Virtual Boy's Tiny 22-Game Library Is Half on NSO Now

Twelve down, ten to go. Nintendo added five more Virtual Boy games to its Switch Online + Expansion Pack service yesterday, and with that, more than half of every game ever released for the ill-fated 1995 headset is now playable through the subscription. The Virtual Boy's entire commercial library was just 22 games. Nintendo is speed-running through it.

The new batch includes V-Tetris, Jack Bros. (an Atlus maze game that's technically a Shin Megami Tensei spin-off), Space Invaders Virtual Collection, Virtual Bowling, and Vertical Force, a vertical-scrolling shooter from Hudson Soft. Japan also got a sixth title, Virtual Fishing. All five were originally released in 1995, and all require either the $100 plastic Virtual Boy replica accessory or its $25 cardboard alternative to play. As VGC reported, Nintendo has confirmed 16 Virtual Boy games total for the service, including two previously unreleased titles: Zero Racer, an F-Zero spin-off featuring Captain Falcon, and D-Hopper, a cancelled game making its debut through NSO.

I find the whole Virtual Boy NSO situation funny. Nintendo is preserving a console library so small that a subscription service can realistically contain all of it within a single year. The remaining unconfirmed games include licensed titles like SD Gundam Dimension War and Waterworld, so rights issues will likely prevent a complete collection. But even so, we're looking at a platform where "most of the library" is a number you can count on your fingers. Compare that to the NES or SNES apps, which could drip-feed games for a decade and barely scratch the surface. The Virtual Boy app might simply run out of content by early 2027, and honestly, the fact that Nintendo is treating this dead console's catalogue with the same rollout cadence as the SNES library is one of the stranger preservation efforts in recent memory.