Erm?
Image: presse-citron.net

The Virtual Boy wasn't a success, that much is beyond debate. It sold poorly and effectively led to Gunpei Yokoi's departure from Nintendo - a sad event when you consider how much he had done to make the company such a force in the field of toys and video games. Despite its commercial failure the system still has some worthwhile games and that's why a new way of playing Virtual Boy games via emulation might be of interest.

You'll need an Android phone, the multi-faceted emulator RetroArch and a Google Cardboard-compatible headset - and the ROMs required to play, which is where this solution becomes a little sticky as distributing such files is very questionable legally. After a little tinkering with the settings, you're good to go - the guy who has come up with this approach even claims that it avoids the headache problem that the original Virtual Boy hardware was infamous for:

After about 30 minutes of play time, I'm not experiencing any of the Virtual Boy's trademark motion sickness. There's also something to be said for playing the games in grayscale instead of the headache-inducing red. It's pretty cool to see Virtual Boy games in their full stereoscopic glory, but the added depth doesn't seem to add much value gameplay-wise.

If you want to see what the footage looks like in 3D without using a Google Cardboard, you can watch the video on your New 3DS - follow this guide if you're unsure of how to do that.

Given that the 3DS has an autostereoscopic display, it's puzzling that Nintendo hasn't released Virtual Boy games on the Virtual Console by now, but in the meantime this is a workable solution - if you're willing to ignore the obvious issues surrounding ROM distribution, of course.

[source theverge.com, via reddit.com]