In the curve of an event broadcast “live” on September 12, 2025, Nintendo revived the virtual child, a console launched in 1995, arrested only a few months later after its very strong failure.
With 770,000 copies sold worldwide (it has never reached Europe), and less than 500,000 in the United States, the virtual child was originally designed by Gunpei Yokoi, creator of Game & Watch (but also franchise Metroid and Game Boy), with the ambition to offer a helmet that allows players to discover help games.
A precipitate launch
“Gunpei Yokoi could not really reach the end of his ideas because the development of Nintendo 64 (launched in June 1996, Editor’s note) had become a priority,” recalls Guillaume “Antista” Leviach, journalist and specialist in Streamer in Nintendo.
As technology is not what it is today, only red and black games, and relatively simple will be available. There are not many of them, and Nintendo is almost the only editor who supports his own console. At the end of his short life, he only totaled 22 games of which Mario tennis either 3D tetris.
Above all, it must be equipped with the console that is far from being a success in terms of design. The helmet is not used and placed in a tripod that must be placed on a table. The games are controlled with a controller among the worst that the environment has been able to design.
A little practical console to ephemeral useful life
At the time of launch, bad criticisms are raining: “Technology was not very satisfactory. It is true that there was something new, but it was painful to play,” he added. The characteristics, such as multiplayer mode, scheduled for a while, have never seen daylight.
Aware of this enormous failure, which has never been repeated since then, Nintendo ceases that the marketing and production of the virtual child only a few months after its launch. Since the end of 1995 in Japan, already early 1996 in the rest of the world.
A few years later, Nintendo, however, retained 3D with its Nintendo 3DS. If the failure is not this time in the game, the effect added by the upper screen convinces little, and will even be quickly abandoned by the studies that work in the portable console, and even by Nintendo with the Nintendo 2DS. At the same time, 3D in cinemas, Blu-ray and televisions begin to experience a hollow wave.
Ironically, virtual reality will succeed more than 20 years later thanks to the Oculus VR headphones, which has become a search (bought from the finish line), before the public’s enthusiasm will happen again, despite the maintenance of a community of more important hobbies that continues.
Even if the virtual child is synonymous with failure, this does not prevent nostalgic to repeat it regularly. However, it is a product assumed by Nintendo, to its Kyoto Museum: “We can see it in the Nintendo Museum in Kyoto, where you can buy sweets with the image of the machine, and there is a reference to the virtual child in Luigi Mansion 3. “
30 years later, Nintendo seems to believe that fans request more and will offer on February 17, 2026 a selection of 14 games through an online Nintendo subscription, and the accessory – Essential – sold 80 euros (or 20 euros in a cardboard version). Nostalgia has a cost, but always less than the original device, it is sold in auction sites between 400 and 850 euros.
Source: BFM TV
