The curious history, technology, and technocultural context of Nintendo's short-lived stereoscopic gaming console, the Virtual Boy. With glowing red stereoscopic 3D graphics, the Virtual Boy cast a prophetic hue: Shortly after its release in 1995, Nintendo's balance sheet for the product was "in the red" as well. Of all the innovative long shots the game industry has witnessed over the years, perhaps the most infamous and least understood was the Virtual Boy. Why the Virtual Boy failed, and where it succeeded, are questions that video game experts José Zagal and Benj Edwards explore in
Seeing Red, but even more interesting to the authors is what the platform actually was: what it promised, how it worked, and where it fit into the story of gaming.
Nintendo released the Virtual Boy as a standalone table-top device in 1995--and quickly discontinued it after lackluster sales and a lukewarm critical reception. In
Seeing Red, Zagal and Edwards examine the device's technical capabilities, its games, and the cultural context in the US in the 1990s when Nintendo developed and released the unusual console. The Virtual Boy, in their account, built upon and extended an often-forgotten historical tradition of immersive layered dioramas going back 100 years that was largely unexplored in video games at the time. The authors also show how the platform's library of games conveyed a distinct visual aesthetic style that has not been significantly explored since the Virtual Boy's release, having been superseded by polygonal 3D graphics. The platform's meaning, they contend, lies as much in its design and technical capabilities and affordances as it does in an audience's perception of those capabilities.
Offering rare insight into how we think about video game platforms,
Seeing Red illustrates where perception and context come, quite literally, into play.
任天堂短暫壽命的立體遊戲主機 Virtual Boy 的好奇歷史、技術及技術文化背景。
擁有閃亮紅色立體 3D 圖形的 Virtual Boy 帶來了預言般的色調：在 1995 年發售不久後，任天堂的產品財報也顯示「虧損」。在遊戲產業多年來目睹的所有創新長期嘗試中，或許最臭名昭著且最難以理解的就是 Virtual Boy。為什麼 Virtual Boy 失敗，以及它在哪些方面取得成功，都是遊戲專家 José Zagal 和 Benj Edwards 在《Seeing Red》中探討的問題，但對於作者來說，更有趣的是這個平台實際上是什麼：它承諾了什麼、如何運作，以及它在遊戲歷史中的位置。
任天堂於 1995 年推出 Virtual Boy 作為一款獨立的桌上設備，並在銷售不佳和評價平平後迅速停產。在《Seeing Red》中，Zagal 和 Edwards 檢視了該設備的技術能力、遊戲以及 1990 年代美國的文化背景，當時任天堂開發並發行了這款不尋常的主機。他們的敘述中指出，Virtual Boy 建立並延續了一種常被遺忘的沉浸式分層立體模型的歷史傳統，這一傳統可以追溯到 100 年前，而當時在視頻遊戲中幾乎未被探索。作者還展示了該平台的遊戲庫如何傳達出一種獨特的視覺美學風格，自 Virtual Boy 發行以來，這種風格並未得到顯著探索，因為它已被多邊形 3D 圖形所取代。他們主張，該平台的意義在於其設計和技術能力及其提供的功能，與觀眾對這些能力的感知同樣重要。
《Seeing Red》提供了對我們如何看待視頻遊戲平台的罕見洞察，生動地展示了感知和背景如何在字面上發揮作用。
José P. Zagal is Professor at the University of Utah's Entertainment Arts & Engineering program. He is the author of
Ludoliteracy, editor of
The Videogame Ethics Reader, and Editor-in-Chief of
Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association. Zagal has been honored as a DiGRA Distinguished Scholar and a Fellow of the Higher-Education Video Game Alliance for his contributions to games research.
Benj Edwards is a tech historian and journalist. He is currently the AI and Machine Learning reporter for Ars Technica and a tech journalist for publications such as
The Atlantic, Wired, Macworld,
PCWorld,
Fast Company, and other publications. Edwards is also the Editor-in-Chief of
Vintage Computing and Gaming, a contributor to the
Retronauts podcast, and creator of
The Culture of Tech podcast.
何塞·P·扎加爾是猶他大學娛樂藝術與工程計畫的教授。他是《Ludoliteracy》的作者、《The Videogame Ethics Reader》的編輯，以及《Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association》的主編。扎加爾因其對遊戲研究的貢獻而獲得DiGRA傑出學者和高等教育電子遊戲聯盟的研究員榮譽。
本傑·愛德華茲是一位科技歷史學家和記者。他目前是Ars Technica的人工智慧與機器學習報導者，並為《The Atlantic》、《Wired》、《Macworld》、《PCWorld》、《Fast Company》等出版物擔任科技記者。愛德華茲還是《Vintage Computing and Gaming》的主編、《Retronauts》播客的貢獻者，以及《The Culture of Tech》播客的創作者。
