In a move that perhaps no one could have expected, the Virtual Boy is joining the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass lineup this month, and having tried it for ourselves, there may be a little more to this historical quirk than meets the eye.
You would be forgiven if you’ve still never heard of the Virtual Boy before today. The console (or was it only a peripheral?) arrived in 1995 and proved to be a rare commercial miss for Nintendo hardware. Despite being designed by the legendary Gunpei Yokoi, who had pioneered the record-shattering Game Boy, at the equally-legendary Nintendo R&D1 division, the system was a hard sell and disappeared from store shelves within less than a year.
To modern Nintendo’s credit, they’re taking the bold move of pulling the Virtual Boy out of the closet of history and including it in the higher-tier of Nintendo Switch Online for all to see, alongside the much more thrilling libraries of the GameCube and Game Boy Advance. And not only that, they’ve actually invested the time and energy to make a compelling presentation for it with two different peripherals.
At a preview event for the Nintendo Switch 2’s winter lineup, I had the opportunity to take the Nintendo Classics app for a spin with the use of the dedicated accessory, which replicates the actual Virtual Boy headset. While I’ve never used the original console (or really ever seen it in person, outside of one time in the cabinet at a used game store), the replica looks exactly like what I expected. Most of the physical bells and whistles are here, like the stand, while the original controller has been replaced with your choice of Joy Con/Joy Con 2s, Pro Controller, or other valid gamepad.
It felt and looked awkward, just like I’d always expected the Virtual Boy would be like in real life.
To play this particular lineup of classics, you’ll need to insert your Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2 into either this accessory or its more affordable, Labo-esque cardboard equivalent and then… insert your face into it. While it felt and looked awkward, just as I’d always expected the Virtual Boy would in real life, the peripheral itself was sturdy and well-constructed.
But it was also an oddly fun experience to actually play. I’d always heard that pictures or video couldn’t do the Virtual Boy’s visuals justice, and this facsimile made that immediately evident. The effect was almost reminiscent of the Nintendo 3DS‘ own stereoscopic 3D visuals, but with much more emphasis on the 3D effect and the need to insert your face into the device. The 3DS made dimensionality an added bonus, while the Virtual Boy treated the effect like 3D movies circa 2009, where half the fun was seeing pictures jump out of the cinema screen.
In an ideal setup for the experience, the Virtual Boy peripheral was somewhat comfortable for a 10-15 minute gaming session, awkwardness aside. I could understand how it proved too cumbersome for mainstream success back in 1995, when it would have required either expensive battery packs or being tethered to an AC adapter. But once settled in, I began to glimpse the potential that Yokoi had seen in the technology.
The Virtual Boy will join the Nintendo Classics lineup with 7 games available at launch: Galactic Pinball, 3-D Tetris, Teleroboxer, Virtual Boy Wario Land, The Mansion of Innsmouth, Golf, and Red Alarm. Each will benefit from the Switch’s suite of enhancements for classic games, such as save states and gameplay rewind, while the ability to view and adjust controls will surely come in handy when trying to match the original system’s bizarre gamepad. With free rein of the launch titles, I focused on 3-D Tetris, Wario Land, and Golf.
The added dimensionality spiced up the classic Tetris format and served as perfect acclimatization to the red-and-black world inside the headset. Rotating the pieces and the playing field puts a fun spin on the most classic game of all time. Golf was also a competent, fun little golf sim, though the presentation plays up the 3D by putting weird emphasis on the menus. Though the need to aim your shot on a giant 3D golf ball makes each shot just a little more complicated than it needs to be, the cross section of fans between golf games and weird 90s tech could get lost in this one for a while.
Wario Land, however, showed the most promise of the launch titles—just as it was arguably the most in-depth game on the Virtual Boy in its own time. Hopping between the 3D planes became more than a gimmick, as swinging hazards immediately illustrate; this is a legitimate platformer and a decent successor to the Game Boy games, and you’ll need to learn to pay attention to multiple planes to survive and thrive.
Later in 2026, the Virtual Boy’s lineup will expand with Mario Clash, Mario’s Tennis (the system’s original pack-in title), Jack Bros, Space Invaders Virtual Collection, Virtual Bowling, Vertical Force, and V-Tetris. It’s unclear right now if any of the remaining games will see release next year, but for the time being, this will see the majority of the system’s 22 total games represented by year’s end; alongside two previously unreleased titles, Zero Racers and D-Hopper, that’s 16 games added to the Expansion Pack tier of Nintendo Online.
Granted, some seem like glorified tech demos, and I’m still not sure how many people outside of diehard Nintendo fans will want to buy into this odd history lesson. Even if the games were great, either version of the peripheral has literal and/or figurative strings attached. The Virtual Boy didn’t scream comfort in 1995, and it’s still not a paragon of ergonomics and accessibility in 2026. At least when I surfaced after about 15 minutes in the games, I hadn’t mustered a headache or found red-and-black patterns dancing before my eyes, as many did thirty years ago.
(That being said, Nintendo’s warnings mention that the Virtual Boy shouldn’t be used by children less than 7 years old. I’m no optician, but I’d maybe wait even longer.)
Upon the initial announcement, I’d been ready to write this addition off as a bell-and-whistle of my membership that I just don’t bother to use—but now it seems there’s a little more to this history lesson than meets the eye. It’s a big ask to suggest customers should buy a $100 peripheral (or a $30 piece of cardboard) to embark on a historical field trip.
But at the same time, like any of Nintendo’s historical field trips, it seems like the kind of thing any big Nintendo fan should get under their belt at some point, if only to say they’ve done it once in their lives. It’ll definitely prove cheaper, easier, and more practical than hunting down the original hardware, at least.
(Virtual Boy joins the Nintendo Classics library via the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pass membership on February 17, 2026; the peripherals are sold through Nintendo’s online store.)
