3-D Tetris retrospective: Red rain | Virtual Boy Works #13

[@IanSane]

Here's something interesting to think about in regards to how short of a time the Virtual Boy was on the market. The 32/64 bit generation started in America with the release of the Sega Saturn in May 1995. At that point Nintendo fans would have been eagerly anticipating Nintendo following Sega with the Nintendo 64's eventual release in Sep 1996. During that wait period the Virtual Boy was released and discontinued. The system's entire life exists during this weird generational transition period where Nintendo's competition had moved to the next gen but Nintendo hadn't yet.Fittingly enough its lifespan also crosses over a lot with the similarly doomed Sega 32X. In Christmas '95 both the VB and 32X would have shared shelf space waiting for almost no one to buy them. No wonder Sony was able to successfully take over the market. The existing market leaders both conceived their most infamous flops around the same time the PlayStation debuted.

[@PizzaDinosaur]

Me: I dunno, seems like fun. Jeremy: The rolling motion you see here is not optional. Me: This is a war crime.

[@ABlackFalcon]

He is wrong, the Select button locks the field in place.

[@guaposneeze]

It seems like something that would work okay on a modern VR headset, where you could just move your head around to adjust the view to get the extra structure from motion visual cues. But just wandering the view around randomly really seems like a programmer trying to point out to his boss that Virtual Boy was impossible to use for the things it was intended to do.

[@KuraIthys]

@@guaposneeze The Virtual boy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's a concept that is almost workable now in 2019, but was basically impossible to pull off correctly in 1996 (unless the device could cost $10,000+ minimum and have a desktop PC size system powering it. Even then it's questionable if the result would have been tolerable with 1996 tech) Hell, as far as it goes it's borderline whether this concept would have been workable at a reasonable price even in 2006. VR would definitely have been possible at the consumer level in 2006, all the technological pieces were there in theory... But, like with the more recent developments, it would have been expensive at that time, not something in Nintendo's target price ranges... Yeah, the virtual boy was too ambitious and unrealistic. The tech just wasn't there...

[@djnekroman]

Jeremy, this is already one of my favorite youtube channels... And then ya go and reference Milk & Cheese. A+

[@MajorPlotFlaw]

So glad you mentioned Milk and Cheese, that was the first thing I thought of when seeing those "Blocks"!

[@ZingaMadinga]

i actually like the "milk and cheese" blocks in 3d tetris

[@nekononiaow]

Thanks for the review Jeremy! Note that the Virtual Boy has way more than enough horsepower to display quite a few solid polygons (of which we see about 50 in this very game, the solid grey blocks are definitely polygons), the choice of wireframe was probably made to allow the falling objects to stay transparent and thus not obstruct the view of the playfield.

[@delaorden]

this game gives me flashbacks of playing breakout on my phosphorus tinted Hercules 286

[@JomasterTheSecond]

Ladies and gentlemen... Introducing... *_WELLTRIS TWO._*

[@MosoKaiser]

I _immediately_ thought "huh, a Blockout clone?" on seeing the gameplay footage! Used to play the DOS original on a 286 PC as a kid. Never quite got into it, the 3D space *and* blocks being tricky to keep track of. Well, on the PC version you at least have a choice between different block sets, the easiest being flat à la original Tetris, and the hardest having at least one protrusion on every piece. This VB interpretation doesn't seem to have improved the core concept much however. Those block destination markers look like a really welcome addition, but that constant movement of the playfield appears to be quite distracting indeed.

[@josephattwell1006]

The Virtual Boy had one of the smallest game libraries in history, but it wasn't THEE worst. The Gizmondo, the handheld allegedly funded by the Swedish Mafia, tied the Virtual Boy by only have 14 games. The Apple Pippin, Apple's ill-fated attempt at a dedicated video game console, had 13 games in the US. The game console with the lowest amount of released games ever was Mattel's Hyperscan, a 2006 console which was effectively Skylander/Amiibo "scan in real-world hardware for extra goodies in-game" except as a standalone console that had the graphics of a SNES and the loading times of a Commodore 64. The Hyperscan only had 5 games released for it.

