More than any other major player in the videogame industry, Nintendo is known for making surprising, out-of-nowhere moves. Yet even for Nintendo, it was quite shocking to see them announce the addition of a Virtual Boy App to their lineup of retro apps for Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack. This is because when the Virtual Boy launched in 1995 and was discontinued a half year later in 1996, it came to be regarded as Nintendo’s biggest market failure of any game console they ever released. This is debatable, by the way – the Nintendo 64DD add-on was such a miserable flop that it never made it outside of Japan, and as a result many Westerners don’t even considering it when weighing Nintendo’s big failures.

But I digress – the point is that the Virtual Boy was a massive failure, and in the 30 years since, Nintendo has seemed committed to pretending like the console didn’t exist. Apart from a few small references to the Virtual Boy in games like Tomodachi Life and the WarioWare franchise, Nintendo hasn’t remade or re-released any of the games in the Virtual Boy library, even when it seemed to make sense to do so, such as when the Nintendo 3DS seemed to offer the perfect platform to bring these games back.

However, for whatever reason, now in 2026 we’re seeing the return of the Virtual Boy to Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 for subscribers of the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack, and accompanying the release of this retro app are a new pair of Virtual Boy accessories to turn your Nintendo Switch or Nintendo Switch 2 into a makeshift Virtual Boy… sorta’. You can find out more about these in my individual reviews of the Virtual Boy (Cardboard Model) or Virtual Boy replica unit.

However, when it comes to the Virtual Boy games themselves, you can see a rundown of the currently-released games on this page. You might be surprised to discover that, while the Virtual Boy was a complete disaster, not all of the games released for it were. Given how brief the Virtual Boy’s lifespan was, only a total of 22 games were released for the console, with 18 of those games never even making it to North America, and the Virtual Boy app is only planned to be getting a total of 16 games in Western regions, including a few of those games that were previously only released in Japan, as well as two never-before-released games, D-Hopper AKA Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers.

Thus far, we currently have 7 games on the Virtual Boy app – 3D Tetris, Galactic Pinball, Golf, Red Alarm, Teleroboxer, The Mansion of Innsmouth (previously only available in Japan), and Virtual Boy Wario Land. Over time, we’ll be getting the remaining 9 games, including the aforementioned D-Hopper and Zero Racers, as well as Jack Bros., Mario Clash, Mario’s Tennis, Space Invaders Virtual Collection, V-Tetris, Vertical Force, and Virtual Bowling.

For those keeping track, this means we won’t be getting Nester’s Funky Bowling, Panic Bomber, SD Gundam Dimension War, Space Squash, Virtual Lab, Virtual League Baseball, Waterworld, and Virtual Fishing (though this last game will release in the Japanese version of the app).

Why list all of those out? Well, since everything has been announced and there are so few games, I figured, “why not?”

Anyway, a few of the games we’ve already received are worth playing (namely, Virtual Boy Wario Land, Galactic Pinball, Teleroboxer, and mayyyybe 3D Tetris), and hopefully the others will hold some nice surprises for us too. As they’re released, I’ll make sure to update the list with my thoughts!

Anyway, please have a look at the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack – Virtual Boy – Nintendo Classics page to see what I thought of the releases so far on this app!

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