Sure, it's got that '90s vibe and is home to some unique games (Red Alarm is one of our personal faves here at Time Extension), but the headache-inducing system has rightly gone down as one of Nintendo's biggest missteps in the hardware arena. Just writing about it is giving us neck pains.
If you're the kind of person who, upon reading that opening section, feels compelling to defend the honour of Gunpei Yokoi's last significant contribution to Nintendo history, then you'll almost certainly be aware of the Virtual Boy's second biggest problem: faulty screens.
It's quite common to find Virtual Boy units with display problems, such as missing pixels, absent lines or entirely non-functional screens, and this is all down to the relentless march of time. You see, the adhesive used on the ribbon cable which connects the main board to the console's twin 384×224 pixel monochrome screens degrades over time, and that's what causes the various problems described above.
Thankfully, the community has come forward with a solution which means missing lines and broken displays are a thing of the past. Modder The Real Phoenix has created Red Ribbon, a replacement flex cable which, when installed (you'll need to be handy with a soldering iron), should give you many years of problem-free play.
It won't solve those headaches, but you can't have everything.