[@MrJWTH]

Hardly the worst it had over double the 6 games the PC Engine SuperGrafx had.

[@Belgand]

That Milk and Cheese nod came out of nowhere. I wonder what to expect next. Nny? Too Much Coffee Man? Scud?!

[@TravisPilgrim]

Damn good show, can't wait for the book

[@sonicmario64]

When I was watching this episode, the first game to come to mind was actually "Blockout", since I have that game for my Sega Genesis as well.

[@kabutops87]

Thanks T&E Soft for trying but, no thanks. I'll stick with Tetris DS and OG Gameboy Tetris for my block falling puzzle fix.

[@WaddleDee105]

These blocks with faces look like they came from a late 90's "How to draw anime" book.

[@wamblo8966]

Watching this gameplay gave me a literal headache. I can’t imagine playing this on an actual virtual boy

[@ZingaMadinga]

Not to be mean or shame on you or anything, but in my opinion your a wussy if you get a headache from seeing virtual boy graphics wether it's on YT or on real hardware. And this is unrelated, but I also think your a wussy crybaby if you cried watching Up

[@ZingaMadinga]

And I played 3d tetris both in 3d and 2d using Google cardboard since I don't have a real virtual boy. You really see the depth perception if your playing it in 3d. If it's in 2d however, it's still not that hard, but it could sometimes be difficult to see where thr blocks are

[@adamking6645]

Nintendo Power spotlighted this game in Issue 82 (March 1996). After that over the following months the only scant information on new VB games was three unreleased titles: Bound High, Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers, all of which appeared in the Pak Watch listings undisturbed for months. By September, just as Nintendo was rolling out the N64, these three titles vanished and all mention of the Virtual Boy was gone by the October issue, showing how fast Nintendo wanted to sweep it under the rug and move on from it.

[@invertXtrogdor]

I've always wondered about this game ever since it was glossed over in that episode of AVGN. Glad to finally get an explanation.

[@That-Other-Dan]

Actually, you CAN stop the well from shifting perspective with the select button. It doesn't make the well any easier to read, though. Also something to note, this game was announced for release in Japan without the Tetris name, instead it was going to be called Polygo Block.

[@ApenBaard]

Gotta love that framerate :)

[@JeremyParish]

Really pairs neatly with the eyestrain

[@joshualewis3780]

You know, it would be a logistics nightmare, but this game would make for a quality Gintendo stream.

[@JeremyParish]

Good lord... I would die

[@murata.9762]

Great episode, as always 👍 I kind of want to buy Blockout for Mega Drive now...

[@jasonblalock4429]

Nah, it's slow and not very fun. Several people/companies have tried to make a stab at 3D Tetris over the years (including Pajitnov's own "Welltris"), and none of them were half as good as the original.

[@hdofu]

Whats funny was 3dtetris was actually harder to find in the US then Vtetris when I went looking in stores.

[@MissAshley42]

Oh wow, I didn't notice the anthropomorphized block in the corner is the "Next" window until you said it. That's. . .that's a decision right there.

[@JeremyParish]

"That's... That's a Decision Right There: The Virtual Boy Story"

[@smallsthetimelord4066]

Love these videos! Keep up the good work!

[@jeffreynowak8866]

Milk and cheese comic reference...nice

[@FreakinTheComments]

Am I the only person who find the character portraits horrifying???

[@danielespeziari5545]

Those blocks are cute, at least

[@ChrisGorski]

I love the Milk & Cheese reference

[@SergioPL]

Keep the amazing job!!

[@KuraIthys]

Reminds me of a game called I have on a really old floppy disk somewhere. (Assuming it's still readable) That was also some kind of 3d take on tetris, and played just as badly...

[@Lifesizemortal]

i can't be the only one who finds this game concept inherently flawed

[@JeremyParish]

I mean... yeah, look at it.

[@ZingaMadinga]

3-D Tetris is my favorite Virtual Boy game, and I don't find this game, let alone the virtual boy, headache inducing in any way, but maybe that's just me.

[@GameplayandTalk]

This game always looked neat to me, but I never bothered to pick it up. The sub-par framerate seems questionable at best.

