We’ve seen the revival of the NES and SNES through the Nintendo Classic mini-consoles compiling together several games of note from each generation. This next revival may surprise you, though. A team of two people have come together to create TeamVUEngine.
TeamVUEngine is dedicated to bringing back not the Game Boy or Nintendo 64, but another lost Nintendo hardware from the 90’s. They are bringing back the Virtual Boy through their own self-made game engine that is open-sourced and available for anyone to use.
While the team has previously made Virtual Boy demos and previews over the years, their dedication has led them to starting a Patreon for those interested in supporting their dream of making the engine available to anyone. This means that any independent developer will be able to create new Virtual Boy games for the 1995 system.
Also: Sony Announces a Brand New PlayStation VR Headset
Perhaps ahead of its time, the Virtual Boy was Nintendo’s first attempt at 3D technology in games and also virtual reality. A head-mounted display similar to today’s Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR, it didn’t even last a year before being discontinued.
This left the Virtual Boy with only 22 games ever released for it. Whether due to health concerns or limited sales, no other games were made from Nintendo or third-party supporters. TeamVUEngine seeks to change that, allowing any fans of the failed hardware to support them with a monthly donation. On their Patreon page, the team says:
With your support, we want to further improve the VUEngine and create full games with it. Furthermore, we aim to make it even more accessible to other developers by completing the documentation, creating tutorials and building new tools like a graphical entity editor.
On the legal side, the engine is licensed under the MIT license that allows it to be open-sourced and available to anyone free of charge. Though TeamVUEngine has yet to announce any full games for the Virtual Boy, it seems this will be the only option for Nintendo fans until the company announces its own VR plans.
