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Iwata:Actually, before we talk about Nintendo 3DS, I’d like to talk about the Virtual Boy system.3
Itoi:Virtual Boy!
3. Virtual Boy™: A home video game system released in 1995. Users looked into an eyepiece with a screen inside and played games displayed in 3D images.

Miyamoto:Whoa. (laughs)
Iwata:In 1995, when the Virtual Boy went out into the world, I wasn’t at Nintendo yet, but one day when I visited Nintendo, then-president Yamauchi said Nintendo had made something and he told me to take a look at it. It was the Virtual Boy system. You were with me that time, Itoi-san.
Itoi:Oh, is that so? (laughs)
Iwata:Virtual Boy was, I think, a commercial failure. Normally, I think it would have been understandable if Nintendo experienced a kind of trauma with regard to the whole 3D genre. But Nintendo continued to doggedly make attempts in 3D technology. And you could say that those attempts have now finally borne fruit. I feel like that is an interesting progression of topics.
Itoi:Nice intro! (laughs) I imagine Miyamoto-san has a unique perspective on this.
Miyamoto:Yeah, I guess I do. But…it’s complicated. (laughs)
Iwata:At the time, I was close to the company, but I was an outsider nonetheless. Miyamoto-san, however, was actually involved with it.
Itoi:It’s complicated?
Miyamoto:Yeah. (laughs) Well, as far as my position went, I wasn’t actually a central player. And that’s a little complicated, too.
Itoi:Oh, right, right. That was (Gunpei) Yokoi-san.4
Miyamoto:Right.
4. Gunpei Yokoi (1941-1997): While at Nintendo, he played a central role in developing such products as the Game & Watch handheld electronic games, the Game Boy™ handheld system, R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy), and the game Dr. Mario™.
Iwata:Central to development of Virtual Boy was Gunpei Yokoi, the father of Game Boy.
Miyamoto:Let's see… To start at the beginning, at the time I was interested in virtual reality, and was one of the staff that went on and on about how we should do something with 3D goggles. I didn't exactly twist his arm, but I would talk with Yokoi-san about how (3D) goggles would be interesting.
Itoi:Yeah.
Miyamoto:But then when development of the Virtual Boy actually began, I was busy developing the Nintendo 64 system.5
5. Nintendo 64™: A home video game console released in June 1996.
Iwataevelopment of the Virtual Boy and Nintendo 64 systems completely overlapped.
Miyamoto:Right. Another complicated thing is that 3D graphics were a major theme for both Virtual Boy and Nintendo 64. Things may have turned out differently if the two devices shared their technology, but they had different purposes. If you think of Nintendo 64 as made to confront 3D head-on, Virtual Boy was using different technology to aim at enjoyment of 3D without rushing in the general direction 3D was headed at the time.
Itoi:Okay, I can see that.
Miyamoto:To be more concrete, Virtual Boy was aiming at using wire frame models6 to simulate a 3D space. If you think about the power of CPUs at the time, that makes sense. But not many games used that method of visual representation. Most of them lined 2D images up at different depths to create a three-dimensional effect.
Itoi:That’s right.
6. Wire frame: One way of achieving three-dimensional graphics. It uses only lines to represent three-dimensional spaces and objects.
Miyamoto:At the time, as I was working on the Nintendo 64 system, part of me thought we should use wire frames to render 3D graphics, but I also thought that wire frame images weren’t terribly appealing.
Itoilaughs)
Miyamoto:If nothing but wire-frame fighter craft had appeared and Mario and other beloved characters had never shown up, that would be a little sad. But if you only changed the depth of a 2D image of Mario, it wouldn’t bring out the real appeal of the Virtual Boy. So the Virtual Boy system was a complicated affair.
Iwata:Anyway, those red-and-black visuals were at a bit of a disadvantage at that time when the graphics for video games were rapidly getting richer.
Miyamoto:Yeah. But I thought of Virtual Boy as a fun toy.
Itoi:Uh-huh.
Miyamoto:It was the kind of toy to get you excited and make you think, “This is what we can do now!” I imagined it as something that people who were on the lookout for new entertainment or who could afford to spend a bit of money could buy and enjoy even if the price was a little expensive. But the world treated it like a successor to the Game Boy system.
Itoi:It’s even got the word “boy” in its name.
Miyamoto:That was also true within Nintendo. Our sales department treated the Virtual Boy as an extension of our licensing business. In other words, we sold it as something like the Famicom system.
Itoi:I see.
Miyamoto:And when you do that, selling 100,000 is just a start. But if you think of it as just a fun toy, it’s a big success if you break just 50,000. If sales generated some buzz, and crossed 100,000, then 200,000, then 500,000—quite a good pattern. Viewed like that, Virtual Boy was, I think, quite an appealing toy. To people