Virtual Boy Wario Land

Virtual Boy Wario Land
Information
Developer	Nintendo R&D1
Publisher	Nintendo
Platform	Virtual Boy
Device	Virtual Boy
Type	Game
Genre	Action, Platform
Play Area	Seated
Game Mode	Single-player
Release Date	November 27, 1995 (United States), December 1, 1995 (Japan)
Price	¥4,900 (Japan, excluding tax)

Virtual Boy Wario Land (Japanese: バーチャルボーイワリオランド アワゾンの秘宝, Virtual Boy Wario Land: Awazon no Hihō) is a 1995 side-scrolling platform game developed by Nintendo R&D1 and published by Nintendo for the Virtual Boy, the company's red-monochrome stereoscopic tabletop console. The player controls Wario, who has fallen into an underground maze while chasing a hoard of treasure and has to climb back to the surface. Wario can leap between a foreground and a background plane, which the Virtual Boy displays at different apparent depths.

The game was released in the United States on 27 November 1995 and in Japan on 1 December 1995. Guinness World Records lists it as the first virtual reality platforming video game. Retrospective reviews have generally ranked it as the best game on the Virtual Boy, while reviewers both at release and later most often criticized its short length. In February 2026, Nintendo made it one of the launch titles of Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics, a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack collection for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Release dates, price, story, gameplay, review quotes and scores, and the 2026 re-release checked against Nintendo pages, the US manual scan, Guinness and every cited review or magazine scan. About review dates.

Gameplay

Story and structure

In the story given in the North American instruction booklet, Wario is on vacation in the Awazon river basin. He lands his seaplane near the Aldegara Waterfall, sees masked creatures entering the falls and follows them into a cave, where he finds a vault of treasure. The floor gives way and drops him deep underground, and he sets out to take the creatures' treasure for himself. Nintendo's Japanese product page describes the setting as a giant underground empire from which Wario fights his way toward the surface.

The game has 14 stages. Nintendo's Japanese page lists stages that begin with an underground lava area and go on to forests, deserts and underwater sections. Each stage has a locked elevator door at its end, and the player must find the stage's key to open it; the elevator then carries Wario up to the next floor. Coins, hearts and a hidden treasure are spread through each stage, and collecting 100 hearts earns an extra life. Four of the 14 stages are boss fights. The instruction booklet says that some levels are "medium Boss levels" and that the final level is the "Big Boss level".

Between stages, Wario can stop the elevator to gamble coins on one of two minigames. In one, he jumps between the foreground and the background to catch hearts and other items that scroll past; the other is a game of chance for more coins. A progress screen then shows the treasures found, the coins collected and Wario's position in the maze. The game saves automatically at that screen, in one of three save files that the booklet calls Data Vaults. If the game ends, Wario loses some of the treasure and coins he has collected.

The ending depends on how much treasure and how many coins the player has gathered; Nintendo Life adds that completion time also affects which ending appears, and that a harder mode can be unlocked. Nintendo Magazine System noted that the player has to find all ten special objects to finish the game properly.

Abilities and power-ups

The play follows the first Game Boy Wario Land. Wario jumps on enemies to stun them, picks stunned enemies up and throws them at other enemies, and shoulder-barges or body-slams enemies and breakable blocks. According to the booklet, a thrown enemy that strikes another before it has bounced twice destroys both.

Wario changes form by touching helmet items. A Viking-style helmet turns him into Bull Wario, who breaks blocks with a single barge and can start an earthquake with a body slam that stuns enemies. The Eagle Statue gives Eagle Wario, who can fly and attack in the air. The Dragon Crystal gives Sea Dragon Wario, who breathes fire that destroys blocks and enemies. Collecting both the eagle and the dragon power-ups produces King Dragon Wario, who has all of the special powers. When Wario takes damage he shrinks to Small Wario, who has no special powers, and another hit costs a life.

Use of the stereoscopic display

Virtual Boy Wario Land is shown in red and black on the Virtual Boy's screens. Its backgrounds are built from several layers at different depths, and at times the player has to jump into the background to avoid an obstacle or to collect an item. Wario steps on a jump board and presses jump to launch himself into the background, where he appears smaller; Nintendo Life noted that the sounds of his jumps and smashes also become more distant while he is there. Hazards and enemies also move along the depth axis. In the first stage, large spiked balls swing between the background and the foreground, and some enemies start in the distance before coming forward to attack. Neal Ronaghan of Nintendo World Report wrote that in most levels the player has to jump between the planes to reach the end, and that the bosses give "some of the most novel uses of the system's 3D effects", with one boss attacking from the background so that the player has to judge the distance to avoid damage.

Development

Virtual Boy Wario Land was made by Nintendo R&D1, the team led by Gunpei Yokoi, who also created the Virtual Boy. Chris Kohler of Kotaku wrote that, because Wario was this team's leading character, the console received its own full Wario Land game, one that differs from the first Game Boy game only in a few tweaks. Jeremy Parish of Retronauts wrote that R&D1 put "a surprisingly huge allocation of staff" into the game. He praised its large, lavishly animated sprites and described its large stage designs as a midpoint between the first Wario Land and its later sequels.