[@unoclayGaming]

I'm a VB defender and therefore biased, but I like 3D tetris. Its tough and far from perfect, but i find it to be pretty fun, and with practice, i can get "sort of" good at it. Plus, my cart even still has a working backup battery that saves high scores. The puzzle mode is pretty fun too. It sure is tough but I still think its fun if you're an enthusiast for VB. I also think there might be a way to stop the rotating screen effect--I'd need to go and check to be sure, but I feel like you can press a few buttons and it quits moving....though i prefer it moving myself....

[@ZingaMadinga]

FINALLY, someone who dosent hate on the virtual boy and 3d tetris. If I could only get one game for VB, I would pick 3d tetris instantly, followed by mario clash and wario land. I played virtusl boy in 3d using Google cardboard, and it dosent hurt my eyes or give me a headache. The only think stopping me from playing virtual boy for 3 hours straight is that Google cardboard hurts your nose after 5 minutes and makes Indents in your nose if your nose is kind of big like mine. And I could just connect a controller and play in 2d for hours, but it's better and more fun in 3d

[@unoclay]

I love almost everything about VB. The hate is....well it seems odd, at this point. The existence of this strange gaming sideroad is a welcome thing---classic nintendo. If someone released $20 budget titles for the console today, they'd make bank. As it is, Im making do with the lively homebrew scene. ;'] @@ZingaMadinga

[@ArnoldOldSchool]

I was a bit tickled by your comment on Nintendo fan boys buying the Virtual Boy. My cousin actually bought this console, and he had been a Genesis kid before that (Sega CD, 32X and all). It probably drove him back into Sega's loving arms.

[@markcambrone8369]

The virtual boy is the only Nintendo platform to not have a Zelda title. Think on that, even the Wii U got two ports and a spin-off.

[@BenCol]

But the Wii U got ‘Breath of the Wild’.

[@markcambrone8369]

@@BenCol Oh yeah...

[@KuraIthys]

@@matthewkoester1640 Yeah, though I think Ocarina of Time started life as a project for the DD, which is part of the reason I heard that it got pushed back so far. Part of it was just the difficulty of trying to figure out how to do Zelda in 3d... But the other may have been problems caused by the 64DD not coming out (it was supposed to be released as far back as 1997 I heard). Zelda is a 32 megabyte cartridge too, which was a lot for the n64 at the time it released. (some later games have 64 megabyte cartridges though) I also heard the game was originally meant to have a lot more dynamic, persistent stuff going on in the world, all of which pretty much had to be pulled when it was no longer going to be a DD game, as was the second quest type of thing. (The DD disks stored 64 megabytes, but up to half of that could be used to save data onto - 32 megabytes of persistent data is a lot compared to the maybe few hundred kilobytes at most that a cartridge would save.) I guess Ura Zelda was another rumoured thing, but I suspect that's basically the content that was pulled to make Zelda work on a cartridge. It always struck me looking at the status screen in OOT that there were empty spots for several things (the triforce notably), but no game content for them. I was expecting the game to continue because of that but it didn't. Another quirk of the 64DD is the memory expansion pack. They released that separately, but the DD is the main reason it exists at all - because a cartridge is fast enough to dynamically load in new content, but the DD is much slower, the extra RAM is necessary to keep DD games at roughly the same level of complexity. The same underlying reasons mean several n64 games would be impossible as is if the console used a CD drive, or would require a lot more RAM to compensate... Anyway, the DD isn't strictly speaking a console in it's own right, so that's slightly different...

[@m0rShh]

@@KuraIthys Well, the Pokemon Mini didn't get a Zelda title either... no prizes for guessing why lol

[@jonnyeh]

Plz zoom the starting overlay to a transparent pixel (like you do with SNES Works). This is so triggering.

[@JeremyParish]

You're going to be OK.

[@ActionGamerAaron]

Gah, I see it now.

[@LordChozo]

And I can't watch anymore No more denial It's so hard to lay down in all of this Who knew that Peter Gabriel was talking about 3D Tetris all along? To your point, the name of this game makes my blood simmer. The very name "Tetris" essentially means Four! How dare they.

