Nintendo's Virtual Boy system was released in August 1995 with the game Mario's Tennis. Also with the launch were two other games (also by Nintendo): Galactic Pinball and Teleroboxer. Following the release of the system, Nintendo sold eight more games, until March 1996. Kemco sold one game. Ocean sold one game. And Atlus sold one game. From August 1995 until the last game was released (March 1996), the Virtual Boy only lasted seven months. Therefore, Nintendo decided to have a relaunch of the system with games such as Dragon Hopper, Bound High, and Zero Racers coming out with the system (Mario's Tennis was still the pack-in game). However, once August 1996 rolled around, Nintendo decided not to have a relaunch of the system and decided to cancel the three games, plus others, that were almost completed and ready for release. Companies such as Ocean, THQ, Bandai, and Rare (yes, Rare) were going to release games for Virtual Boy, but since Nintendo cancelled ALL games, we'll never see any of the games, ever. And now it's August 1997, two years after the Virtual Boy system was first released. Many people have made Virtual Boy pages on the internet, Nintendo doesn't allow any game "help" in its magazine Nintendo Power, anymore. Stores are liquidating Virtual Boy's and Virtual Boy games. And within the next half year, someone who has never heard of Virtual Boy will probably never hear about it, ever. Well, there's the history lesson for you. Now onto math (Ha,Ha).

The main reason Nintendo's Virtual Boy system failed was: the lack of games. First of all, you need a company to make the games. Well, there were only six companies: Nintendo, T&E Soft, Hudson Soft, Ocean, Kemco, and Atlus. Not enough companies, obviously. Second, you need companies willing to sell the games. Nintendo ended up selling most of the games. The rest were sold by Ocean, Kemco, and Atlus.

There weren't enough kinds of games:

• 7 action games (action fans will be happy)
• 2 puzzle games (puzzle fans, especially Tetris fans, will be somewhat happy)
• 1 tennis game (tennis? why tennis?)
• 1 boxing game (Super Punch-Out!! for Virtual Boy? well, maybe not)
• 1 golf game (hey, it's made by T&E Soft. so it has to be good, right)
• 1 baseball game (the only team-sport game for Virtual Boy)
• 1 bowling game (the only two-player game for Virtual Boy, even though it's only "alternate" play)

The games that were going to be released were of these kinds:

• 4 more action games (more action games?)
• 1 adventure game (Dragon Hopper is the closest thing to Zelda that Virtual Boy was going to get)
• 1 more puzzle game (Lemmings-type of puzzle, not Tetris-type)
• 1 fishing game (fishing in black and red? okay...)
• 1 racing game (this is one game that Virtual Boy needed)

Four games came out in Japan that didn't come out here in America. They are V-Tetris, Virtual Fishing (well, at least someone got it), Space Squash, and In Mouse's House. Games that were going to be released in Japan, but never were, include the following:

• Virtual Bomberman (by Hudson Soft)
• Virtual Bowling (by Athena)
• Virtual Mahjong (by VAP)
• Dimension Wars (by Bandai)
• PolygoBlock (by T&E Soft)

If anyone has any information on any of these Japanese games, e-mail me at "kylenin@angelfire.com".

I know this is a long editorial, but I want to say what I wanted to say about Virtual Boy.

Little tidbits of information (about Virtual Boy games) include the following:

• Panic Bomber was originally made for the Super NES, but was converted into a Virtual Boy game. (This is from GamePro, April 1995, magazine.)
• The Virtual Boy Playlink Cable (an adapter that you use to link two Virtual Boy systems together to play two-player mode), which was never released, was going to work for Virtual League Baseball and Faceball (this was a T&E Soft game that was never released).
• From Nintendo Power: "Rare is scheduled to develop Virtual Boy titles for Nintendo." I only know about GoldenEye 007.
• From Nintendo Power: "T-HQ has begun development on several Virtual Boy licensed products here in the U.S. including possible sports and adventure games." T-HQ never sold any games in America. Only Virtual Fishing in Japan.
• Boss Game Studios, who is currently making Nintendo 64 games (like Top Gear Rally), was going to develop a Virtual Boy game.
• Worms, from Ocean, was a Lemmings-type game that was supposed to be released in the fall of 1996 for Virtual Boy, Super NES, and Game Boy. It never made it to any of those systems (in North America).
• Virtual Boy was never released in Europe.

Is that enough facts for you?

One more thing I'd like to add before I finish. Waterworld, which is known as the worst game for Virtual Boy, is a 16-megabit game. One question for Ocean, if the developers of this game are reading this: Where was all that 16-megabit memory used in the game? In my opinion, it could have had 4 megabits of memory and still would have been as good (or bad), as it was. Ocean really wasted money and time on this game.