Every Virtual Boy Game on Nintendo Switch Online, Ranked

Two Lost Games Finally See the Light

The Virtual Boy never had its moment. Nintendo’s red-tinted stereoscopic headset-on-a-stand sold poorly, never launched in Europe, and was discontinued less than a year after its 1995 release. It may be the worst-selling console Nintendo has ever put out. And yet, the thing has accumulated genuine fans over the decades, people drawn to its oddness, its ambition, and the small library of genuinely good games buried inside its commercial failure.

Now Nintendo Switch Online subscribers on the Expansion Pack tier have access to a growing slice of that library, and Nintendo Life has updated and republished its full ranked guide to every Virtual Boy game on NSO. The timing matters: the update comes following the recent addition of D-Hopper and Zero Racers, two Virtual Boy titles that were completed during the console’s original run but never commercially released. Their debut on NSO marks the first time either game has been available to play for the general public. That’s a legitimately interesting piece of gaming history, not just a routine catalog addition.

Only 22 games were ever released worldwide for the Virtual Boy, according to Nintendo Life, so the gap between “games on NSO” and “the entire Virtual Boy library” is narrower than it is for almost any other platform Nintendo has put on the service.

A Library Worth Revisiting, Carefully

The Nintendo Life ranking covers 17 titles and is ordered by reader ratings, which gives it a usefully crowdsourced quality rather than the perspective of a single reviewer. At the bottom of the list sits Virtual Fishing, which the outlet scores 5 out of 10, noting it is “annoying audio-wise and at times visually flawed” while acknowledging it at least does something.

The stronger end of the library includes titles that hold up reasonably well as curiosities or as legitimate fun. Virtual Boy Wario Land, Red Alarm, Galactic Pinball, and Jack Bros. are among the games listed in the catalog. Teleroboxer, Mario’s Tennis, Mario Clash, and 3D Tetris round out a roster that ranges from genuinely clever to deeply strange. Space Invaders: Virtual Collection, Vertical Force, V-Tetris, Virtual Bowling, and Innsmouth no Yakata are also part of the accessible lineup.

The Virtual Boy library was always more interesting than the console’s reputation suggested, and having 17 of those games available through a subscription service, including two that were previously locked away in development vaults, is a reasonable argument for poking around.

The Broader NSO Retro Picture

Nintendo Life’s guide is part of a larger suite of ranked articles covering every retro platform available through Nintendo Switch Online, including NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, N64, Genesis and Mega Drive, and GameCube titles accessible through Switch 2. The Virtual Boy section is the smallest of these by a significant margin, which is simply a reflection of the console’s brief commercial lifespan.

Access to Virtual Boy games requires the Expansion Pack tier of Nintendo Switch Online, the higher-priced subscription option that also unlocks N64, Genesis, and GameCube catalogs. The games are playable on both Switch 1 and Switch 2, according to Nintendo Life.

For anyone who has always been mildly curious about Nintendo’s strangest console but never had easy access to it, the NSO library is now the most practical way to find out whether that curiosity was warranted. The answer, for a handful of titles at least, appears to be yes.