I Tried Out Nintendo’s New Virtual Boy Accessory for the Switch and I’m Hooked.
When the Nintendo Virtual Boy came out in 1995, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. 3D gaming on a huge, personal screen? Portable 32-bit power the same year the original PlayStation launched in the US? “Who cares if you have to put it on a stand and look through an annoying red filter to use it,” I thought. “It’s so cool.” Fast forward to 2026, and I’m very glad I never bought one. Over the years, the console has become known as one of Nintendo’s most notorious failures: low sales, an extremely limited game library, and reports of intense frustration from players who did manage to get one.
In any case, Nintendo is bringing it back. Last September, the company announced the Virtual Boy accessory for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, which will allow you to play Virtual Boy games in full 3D through a clunky headset on a stand, just as Virtual Boy creator Gunpei Yokoi intended. And now that I’ve had the chance to test it out myself at a preview event, I’m starting to think I might have been right in my elementary school assumptions.
It turns out the Virtual Boy was ahead of its time.
Before I tried the Virtual Boy accessory for Switch, I’d never played a real Virtual Boy. I’d seen videos of games on YouTube that looked like a nightmare, but the actual hardware was too rare for me to get my hands on. Now, the Switch accessory has allowed me to play Virtual Boy games myself, rather than just watch others play them. And once you get your hands on them, it’s much harder to disparage them.
The first thing that struck me was the incredible 3D effect. It’s the most convincing 3D I’ve ever seen on a Nintendo system, including the 3DS. Characters literally pop out of the background, and the game’s environments are designed to utilize depth to enhance the gameplay.
Take Red Alarm , for example. The wireframe graphics are terribly awkward to navigate in the flat cutscenes , your ship constantly blending into the background. But seeing the game in true stereoscopic 3D suddenly makes sense. It’s still not the most complex game, but for 1995, having a handheld (the Virtual Boy is a huge console) space shooter with a fully explorable 3D environment seemed incredible. Now that I’ve tried it, I can say it works, and I really appreciate how the developers used stereoscopic 3D to make the simple graphics the console was capable of actually work in a playable 3D space. It all seemed so ambitious, and I feel justified in my childish delight, knowing the effect wasn’t just a marketing ploy.
Of course, the claimed 32-bit system power is somewhat misleading. The original Virtual Boy offered a resolution of 384 x 224 per eye and a maximum frame rate of 50 frames per second, making it more of a souped-up Game Boy than a portable PS1. Don’t expect games on the level of Final Fantasy VII or Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater . However, Red Alarm is the kind of game that, in 1995, I would have been shocked to find on anything other than a Sony console.
Does this mean any of these games will make your 2026 game of the year list? Well, probably not. But they’re definitely not bad , and they’re an original piece of gaming history that’s definitely worth checking out, especially if you’ve been toying with them all these years, like me. Despite the low resolution, they look sharp on the Nintendo Switch screen and play much better than I expected. They also clearly innovated on the design techniques that Nintendo later used in games like Super Mario 3D Land , which also used the 3DS’s 3D effect (frankly, the worst) for gameplay. I still understand why the system failed, but I can now confidently say that it was truly ahead of its time, and I probably would have been happy with it in the ’90s if I’d listened to my gut and bought it years ago. Of course, then I wouldn’t have spent my own money.
The new accessory for Virtual Boy is exceptionally authentic.
“But Michelle,” I can feel you typing, “you didn’t actually play the Virtual Boy! You played it on a Nintendo Switch 2 emulating the Virtual Boy!” That’s true, but I can confidently say my experience is probably nearly identical to what I would have had 31 years ago on a real Virtual Boy. And that’s because Nintendo really went to great lengths for accuracy in its Virtual Boy accessory. It’s probably the right choice—then again, games are mostly interesting for their place in video game history, not in themselves—but there are some nuances worth keeping in mind.