[@massivepileup]

Was Block Out ever really good? It was technically interesting but never felt that fun to play to me.

[@jasonblalock4429]

Same here. I played it once back in the day, and I wasn't impressed at all. I think the basic problem was simply that it took so many piece drops to fill in even one layer in the well that the gameplay became slow and tedious. Plus it couldn't have the same level of speed and fluidity as regular Tetris, because they had to account for the player moving on multiple planes - so that slowed the game down even further.

[@Lorfarius]

Been a great series, owned a couple of these over the years but none of the games are anything special. Such a shame we didn't get some decent Nintendo design magic.

[@ThePerfectKiosk]

Bound High! was not a first-party title.

[@johnsimon8457]

So this is not Welltris, nor is it Tetrisphere 🤔 I wonder if this would be less of an eyesore if the screen updated at more than three frames per second. Like, why is the framerate THAT BAD? There’s likely no floating point unit or trigonometry hardware like on a modern cpu and the wireframes are all drawn in software, but still, it’s only a few line segments...

[@KuraIthys]

You'd think it'd be better than it is. The Virtual boy's CPU is no powerhouse, but it should at least be on par with the second revision SuperFX chip, and that can power vastly more complex thing than these virtual boy games at much higher framerates. Starfox runs at about 15-20 fps on the original SuperFX (which is half the framerate), and manages scenes of about 100 flat-shaded polygons and even one or two textured surfaces. Starfox 2, as far as the SNES mini emulation goes appears to run at 30 fps with probably 200 polygons and way more textured surfaces in use... I mean, how can the virtual boy be so bad at 3d it can't even keep up with that!?

[@BenCol]

Perhaps the anthropomorphised blocks were meant to tie in with a Saturday morning cartoon that never got made.

[@JeremyParish]

Or, maybe they're vile homunculi who gaze into your soul and leech your very being away

[@Sinaz20]

Milk and Cheese! Hah!

[@Sheepy007]

Will you cover the Street Fighter 2 homebrew port? Maybe as a sort of special episode after you've covered the whole library

[@JeremyParish]

twitter.com/gamespite/status/1119264762007904256

[@KuraIthys]

This series really highlights the limitations of the virtual boy. In hindsight there's a good reason why VR was something often mentioned but never seen until Oculus made a breakthrough some time around... 2014 was it? Don't get me wrong, there was VR before that. Vuzix sold some really dubious VR glasses for most of the 2000's that were kinda affordable (insofar as the current crop of VR headsets were affordable at launch) And there have been functioning, even fairly decent headsets since the 1970's, but the catch is those have really expensive optics and other tech that cost in the region of $10,000 to $100,000 per headset. If we're talking consumer level stuff, 1996 just wasn't viable for this kind of device - especially not at the price point and 'portable' setup that Nintendo tried with the virtual boy. If we look at high end 3d hardware, I'd say, given a few minor compromises, High end PC hardware would've been reasonably capable of supporting VR since about 2000. (you do need to hit 90 fps or so, but with suitable game design that would certainly be possible at the time) However, there's a bunch of technical problems with creating a cheap VR headset that isn't completely awful that relied on other industries to solve (including some developments that both Nintendo and Sony used for games around 2003-2006+) - First requirement, and the one that oculus really nailed, was a cheaper way to make a semi-decent lens assembly. - The final solution is a mixture of the lenses, and some software pre-processing to help out. While this was a clever innovation, it doesn't seem to have been a true technical leap. Someone could've done most of this in the mid 90's if they had been determined to, and thought of it... - The second requirement was affordable screens with sufficient performance and at a small enough scale to use in a headset. The final release headsets used slightly different more optimised screens (but still based on similar tech), but the first prototypes basically got their screens from the mobile phone and tablet PC's that were already mainstream by then. (The original oculus dev kit contains an 8 inch 1280x800 display lifted straight out of the kind of thing that goes into making tablets.). Thus this is piggybacking off the development of smartphones. The experience might've been quite subpar with 2000 era screen tech, if it was plausible at all. - The third requirement is that to make the experience complete, and also to combat nausea, is that you need very responsive and fast head tracking, preferably in all 6 axes. And what made this happen? Two things. Optical tracking using cameras. (eg. What the playstation Eyetoy did, and in more specialised form the tracking camera in the end of the wii remote), and... low cost, high precision accelerometers and gyroscopes - eg the exact same technical breakthrough (MEMS integrated circuits for these things) that made the Wii possible. - The tech in the wii is a very old concept (examples exist as far back as the 1950's or earlier), but the low cost, high performance, small scale parts that made it viable for a game console were only a few years old when the Wii came out. So we've got one innovation, some tech that would've been good enough in 2000 (but probably not in 1996), and some developments that depended on tech developed and improved on in the period of about 2006 to 2014... And the end result of all that is still a relatively expensive headset that needed an even more expensive high end computer to run it at reasonable performance. That was possible in 2014. Would have been tricky but maybe doable in 2006 Would have been extremely unlikely but just barely possible in 2000 But 1996? No. And keep in mind even the 2014, 2006 and 2000 cases would've been really expensive. ($3-4000 total cost, give or take), quite unlike something like the virtual boy. So it's just very much a case of being a device that was far too ambitious for it's time, and probably wouldn't even have worked properly a decade later. It's time is nowish given the technical constraints, but alas they foolishly tried to do it more than 20 years ago.

