Virtual Boy Wario Land retrospective: Red-blooded WAAAAH-man | Virtual Boy Works #08

[@spike1000]

"Wario can use Mario's butt-stomp skill" He actually did it first.

[@DarthEnderX]

I'll never understand why Nintendo didn't put VB games on the 3DS.

[@Poever]

It’s too late now, too. All 3DS systems that could display 3D are no longer being marketed anymore.

[@pokepress]

I wish they had done some sort of callout in the 3DS Mario Tennis game. A VB-styled court would have been fun.

[@f0ry0u81]

That would make too much sense.✌️

[@SECONDQUEST]

ITS VIRTUAL BOY WWWWAAAAHHH

[@discountchocolate4577]

Nintendo has an annoying habit of throwing the baby out with the bathwater with few exceptions. Consider for instance that instead of introducing gamecube games for Wii U VC, they decided to sell HD rereleases of the system's 2 Zelda games for $60.

[@TravisPilgrim]

What I find most intresting about this game is how it uses platforms in the foreground and background. 3DS Games like Mutant Mudds and Kirby Triple Deluxe were build entirerly around that idea, but Wario was already doing it back in the 90s

[@Poever]

Mutant Mudds doesn’t work as well outside of the 3DS for that reason

[@jasongarrett768]

You can hear Jeremy taking a vocal running start towards that WAAAAAAA at the beginning. :D

[@2yoyoyo1Unplugged]

Jason Garrett WWWWAAAAAAAAAHHH

[@dudujencarelli]

I just realized something. The final boss in Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii) is directly inspired by this game's own final boss. The hands, the head, the fact that it goes to the background and foreground. Retro Studios took inspiration from a VB title.

[@AuthorativeMrM]

I worked at Blockbuster when the VB came out, and we had Wario Land running on our demo unit. Playing it didn’t endear me to the system at all, but it was pretty neat to see how effective the 3D gimmick was.

[@sryx]

MrMatthews I bought my VB from Blockbuster. I even have the travel case that it came it when you rented it :)

[@AuthorativeMrM]

I’d love to have that! I bought my VB just a couple years ago in an awkward Craigslist deal

[@tjanas]

The only time I played a real Virtual Boy was from renting it from Blockbuster in the late summer of 1995.

[@jasonblalock4429]

I'm a little surprised you didn't mention the 2.5D Kirby platformers, especially the 3DS entries, which had nearly identical usage of the foreground/background plane gimmick. It's hard to imagine that HAL Labs weren't inspired by this.

[@zenrankin8876]

I would love a new entry in the Wario Land series. His games are pure joy.

[@SherlockHyde]

I really wish Nintendo were better at putting out their older games, because this one would have been a perfect fit for the 3DS I feel.

[@WhoIsSirChasm]

Them's fightin' words about Wario Land: Shake It!

[@JoeBushOnline]

Wario Land was practically my favorite series growing up, it's sad knowing one of the scant few games in the series is forever trapped in red and black

[@KGRAMR]

VB Wario Land is not only the best Virtual Boy and not just one of the best entries in the series IMO, its one of my favorite titles of all time. I have the records for the fastest time for finishing it on both quests at Planet Virtual Boy ;)

[@rabiroden]

I still blows my mind the Virtual Boy output a higher resolution than any other Nintendo "portable" until the 3DS was released _16_ years later. And even then it's just barely smaller than the 3DS's main screen. It's even higher resolution than most N64 games. Modern VR emphasizes that both resolution and framerate need to be high to reduce sickness. It seems the Virtual Boy emphasized both these things in its design, even if it's not truly VR. It seems pretty forward-thinking in that sense.

[@SleepingCocoon]

right? and that's not even considering it actually renders 768 horizontal pixels (one a one-LED-wide display!). 768x224! on a consumer game device from 1995! cripes!

[@JoJoTheOtter]

Awesome game. I remember it being on demo at Target, and my little sister and I would play it as much as we possibly could. That Christmas, I actually got my own SNES and my little sister’s gift to me was a copy of Wario’s Woods. She was so upset to find out that it was not, in fact, an SNES version of the VB Wario Land. I felt bad, but Wario’s Woods turned out to be a very solid puzzler that was actually very fun, so I assured her that the gift was still very meaningful.