Before release, the game was listed under the pre-release name Wario Cruise in the Virtual Boy section of a "'95 Next Generation Software Listing" in the July 1995 issue of GameFan.

Release

Region	Platform	Release date	Notes
United States	Virtual Boy	27 November 1995	Date as recorded by Guinness World Records
Japan	Virtual Boy	1 December 1995	Released as Virtual Boy Wario Land: Awazon no Hihō; suggested retail price ¥4,900 (excluding tax); genre listed by Nintendo as action
Nintendo Switch Online	Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 (Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics)	17 February 2026	Launch title; Nintendo lists a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership and the Virtual Boy accessory (plastic or cardboard model) as required

The Virtual Boy was not sold in the United Kingdom, and Nintendo Magazine System reviewed the game in March 1996 as an import.

Nintendo Classics re-release

Nintendo World Report reported on 27 January 2026 that the Virtual Boy - Nintendo Classics library would be available to Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack members on 17 February, with Virtual Boy Wario Land among the seven launch games alongside 3-D Tetris, Galactic Pinball, Golf, The Mansion of Innsmouth, Red Alarm and Teleroboxer. Nintendo's store page gives the release date as 17 February 2026 and says that the collection needs either the Virtual Boy accessory for Nintendo Switch 2 and Nintendo Switch or a cardboard version of it. Nintendo's own Virtual Boy page promotes the game with the line "Discover hidden rooms and treasure in Virtual Boy Wario Land."

At the end of July 2026, Nintendo added five Virtual Boy soundtracks to its Nintendo Music app; the Virtual Boy Wario Land album has 38 tracks (about 40 minutes), the most tracks of the five.

Reception

Early reviews

Publication	Score	Notes
The Electric Playground	9 out of 10	Review dated 31 October 1995
Game Zero Magazine	22.5/25	Graphics 5.0, sound 3.5, gameplay and control 4.5, longevity 4.5, overall 5.0; undated online review
Next Generation	2 of 5 stars	July 1996 issue

The Electric Playground called it "the first Must Buy game for the V-Boy", praising its larger sprites, control and three-dimensional touches compared with the Game Boy Wario Land. The review singled out the first jump into the distant background, where Wario shrinks to less than half his normal size, as "very cool". Its one complaint was that the game is over too quickly. Game Zero Magazine wrote that the game "alone sold the system" for its reviewer, praising how objects move in and out through the play area, and judged the difficulty to be about middle of the road.

The two reviewers of the British Nintendo Magazine System were more reserved about the 3D. Both thought the game too easy to finish, and both found that the depth effect did little to change the play; one called it "merely cosmetic", in contrast to the 3D of Super Mario 64. The magazine still called it "another great platform romp from Nintendo" and said it would have rated as a classic with a few more levels than its 14. Next Generation called it "a competent addition" to the line of Mario-style side-scrollers but wrote that the ability to leap forward and backward "does little to add to the actual gameplay", being "really just an elaborate way of accessing familiar side-scrolling levels and bonus rooms". It said the game would still be welcome in the collection of "any true Mario fan".

Retrospective assessments

Patrick Kolan of IGN, writing in 2008, called the game "the closest thing to a killer application the system would receive" and "the pinnacle of gameplay on the Virtual Boy", adding that it is on the short side. In a 2009 review for Nintendo Life, Dave Frear gave it 9 out of 10. He wrote that the 3D background layers are part of the level design rather than a decorative effect, and that the bosses make good use of it. His main criticism was that there are only 14 levels, four of them boss fights, although he found the multiple endings made the game worth replaying.

Neal Ronaghan of Nintendo World Report, who scored it 8 out of 10 in 2015, wrote that the game is "far and away the best game on the system", while placing it "very much at the bottom of the list" of Wario platformers. He found that it could be beaten in a few hours and that its plane-jumping design "just scratches the surface" of the idea. Jeremy Parish of Retronauts described it in 2019 as having a reputation as "the only good Virtual Boy game", and found that it lived up to it.

Legacy

IGN reported that at a Retro Studios panel at the 2011 Game Developers Conference, the studio's staff said that Virtual Boy Wario Land was one of the games they studied while planning Donkey Kong Country Returns, specifically for its separate platforming planes that let Wario move between the background and the foreground. Jools Watsham, director of the Nintendo 3DS game Mutant Mudds and co-founder of Renegade Kid, told Nintendo Life in 2012 that the layer jumping in Virtual Boy Wario Land was "definitely the inspiration" for the same feature in Mutant Mudds, though he felt the earlier game "didn't quite push the 3D effect as far as it could have". Nintendo World Report also compared the game's plane-jumping with Mutant Mudds and Nintendo's Kirby: Triple Deluxe.

See also

• Virtual Boy
• Mario Clash
• Gunpei Yokoi
• Stereoscopic 3D