To the bemusement of pretty much everyone, Nintendo is rereleasing the Virtual Boy platform. What were they thinking?

The Nintendo Switch accessory is meant to recreate the original Virtual Boy experience.

For those unfamiliar, the Virtual Boy was one of the first pioneering efforts in virtual reality. The display was accomlished via a stereoscopic LCD screen, illuminated using red LED’s to backlight the screen. The apparatus was self-contained, and looked very much like the device shown in the accompanying video.

The Virtual Boy console was designed by legendary product developer Gunpei Yokoi, father of practically all mobile gaming consoles; the man who developed the original Game & Watch, Gameboy, Metroid, as well as the Gameboy Pocket.

It was one of the more embarrassing failures of Nintendo’s entire history, but not for lack of innovation. It was the very first 3d gaming system there ever was, and its original release suffered at the hands of Nintendo’s internal marketing politics. It ended up as a rigid desktop display that one put one’s face into, instead of wearing it. The reason that happened was that the batteries and computing power of the day wasn’t up to the challenge of making it a portable system. It failed commercially because Nintendo corporate didn’t understand what arbitrary design decisions would do its marketability, and hamstrung the project to the point where it could not succeed.

Fast forward to today, and the device is reborn as a Nintendo Switch 2 accessory. One opens the cover and drops in a Nintendo Switch, and games for the format are downloaded from the Nintendo store. Now you can try the weird game format that requires you to hunch over a stereoscopic display that sits on a tripod rather than being strapped to your face like every other 3d system. The experience is as authentic as it can be without being a slavish reproduction of the original.

It will cost $100 for the full kickstand version, and $25 for the cardboard fold-up version, in case you want to try the experience without spending the extra dough. You’ll still need the Nintendo Switch Online and Expansion Pak services to get access to the available titles, of which there will be 14 at launch.

The biggest unanswered question is “why?”

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