[@AlexMeyersVids]

Been waiting for this😁😁

[@Pixel_Padre]

Easily my favorite Wario game, but then I've always preferred the platforming-focused design here to the more puzzle-centric Wario 2 & 3.

[@TanookiSuit]

Same here which is why I've grown to detest Wario Land games because they got stupid with the no death brain teaser garbage. I love this game, got it coming back to me in the mail soon too. :D

[@pentelegomenon1175]

I agree, except I prefer the original.

[@ProbablyOkay]

The graphics are so beautiful! I want this for my 3DS!

[@macrozone]

It looks phantastic, in particular Wario looks much better here than in later entries.

[@monkeyspice2010]

great video as always :) Virtual Boy is the one Nintendo Console I never owned. Good to see it get some love :)

[@kidv2]

0:13 Ha! Just made me realize I don’t think I saw a Virtual Boy game cartridge before !

[@joshualewis3780]

While you can get an OK sense of what this game plays like from other Wario games, it's still a shame that it's not really accessible. It's an honestly 'fun' game.

[@feitclub]

I never got into any Wario games in the 90s (not even Super Mario Land 2 or 3!) but every one that I've explored via Virtual Console has been worth it.

[@kramerdesign9443]

I've looked into this Wario entry a couple times over the years, and it may have been the red monochrome or just poor video - but I'd never realized how great looking this game is! Graphics aside, I'm really excited to play through this one now - thanks Jeremy!

[@GameplayandTalk]

I've got to say, this is still a fantastic looking game. It's been ages since I've finished it but I do remember having a good time with it. It's a shame it was never ported to another platform. I could see a colorized version sitting pretty well with modern Wario fans.

[@sludgefactory241]

Doing God's work my man!

[@lazybacon7520]

This was the only game that messed my eyes up after playing sessions. I enjoyed it so much more than the others, and took less breaks because of it.

[@ethelchip3620]

Great review!! This is my third favorite wario land game. I also really enjoy Mario Clash a lot for the simple arcade style gameplay. VB really does have some good games. I hope that 3ds emulator gets finished eventually.

[@joejoe3011]

This is the game I remember demo-ing at Target

[@SEGAClownboss]

It's so rare to hear Jeremy be this passionate. Nice!

[@brady9592]

Some top notch pixel graphics.

[@jasongarrett768]

The note at the end on this game deserving a port rings especially true after just playing Xeodrifter. Everything here would have worked perfectly fine on the 3DS as well.

[@arcanineryu]

Man, that boss battle clip reminded me so much of the epic final battle against baby bowser in yoshi's island

[@retrospectrum]

This is actually my favorite Wario Game.

[@TanookiSuit]

I believe in your sentiment in closing there entirely. You know the 3DS is on the way out, but we have seen what it looks like Nintendo isn't discouraging and they may get in on too with the Switch. There are stereoscopic headmounts coming (much like for years have sat on mobile phones) to slide the Switch into. Perhaps the VB could get a collection package with the titles Nintendo at least made, if not the whole line of them since the developers all support NIntendo still. Have the thing work either in stereoscopic natural, standard mode on the panel(or tv), and perhaps go that DX route and colorize the things for either style as a choice too on top of classic vintage red & black. The VB has a good library, small, misunderstood definitely, but totally worth not leaving in the dirt.

[@sludgefactory241]

You said there are stereoscopic headmounts coming? Are we talking a mobile type VR headset? When was this confirmed? Not saying you telling stories, I just hadn't heard about it somehow. If they did that, they would be dumb not to port the VBoy library. Already dropped the ball with the 3ds. Hate to see an opportunity wasted again.

[@JeremyParish]

There was a VR-leaning Switch patent leaked a couple of weeks ago.

