Now players can emulate 1995's Virtual Gameboy on Vision Pro
Developer Adam Gastineau recently unveiled "VirtualFriend - VB Emulator" for the Apple Vision Pro, bringing back Nintendo's game from the short-lived VR experiments of the 90s - it's also compatible with iPhone and iPad, but without 3D effects.
The Nintendo Virtual Gameboy (NVB) was discontinued after only a year on the market, so only 22 games have been made for it. However, Gastino said that the emulator can also play homemade games. Whether it is revisiting an old original game or exploring a game made by some enthusiasts, there should be plenty of games to try.
The app also corrects a major shortcoming of the original NVB. Players who bought or tried this quasi-VR console in 1995 and 1996 have all complained of headaches. This side effect is most likely the result of a combination of monochrome red-black graphics and parallax 3D viewing technology. Vision Pro has a stereoscopic display, but renders the app on a virtual screen. This distance from the material being viewed helps eliminate the eye strain associated with isolating the eye in contemporary VR or NVB.
The app also has the option to view the game in a traditional red letter pattern on a black background or a fully customized color scheme. Users can change the two main colors at will, or use the app's various presets. The Game Boy's preset black letter theme on a green background is particularly soothing, and these features also help relieve eye strain associated with NVB headaches.
NVB isn't really VR, though. That is, it doesn't use motion or head-tracking technology to let users "look around" the game world. It's more like a Mattel View-Master, except the graphics are dynamic - the game looks deep, but that's about it.
The only real downside to VirtualFriend is that there are no pre-installed games, and no intuitive way to browse and import games into iPhone. You have to find ROMs online and download them to iPhone, then use VF's file browser to import them into the app's library. That's easy for most iOS emulators, though, and it's a free app.
The release of VirtualFriend coincidentally (or inadvertently) came just five days before Virtual Gameboy celebrated its 29th anniversary. The novel gaming platform was ahead of its time and may have underperformed in 1995, but that's precisely why it's the hot item it is today. Working NVBs are hard to find and cost between $300 and $3,000 on sites like eBay or JustPressPlay.
