformer, it’s absolutely worth experiencing — just maybe not on original hardware for more than half an hour at a time.