[@TanookiSuit]

@@JeremyParish That was it, but I also recalled this device NintendoLife showed off at the tail end of October last year and they have this website about it. I know it's kind of a smoke and mirrors type deal vs real 3D much like those drop your mobile phone in devices that pop up at Christmas time for a cheap price. nsglasses.com/

[@TanookiSuit]

@@sludgefactory241 See Jeremy's comment and my reply as I had a couple intents with it.

[@smartoperator7716]

fantastic! I really want to purchase a virtual boy, such an oddity

[@SmashBrosOdyssey64]

You can tell Jeremy is reveling in the ability to yell WAHHH, and I love it.

[@pentelegomenon1175]

You'd think that the VB technology would make a game like this feel more immersive, but I remember this not really being the case, despite the game being pretty good its medium felt like an impediment, it was like trying to see the game through binoculars.

[@megamike15]

well besides the whole jumping in the background thing this game could have easily been made on the gb or snes.

[@IanSane]

You figure at some point on one of the Nintendo handhelds when it was time to make a Wario game Nintendo would have thought "Hey, we've got a completed game here that we've never re-released and almost no one has played. Why don't we remake this and save ourselves a bunch of time because the level layouts are already done?" Maybe they feel 10 levels is too short? Fine, how about an eShop game? Or why not start with the 10 levels here and expand on it? Still have a lot of content already done. I can see how the other VB first party titles probably don't have enough content to recycle into a modern game but this one seems pretty featured. Remember how barren the DS launch was? A VB Wario Land port would have helped fill things out nicely.

[@bearwooden660]

Dude, I loved VB. I got it for $25 as it went down in the price in 6 months from 150 to 25 in US :(. Wario is the best game for VB, but VB was really amazing in my book. The reason they stopped making games was a lot of people started complaining of headaches and feeling woozy after playing for a while. I played it for hours and never had any ill effects... Sucks this system died before it even started ...

[@jayjasespud]

I wish they had done another Wario Land like this one and the first.

[@SPac316]

A lot of decent games I missed out on because of my VB bias back when I was in high school. I mean, not that it wasn't justified because I knew the VB was gonna fail back then. But now I would mind getting one now just to have it, if I can get a good deal on it.

[@irvyne6111]

The final boss is such a pain. Other than that, I found this to be a really enjoyable game.

[@OsakaSan]

Looking at how 3DS and New 3DS Nintendo library was, i can see why Nintendo never bothered with porting Virtual Boy games. First, if they were to release a full functioning emulator - and who knows if they even developed and tested one - the over black color palette would make it a mess to play in 3D. Autostereoscopic 3D suffered greatly when anything was over a dark or black background, remember how Ocarina of Time colors were lightened overall? Ganon's tower in particular lost a lot of atmosphere because of this precisely. There's also the fact that they didn't have a fully functioning SNES emulator working until N3DS (or at least one that lived to their standards) so a VB emulator for Virtual Console would have been a bigger hurdle. Second, Nintendo made a fuss with eye strain on 3DS, to the point of undermining their own marketing and affecting sales. I can't imagine that very same Nintendo releasing a Virtual Boy emulator on a console they themselves spent months telling people it could cause eye strain and headaches. Third. They could release colorised ports, but Nintendo seemed extremely invested with the combination of 3D and polygons, never releasing (as far as i know) sprite based games with 3D support (Wich, by the way, is a shaming, because sprite based stereoscopic games looked awesome) We could still have some hope with the Switch and Labo virtual glasses, but that ship sailed as soon as it got build.

[@dbpooper7512]

Is it too much to hope for a Wario Land All-stars? Wario's 25th anniversary came and went with little notice.

[@evenmorebetter]

Super Wario Waaaah-Stars? Super Wario All-Garlic?

[@matthewmicelli6674]

It's remake time, babeh.

[@darktetsuya]

right out of the gate with the 'WAH' jokes I see, better to get them out of the way early. :P also this *was* a kazumi totaka soundtrack, so I guess that explains the little detail about switching planes. if any game would've been worth the eye strain, this would be it. :P

[@k2montgomery419]

VB Wario Land was one of three titles I played for the system back when I could rent it from Blockbuster. It was by far the best. The other titles I played were Mario's Tennis and Mario Clash. This game was awesome! I have wanted to purchase a Virtual Boy ever since just for this one game alone. I only just played the other Wario gameboy and gameboy color games on the 3DS, and I was not impressed. I really don't understand why all VB titles weren't colorized and released for the 3DS. I would have bought each and everyone of them.

