[HN Gopher] Virtual Boy Architecture: A Practical Analysis ___________________________________________________________________ Virtual Boy Architecture: A Practical Analysis Author : strangecasts Score : 32 points Date : 2021-02-12 19:31 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.copetti.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.copetti.org) | dvno42 wrote: | If you're curious what the "VUE Development Station" looked like. | http://brasilbign.blogspot.com/2017/03/saiba-o-que-os-consol... | corysama wrote: | Note that this is part of a series: | https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/ | jandrese wrote: | It's not that hard to figure out why the Virtual Boy was a market | failure. It had so many headwinds at launch the biggest mystery | is why Nintendo thought it would be a success. | | It's a portable that isn't portable. It combines the worst of | both worlds by being a battery eater while also being too big to | fit in your pocket and needing a table to play it on. It's clear | the original idea was to put a head strip on the thing so you | could wear it, but concern about kids falling into open manholes | killed the idea. They were also way ahead of their time on the | technology front, so you got the expensive and fragile moving | parts that ended up providing only a lame low resolution all red | display. The computing power required meant you had to put a high | power CPU as well, which meant short battery life. IMHO the box | should have come with the AC adapter instead of the battery pack | on the controller, not that it would have solved the other | issues, but at least it would indicate that it's really a home | console not a portable. Probably worst of all it was competing | against the Gameboy, a runaway success with an enormous game | library that didn't require mandatory nag screens warning about | eyestrain. | | Ultimately it was a product about _25 years_ ahead of its time. | Even today people are struggling to get VR right. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-12 23:01 UTC)