[@JeremyParish]

The original spec for VB tech included head tracking, which would have made possible something akin to VR, but the processor tech lacked the speed to keep lag tolerable. It caused nausea, so they spiked that feature. And then the radiation issues and battery concerns resulted in a device so heavy it had to be table-mounted anyway. Ah well. What could have been, if only they'd found a way around Moore's Law.

[@METR0lD]

I was so hyped for this game back before it launched. And man, what a disappointment it was. 3D Tetris is not a good game. Period.

[@willcail]

Um This is more like Welltris. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welltris

[@JeremyParish]

┳┻| ┳┻| ┻┳| ┻┳| ┳┻| ┳┻| ┻┳| ┻┳| ┳┻| ┳┻| ┻┳| ┳┻| ┻┳| ┳┻| _ ┻┳| •.•) Welltris is a Blockout clone ┳┻|⊂ﾉ ┻┳|

[@willcail]

Jeremy Parish You got that backwards Blockout is the Welltris Clone. A article from the Chicago Tribune is more accurate than some random KZbinr gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/564824-welltris/reviews/50279 www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1989-11-17-8903100698-story.html

[@ABlackFalcon]

Another Virtual Boy review in this series, another review where he misses the mark and bashes a fantastic game. It's what I was expecting, unfortunately, but it's quite wrong. When I got this game, I had low expectations; I've never liked Blockout very much, it's a difficult and frustrating game. This game, though, is outstanding! 3-D Tetris is the best Blockout-style game I have ever played, and it's a great puzzle game I'd definitely highly recommend. The game changes some things from Blockout, making it a different and, I think, better, game. First, the small, 5-layer well focuses play in a way you don't get in Blockout. The way you can lose and gain levels adds tension that Blockout doesn't have for a long time, until you fill up its much larger well. The images on the side of exactly what is on each layer are also really useful, and would be great to have in Blockout, it gets confusing quickly. I think this game is slow paced enough that you do have time to look at the side images often enough for them to be helpful. Piece control is much better than Blockout on the Genesis as well, as the game uses both d-pads and all the buttons for good, easy 3d control -- one d-pad moves the piece horizontally, while the other rotates it around, and buttons twist and drop it. It works really well, and it's too bad he doesn't describe the controls here -- it's a key part of why the game is good. The controls are complex, but once you learn them it's great... including that Select locks the field in place, come on! You're wrong on a key point in this video when you say that it's always moving around, it is not. Just press Select and try playing the game again! I like the variety here as well, the Puzzle mode is great and a really fun challenge. The game also saves your high scores and level or puzzle progress with a battery, something previous console and handheld Tetris games didn't do. It's a great feature in a great game.

[@WilliamStoneContentZone]

F

[@monkeyspice2010]

This just looks awful...