My brother fiddling with the Virtual Boy - the only remaining member of the user research team!
Throughout this series, we've seen all kinds of systems, some with modest CPUs but impressive synergies, others with questionable hardware but beautifully packaged. This particular case, however, presented an interesting proposal: the CPU was far from limited, and the graphics hardware was up to the task. The sound wasn't outstanding, yet it remained comparable to other handhelds of the time.
So, why didn't more children play with it? I'm afraid a marketing study is beyond the scope of this article. But from the technical side, I suspect the message simply didn't land. At the end of the day, nobody cares about affine transformations or a pipelined CPU if all they see is red dots.
I suppose that was my driving motivation for writing this piece: to uncover innovative technology buried in the most unexpected places.
I would also like to thank the Planet Virtual Boy community for helping me with the study. They are currently working on many projects that continue to breathe new life into the Virtual Boy, so I recommend browsing their forum for more insight.
Finally, this marks the final entry in the 'retro saga', the next one will return to (relatively) modern renderers - starting with the PSP!
Until next time!
Rodrigo