The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit console developed and manufactured by Nintendo that was released in 1995 and was marketed as the first console capable of displaying stereoscopic “3D” graphics. Allows the player to use it as a head-mounted display, placing the head against the eyepiece to view a red monochrome display with a black background. The games use a parallax effect to create the illusion of depth.
Unfortunately, despite being quite a revolutionary idea for the time, sales fell short of targets and Nintendo stopped distributing and developing games in 1996, having released only 22 games for the system and being considered the company’s least successful console. nipoa and one of his most notorious failures.
However, there are fans who never lost faith in this platform and over the years they have continued to bet on it with different projects. A clear example of this is VUEngine, a team of two enthusiastic people who are creating a versatile and open source Virtual Boy game engine, as well as development tools and new games for the console.
This team has jumped to the fore to announce the demo of a Virtual Boy game that will be compatible with the Rumble Pack. These are the details that have been shared:
- The “new” game is Captain Sevilla 3D and is based on the 2010 title Capitán Sevilla 2 by Rubén Garirá Soto, which in turn is a tribute to Capitán Sevilla, which was released on the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and MSX in 1988.
- In 2018, the team behind the game rebuilt it using VUEngine, ‘remastering’ the game to take advantage of the Virtual Boy’s 3D display.
- A demo which “contains all areas of the original 2010 demo, new Ruben sprites, updated game mechanics, newly remastered backgrounds for even more stereoscopic depth, music and sound effects.”
- The project was suspended in 2019 due to financing problems, but it is already up and running again, and will be compatible with the next Virtual Boy Rumble Pack by Kevin Mellott.
- Captain Sevilla 3D will be the first publicly available game to use the device.
- The source code is available at Github and the VUEngine team is hoping someone else will pick it up and continue the work.
If you are interested in this peculiar demo, you can play it online at Planet Virtual Boy.
What do you think?
Via.
