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 Big fish |  Mosquito |  Treasure! |
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Wario goes treasure-hunting along the shores of the Awazon Basin and falls into a trap protecting Demon Head's vast treasure hoard. On his way out of the complex, Wario intends to steal as much treasure as he can.
It's Wario Land, but on the Virtual Boy! It's the same general idea as Wario Land's 1st installment, but requiring you to strap your head into, like, an Imperial AT-ST looking thing. Well, to be fair, you don't need that anymore. Kinda. To play this game legitimately, you buy what is basically a Virtual Boy for your Switch 2 console, then you stick your face into it and get all that glowy red eyestrain goodness that pediatricians were complaining about in the '90s.
Ok, but seriously now, folks. This game was released when I was in kindergarten. My mum wouldn't let me near the actual Virtual Boy because of the eyestrain thing, but it's not like I could have reached the forehead switch on Sears' demonstration console anyway, being so high off the floor. All I have of this game are vague impressions from a game magazine that my family counsellor had in his waiting room. I would look at grainy screenshots of this game and Mario Clash, as well as Donkey Kong Country 2 and Yoshi's Island under a somewhat dim recessed light as I waited for mum to get done talking to the counsellor. The first time I really sat down and made myself familiar with the game was about 2 years ago when I watched a longplay of it on YouTube. I never bothered playing it myself, mostly because I didn't really want to bother with a Virtual Boy emulator. There were only, what, fourteen games released for it? The only reason I decided to finally play it was because of Nintendo's baffling decision to release the full battery of Virtual Boy games on Classics, hardware-lock it to the Switch 2, and further hardware-lock it to a specialised enclosure that costs $100. Like, are they TRYING to go out of business? I'd heard of a Virtual Boy emulator for the Nintendo 3DS that was able to use the 3DS's native stereovision to provide a more convincing 3D effect than the original hardware could, which I discovered on the Universal-Updater UniStore while I was making homebrew recommendations for the Hack Your 3DS page— it's called Red Viper. Furthermore, apart from simply emulating the games, Red Viper also gives you the option of flattening the 3D effect, allowing people to watch your gameplay over your shoulder, something the Virtual Boy could not do.
The game itself is rather unimpressive. It's Wario Land with red and black graphics. In terms of gameplay, you'd be better off with one of the Game Boy Color games. One thing that Wario Land benefits from is Wario's inability to be hurt. Like the first Game Boy installment, Virtual Boy Wario Land operates on a Super Mario Bros.-like system of turns. Take damage and start over, basically. I can't speak for the veracity of the 3DS making a more convincing 3D image, having never tried the game on the genuine Virtual Boy before, but it manages to stay "3D" much longer than your average 3DS game, which is interesting.
4/10, would not recommend.