Nintendo Virtual Boy Puts You Inside The Game

The first virtual-reality experience for the masses hit retail stores last week. It’s Nintendo Virtual Boy, which puts you inside an absorbing, 3-D gaming experience that isn’t possible on regular screens.

Virtual Boy is a self-contained, portable, pod-like system that you set up on a table top. Tilt the pod to your head position, focus the eyepieces for optimum viewing and blast off into worlds unknown!

The system is built around a fast 32-bit microprocessor and densely programmed game cartridges, but Nintendo keeps things relatively inexpensive - $180 - with its monochrome display. (The stereo image is made up of dancing red LEDs bouncing off a mirror and magnified by a lens.)

Most players won’t mind the red-on-black color scheme, I suspect. Look how well the monochrome Nintendo Game Boy has done.

The action moves fast and with crisp detail. Cool stereo sound effects and music play directly into your ears, with adjustable volume control. The comfortable foam mask you’re peering into blocks out distractions (and is even suitable for eyeglass wearers). The double-grip controller, with twin pads and lots of buttons, puts plenty of power at your fingertips.

And parents, take note: Because Virtual Boy’s headset is stable (unlike strap-on virtual-reality helmets and glasses), the user won’t experience the woozy, disorienting effects that have given virtual reality a bad name.

Nintendo is making it easy for people to try this novel system before they buy. Demo units are being set up in game stores. And for the next couple of months, Blockbuster will be renting Virtual Boy systems and cartridges for overnight home trials.

Here’s our reaction to the first four games:

Mario’s Tennis ($39.99): The tennis game that comes packed with Virtual Boy is a glorified version of Pong that looks deceptively simple but isn’t - even when set on “easy.” Learning to serve and volley isn’t that hard, but it takes real tennis strategy to lure your opponent out of prime position and get one past him.

Singles and doubles play are possible, and there are performance differences among your opponents. Mario is average, Luigi faster, Princess Toadstool is slow (but her racket contact area is large).

A screen display at the end of every match posts statistics to gauge your performance in the backcourt, at the net, with unforced errors, etc.

Galactic Pinball ($39.99): This space-age arcade simulator is a must-have for any Virtual Boy. It really looks and plays like a pinball game - with faster flipper response on some games than others, tilt-ability and bonus rounds.

You can choose from four different tables, each floating in the Milky Way and each subject to extra-terrestrial interference that affects game performance. Space pirates invade (requiring you to pause and blast ‘em). You are occasionally bombarded with asteroids (good for extra points when hit). Things like that.

With lots of deep space eye candy and surprises, this game is extremely involving and addicting.

Teleroboxer ($39.99): In this futuristic vision, robotic boxers clobber away in the old familiar ways: dodging, blocking and guarding as you deliver jabs, body blows, hooks and uppercuts. But, trust me, when an opponent puts out your robot’s lights with his metallic fist, you’ll feel like somebody just blew out your main circuit board.

To defeat mecha-marvels Pagero, Prin, Spokong and Ikanger, you’ll need to combine left and right control pad moves with slug button jabs - to counter with an uppercut or hook, for example, at the same time you dodge or duck.

Play is tournament-style. Only by defeating the first foe will you get to face others.

Red Alarm ($39.99): This 3-D shoot-‘em-up is a blast, as you swoop your Tech Wing fighter plane through a 360-degree universe - dodging buildings and downing the weapons of the nefarious KAOS war machine with your arsenal of very cool homing missiles.

Because there’s a whole lot going on at once, the red LEDs draw a sketchy, stick-figure world. Still, the realistic perspectives are very involving.

You can view the action from four different camera locations: normal, tight, in the cockpit (with a lock-on sight displayed, my favorite), and with a three-quarter top view. The last looks like a movie and has the most dimensionality, but is the hardest.