The main issue: you may have to move your desk or table to use the Virtual Boy Switch accessory. The plastic version of the accessory looks exactly like the real console, but that means its stand isn’t adjustable. So if your desk isn’t at the right height to allow your eyes to look through the viewfinder when you place your copy of the Virtual Boy on it, you’ll have to either move it somewhere else or prop it up on books or something similar. At the event where I tested the device, Nintendo had adjustable-height desks, which means the company is aware of this issue.
Another issue is that these games supposedly require the accessory to run. Technically, there’s no reason why these games couldn’t run in 2D in TV mode, but Nintendo told me at the event that this isn’t possible. According to the company, to run the Virtual Boy on your Switch or Switch 2, you’ll have to remove the console from the dock and place it in the Virtual Boy accessory. I wonder if some resourceful fans will be able to circumvent this limitation and play in handheld mode without placing the console in the Virtual Boy accessory, so that the image for each eye is displayed in 2D side by side. But this is just speculation, and even if it weren’t true, some of these games require 3D to function properly, which is likely why Nintendo is so strict about the use of this accessory.
Personally, this doesn’t bother me. I play these games to get a feel for the Virtual Boy without having to buy a real one, so an experience as close to the original as possible is perfectly fine for me. But I understand that this could create accessibility issues for others, which is probably why Nintendo only added a few new features to make playing on the Virtual Boy in 2026 a little easier.
Since the plastic version of the Virtual Boy accessory costs $100, Nintendo also sells a cardboard version for $25. It’s not as accurate a replica as the more expensive model, but it’s still quite cute. More importantly, in addition to the lower price, it can be used without a stand—one isn’t even included. This means you can simply hold it up to your face and control it with Joy-Con controllers attached to both sides of the device. I can imagine this might become uncomfortable over time, but that’s how Nintendo’s LABO VR worked, and it should be a good solution if you can’t rearrange your space to accommodate a plastic model. It’s also a bit more portable.
The second feature is designed to help reduce the strain caused by red graphical effects. While the games impressed me more than I expected, I admit that the Virtual Boy’s red filter still irritated me even after just a few minutes of play. That’s why players will eventually be able to choose from alternative color options for their games, including a yellow filter, a green filter, and, perhaps best of all, a black and white filter. This feature is scheduled to release ” later this year ,” and I imagine it will be a real lifesaver for those who truly want to play a Virtual Boy game to the end, not just for fun. If you have a plastic Virtual Boy accessory, you’ll need to remove the physical red filter from the screen, but it only takes a few seconds.
New games for Virtual Boy will be released in 2026.
Perhaps the coolest feature of this release is that, in addition to being able to play Virtual Boy games originally released in North America, the new Virtual Boy accessory will also be able to run games previously only available in Japan. For example, in addition to Red Alarm and Virtual Boy Wario Land , at the presentation I attended, I also got to play the Lovecraft-inspired first-person horror game Innsmouth no Yakata . This adds a significant novelty and is a pretty smart move overall, as only 14 games were originally available for the Virtual Boy in North America.
But even cooler is that Nintendo is adding unreleased games to the Virtual Boy catalog for Switch and Switch 2. Among them is the cancelled F-Zero game, renamed Zero Racers , making this accessory a near-must-have for Captain Falcon fans.
How to get the Virtual Boy accessory for Switch and Switch 2
I started testing the Virtual Boy accessory for the Switch expecting to be laughed at, but I ended up being impressed and left with a greater respect for video game history. After decades of mocking the Virtual Boy, I have to admit I actually like it a little. For me, that more than justifies the price, and I’d say it’s worth buying if you can afford it—at the very least, it’ll be a decent desktop toy.
Unfortunately, there’s one more important note. Both the plastic and cardboard accessories for the Virtual Boy on Switch and Switch 2 are only available to Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. This isn’t a big deal, since playing these games also requires a Switch Online subscription. But right now, even if you’re a subscriber, both accessory models seem to be sold out. Hopefully, Nintendo will restock them over time so I can convince more people of my new “Virtual Boy is actually a good thing” idea.