Nintendo LEAPS OFF THE SCREEN! And straight into the dumpster :'(

The 1990s was really the decade where the personal computer had taken the world by storm. Everyone knew what a computer was, and what they could do. From the early 1980s and into the 90s the popular vision of the future was a completely digital one. Great digital worlds where we'd fly around on light cycles, and be affectionately refereed to as "Users". Or smuggle top secret data for the black market with a chip that could only hold one gig implanted in your head, or Mankind's consciousnesses is enslaved by massive robots using us for energy. In any scenario computers had a big role in altering our reality.

With the exponential growth of technology and know how for programming in basic polygonal shapes by the early 90s games were going "3D". However the 3D isn't REALLY 3 dimensions, but a pretty sophisticated polygon mesh that may actually be 3D in the computer space, but is displayed on a 2D monitor, I know because every time I try to punch Guy Fieri when he's on tv I end up hitting glass.

True 3D however was and is a feature that many electronic producers see as a holy grail of sorts, which is why Nintendo developed the Virtual Boy.

The Virtual Boy is a 32-bit system released in 1995. The 3D images produced are impressive, though it also acts as a crutch since the only colors it generates are hues of red and black. The 3D effects are a result of two 1x224 linear arrays, each one directed to an eye that are presented to the player through oscillating mirrors that cause the Virtual Boy to emit a murmur.

The basic concept was a cool idea, you'd stick you eyes into the view port and Link could throw his boomerang RIGHT AT YOU! Or Mario would LEAP OFF THE SCREEN! Continuing to blur the line between reality and virtual reality, it's too bad it turned out to be the worst console Nintendo has ever produced.

The 3D effect can cause trauma in the eyes, in fact, Nintendo urged parents not to let children under the age of seven to play the system since it had the potential to damage their eyes. I'd say that was a good idea,

telling pretty much the entire base for your business model to not by your product. I mean that's what I'd do, then again I try to punch people I've never met through my TV so what do I know?

Some critics questioned Nintendo's use of red colors in all of its Virtual Boys. This choice was both monetary and functional, though at the same time was not entirely appealing to the consumer. Nintendo claimed that colors other than red were more expensive and drained the battery much faster than it already did.

On top of that the console had pretty much no third party support. Most developers were focusing on the major consoles that were going to be released the next year. Even Nintendo didn't support the console that far past launch basically giving up on it to support their new box, the Nintendo 64.

The real tragedy to this was the fate of the Virtual Boy's veteran designer Gunpei Yokoi

. The creator of the Game Boy and Game and Watch, inventor of the modern day D-pad, a design that nearly all video game controllers use today, and producer of several long-running and critically acclaimed video game franchises, had to fall on the proverbial sword once the Virtual Boy had crashed and burned horribly.

It really is a shame that someone who is arguably just as important to Nintendo's success as Shigeru Miyamoto had to leave the company in this way. His idea may have just been a victim of execution and timing however, the 3D concept is alive and well in Nintendo's most recent handheld the 3DS. In the cases that I have seen, most failures are simply the right idea at entirely the wrong time.