Nintendo

Nintendo
Information
Type	Public company
Industry	Video games, Consumer electronics
Founded	September 23, 1889
Founder	Fusajiro Yamauchi
Headquarters	Kyoto, Japan
Notable Personnel	Shuntaro Furukawa (President), Gunpei Yokoi (designer of the Virtual Boy and Game Boy, deceased)
Products	Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Virtual Boy, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Labo
Website	https://www.nintendo.com

Nintendo (Nintendo Co., Ltd.) is a Japanese video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It was founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi as a maker of handmade hanafuda playing cards, and moved into electronic toys and video games in the 1970s and 1980s. It is best known for home and handheld game systems and franchises such as Mario, The Legend of Zelda, and Pokemon, but the company has a long and uneven history with Stereoscopic 3D, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality hardware.

Nintendo's most prominent VR product is the Virtual Boy, a stereoscopic console released in 1995 that was a commercial failure and was discontinued within a year. Two decades later the company returned to the field with the autostereoscopic Nintendo 3DS handheld (2011), which produced a glasses-free 3D effect, and the cardboard-based Nintendo Labo VR Kit (2019) for the Nintendo Switch. In February 2026 Nintendo revived the Virtual Boy library through its Nintendo Switch Online service, paired with a replica viewer and a low-cost cardboard model.

Company background

Fusajiro Yamauchi began the business in Kyoto in 1889, producing hanafuda ("flower cards"), a set of 48 illustrated playing cards used in Japanese games. The company stayed in the card and toy business for decades before entering electronic games with the Game and Watch handheld line in 1980, the arcade hit Donkey Kong in 1981, and the home console market with the Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo remains based in Kyoto and is publicly traded; its president since June 2018 is Shuntaro Furukawa, the sixth person to hold the role.

The company's relevance to virtual and augmented reality comes from a small set of stereoscopic and 3D hardware projects spread across thirty years, rather than a continuous VR product line. Each is covered below.

Virtual Boy (1995)

The Virtual Boy was a stereoscopic console released in Japan on July 21, 1995 and in North America on August 14, 1995, at a launch price of 179.95 US dollars. It was led by Gunpei Yokoi, the head of Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division and the designer of the Game Boy.

The display was licensed from Massachusetts-based Reflection Technology, Inc., which had developed a technique it called Scanned Linear Array. Each eye looked at a single vertical column of red LEDs whose light was bounced off a rapidly oscillating mirror; scanning that column back and forth across the eye fast enough produced a full image through Persistence of vision. Because affordable, bright LEDs were only available in red at the time, the screens were monochrome red on black at a resolution of 384 by 224 pixels per eye, driven by a 32-bit NEC V810 processor running at 20 MHz. Presenting a slightly different image to each eye created a stereoscopic depth effect, but the unit had no head tracking and so was not worn on the head; it sat on a table on a stand, and the player leaned into a fixed binocular eyepiece.

The Virtual Boy sold an estimated 770,000 units and shipped with a library of about 22 games before Nintendo discontinued it in 1996. It was never sold in Europe. Its commercial failure has been attributed to the high price, the unappealing red-and-black image, a weak sense of depth, poor ergonomics, the lack of true portability, and reports of eye strain, headaches, and dizziness that led Nintendo to print health warnings and recommend frequent breaks. The Virtual Boy is widely cited as one of Nintendo's largest hardware flops and an early cautionary example in the history of consumer VR.

Nintendo 3DS and autostereoscopic 3D (2011)

The Nintendo 3DS is a handheld game system that launched in Japan on February 26, 2011, in Europe on March 25, 2011, and in North America on March 27, 2011 at 249.99 US dollars. Its top screen produced a 3D image without glasses using a parallax barrier, a layered filter placed over the LCD that directs alternating columns of pixels toward the left and right eye so that each eye sees a different image. A physical 3D Depth Slider next to the screen let the user adjust the strength of the effect or switch it off.

The technique, called autostereoscopy, removed the need for the eyewear used by 3D televisions of the era, but the original 3DS had a narrow viewing angle: the head had to stay roughly centered or the 3D effect broke down. Nintendo addressed this with the New Nintendo 3DS, launched in Japan in October 2014, which added a feature called Super Stable 3D. Developed by Nintendo European Research and Development (NERD), it uses the system's front-facing camera and an infrared LED to track the position of the user's face and steer a dynamic parallax barrier so the 3D image holds across a wider range of angles and head movement. The same face-tracking and sensor-fusion approach used to keep the image aligned is closely related to the head-tracking problems faced by VR head-mounted displays. The 3DS family sold about 75.71 million units worldwide before Nintendo ended production of all models in 2020.

Nintendo Labo VR Kit (2019)

The Nintendo Labo VR Kit, formally the Toy-Con 04: VR Kit, is a cardboard Virtual Reality accessory for the Nintendo Switch, released on April 12, 2019. Labo is a line in which players assemble cardboard sheets into controllers and accessories called Toy-Con that work with the Switch. The VR Kit centers on a pair of cardboard VR Goggles into which the Switch screen slides; like Google Cardboard, it has no head strap, so the player holds the console with its attached controllers up to the face, and the screen is split into two images to create a stereoscopic view.

The kit shipped in two configurations: a full kit at 79.99 US dollars that built the goggles plus five additional Toy-Con (a blaster, camera, elephant, bird, and wind pedal), and a 39.99 US dollar starter set with the goggles and the blaster. It was rated for ages seven and up and included a set of small VR mini-experiences. On April 25, 2019 Nintendo released free updates that added optional Labo VR support to two existing Switch games: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gained a VR mode for the full game, while Super Mario Odyssey added three short bonus missions playable in VR. The kit was a self-contained, low-cost product aimed largely at younger players rather than a competitor to dedicated headsets from Sony or Microsoft.

Virtual Boy revival (2026)

On February 17, 2026 Nintendo brought the Virtual Boy library to its subscription service as Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics, available to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack members in the United States and Canada. The classic games are presented in 3D and are designed to be viewed through one of two new accessories. The first is a dedicated viewer, Virtual Boy for Nintendo Switch 2 / Nintendo Switch, priced at 99.99 US dollars, that replicates the look of the 1995 hardware and uses a docked Switch or Switch 2 (not the Switch Lite) as its screen and processor. The second is a cardboard model at 24.99 US dollars, which Road to VR compared to Google Cardboard and Nintendo's own Labo VR Kit and which requires holding the whole console up to the face. Nintendo said 14 games would be added over time, beginning with titles such as Mario's Tennis, Galactic Pinball, and Teleroboxer. The release made games that had been effectively inaccessible since 1996 playable again in their intended stereoscopic form.

VR and AR hardware timeline

Product	Year	Type	VR/AR relevance
Virtual Boy	1995	Stereoscopic console	Red-LED Scanned Linear Array display per eye; table-mounted, no head tracking; about 770,000 units sold; discontinued 1996
Nintendo 3DS	2011	Handheld with autostereoscopic screen	Glasses-free 3D via a parallax barrier with a depth slider; about 75.71 million units sold; production ended 2020
New Nintendo 3DS (Super Stable 3D)	2014	Handheld with face-tracked 3D	Dynamic parallax barrier steered by camera and infrared face tracking, developed by NERD
Nintendo Labo VR Kit (Toy-Con 04)	2019	Cardboard VR accessory	Cardboard goggles holding the Switch screen, no head strap; optional VR modes added to Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey
Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics	2026	Emulated library plus viewer accessories	Virtual Boy games on Switch Online, played through a 99.99 US dollar replica viewer or a 24.99 US dollar cardboard model