[@Zoomy222]

Love this game. Totally awesome for the time.

[@iamrockness]

It is an absolute shame that the 3DS appears to have gone its entire lifespan without any Virtual Boy games, especially this gem. I have fond memories of playing this on my Virtual Boy a few years ago when I found one at a thrift store along with it.

[@Big_Dai]

Wait.. wait.. Was the Virtual Boy the first to use WideScreen ever? If not, I'm sure it is at least the first one to use foreground screen (which we prominently see in Paper Mario).

[@JeremyParish]

It was the first commercial home system I know of to use widescreen. There were things like Darius (arcade) and Hi-Ten Bomberman (unreleased), but home systems used 4:3 televisions and previous handhelds had nearly square screens.

[@skyrunner14]

Another great overview, as usual! Just out of curiosity, will you be making a video about the unreleased-but-finished-and-leaked Bound High?

[@JeremyParish]

I'll be covering extracurricular material, yes.

[@JoeTheJRPGManiac]

Personally, I always found Jack Bros to be the pinnacle of the system and not Wario Land. That's not to say Wario Land is a bad game, as a matter of fact I prefer it to Wario Land 2 and 3 for the more traditional Mario style platforming, but I've always loved twin stick shooters, and Jack Bros constantly had me in that 'One more try' mentality as I played it. Helps I'm a fan of SMT as well.

[@evenmorebetter]

I think Space Squash belongs in that upper pantheon as well, IMO

[@rkfan1012]

What’s the name of the outro “next episode” music?

[@sludgefactory241]

Need to find the ROM for this. Been playing the GBC wario for a week or 2 now for like the fifth time on my 3ds. I almost prefer wario to Mario side scrollers. The world deserves a Waluigi game Nintendo. Just cuz Camelot made the character doesn't mean ya gotta hate on him so

[@KuraIthys]

I suppose the one upside of trying to develop a virtual boy emulator is that, hypothetical homebrew aside (IS there VB homebrew?) you only have to test it against 22 games, and if it works alright with all of them, job done. Kinda. (depends on how particular you want to be about it.) The downside is, the only way to verify the reliability of an emulator properly, even on a system with just 22 games... ... Is to own the system AND all 22 games. Not only that, but you have to play through each game thoroughly both on the emulator and on real hardware, and make careful notes on whether the two behave the same way or not... bleh. XD I wouldn't mind making a Virtual Boy emulator (for use with Virtual Reality headsets, to be exact - for obvious reasons.), but getting actual hardware just feels too painful...

[@BainesMkII]

For people that really want to emulate a system as accurately as they can, not just get a "good enough" result, having fewer games can be worse. The more games you have, the more chances you have for some game to visibly break due to your mistakes, which means you can figure out the "right" way to emulate something. (And sometimes fixing an issue that visibly breaks one game can also make several other games more accurate in more subtle ways that you'd otherwise have missed.)

[@scottmog]

Pointy bits, that is all.

[@delaorden]

Lol what happened in 7:39 ? The Virtual Boy is 32 bits and you repeated 2 times that its the best looking 8bit wario game

[@timg2727]

I thought the same thing.

[@JeremyParish]

That's why I added a last-minute footnote to explain my scripted brain-fart.

[@Michirin9801]

This should have been remade on the 3DS...

[@PrinceAkkanatan]

On the list of top 100 Virtual Boy Games, this is number one...through 98 (Boxing and Tennis)

[@JeremyParish]

If you've been following this series, you know that's neither fair nor true!

[@Nikujaga4649]

Top 100 from Sydlexia?

[@jonahabenhaim1223]

I don't think there ever was 100 virtual boy games

[@Nappyfox]

More please

[@JeremyParish]

I literally covered the entire VB platform, man. There’s nothing left for me to do here.

[@JVeg199X]

Did you try the hard mode? It mixes things up, like Wario Land 4’s hard mode. Definitely gives the game more longevity.

[@JeremyParish]

Wait, there's a hard mode? How did I miss that?

[@JVeg199X]

@@JeremyParish IIRC you have to beat the game with all the treasures and then next time you start your save file, it will start the game from the beginning but in Hard Mode. Also, the cursor on the file select screen will appear different when highlighting your Hard Mode file.

[@JeremyParish]

Oh, that explains it. I missed three treasures on my playthrough and the fact that you have to manually trek backward through each stage to revisit previous areas made me nope out of a complete run.

[@bayzul7405]

"core design strengths and make hardware specific features secondary" Shame that's how IP's faded trying innovation than a good game. Starfox U comes to mind, and when it hits good like F-Zero GX (granted SEGA made it), Nintendo forgets or discards by sale data paling to Mario-Zelda. VB Wario demonstrates Nintendo prior embracing creativity even with setbacks like the VB that got them to today.

[@justinrunge]

As you said in an earlier video, the 3DS was really Nintendo's chance to give these games a second life. I wonder why they never got any Virtual Console love.

[@mattdgroves]

Wario: Ferengi Mario

[@HydraSavior]

Of course gold coins aren't worth extra lives, hearts are. "Nothing is more important than your health...except for your money." --Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #23

[@adamking6645]

Nice touch with the message at the end urging how the remainder of the Virtual Boy's library "isn't all garbage". I'm sure several people (including myself) were about to type how you don't need to continue this series now that you covered Wario Land and thus all the 'important' games and there's nothing left but scrubs.

[@JeremyParish]

I mean, I haven't even talked about the game based on the Cthulhu mythos.

[@TBrizzle01]

I prefer the original Wario Land (and VB Wario Land) style to the subsequent games. I love the Mario aspects with power ups and shrinking when damaged. I find getting hit in the later games to be extremely annoying as it wastes a ton of time.

[@BlazeHedgehog]

I really like VB Wario Land. Color me one of the few that didn't like Wario Land 2 or 3; they were creative but tedious games. Invincibility meant most of your "penalty" for failure was having to climb up from the bottom of a room, only to get knocked all the way back down to the bottom again when you messed up. Got really boring. VB Wario sticks closer to traditional platformer ebb and flow, where taking damage is the penalty itself, not the knock-back.

[@gopherbone697]

Waa

[@KuraIthys]

To be fair to the virtual boy's graphics compared to a gameboy, according to it's specifications it's got a 384x224 resolution per eye (which in principle the brain may interpret as a higher resolution if you combine both eyes) vs the 160x144 of a gameboy, and supposedly can produce 128 shades of 'red'/monochrome, (though only 3 + black on any given 4 pixel column - this seems like an odd limitation honestly. But I suppose it's like the 8x8 tilemap blocks of most 8 and 16 bit systems, including the gameboy. Perhaps there's some internal technical reason for it. - it would imply a display is broken up into 384x56 groups of 4 pixels.) Definitely a strange system, looking at it's hardware specs. Parts of it's spec sheet read very much like a gameboy. Part read like a seriously beefed up Super Nintendo. None of it quite resembles what you'd expect from a purpose-built VR system (eg, it has no meaningful dedicated 3d capabilities.) You'd think it could come close to the level of graphics seen from SuperFX games though, given the presence of a 32 bit CPU running at roughly 20 mhz. (I recall it actually being TWO such processors, but the specs I'm currently looking at say otherwise. Oh well.)

[@LarissaGoldberg]

This is so much fun

[@fireflocs]

I would argue that Shake It is better than Master of Disguise. I know, I know, technically, it's 'Wario: Master of Disguise', so it's not explicitly part of Wario Land, but let's be real, that's a Wario Land game.

[@JeremyParish]

We don't talk about Master of Disguise.

[@BusyMEOW]

I wish they kept the Wario Land 1 gameplay for the sequels instead of the gimmicky transformations

[@JeremyParish]

I love them both equally, don't make me choose a favorite child

[@MaidenHell1977]

Isnt this game 32-bit?