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    Nintendo Super Visor




    Originally posted by Jez San
    I worked on a VR machine called the Super Visor for Nintendo, but unfortunately, we fell out. A guy called Mr Gunpei Yokoi cancelled our project in favour of the Virtual Boy, which we used to call the Virtual Dog because it was so bad. He made a bet in the wrong direction, cancelled our project and his one was awful. It was a bad decision.We had full colour and head tracking at a time where no-one else did, but the Super Visor was cancelled in favour of a system with no head tracking and red graphics. It was like the Vive headset that’s on sale today but made 20 years earlier. Of course, it wasn’t quite as good because the Vive has better screens now, but our’s was made a long time ago. We almost finished the Super Visor and it was cancelled to do the Virtual Boy, which was a shame. VR gaming could have happened 20 years ago if they had kept us on.
    Oh, what could have been... and cancelled in favour of the sodding Virtual Boy
    Last edited by _SD_; 27-09-2018, 14:59.

    #2
    It was like the Vive headset that’s on sale today
    The Vive costs £500 at the moment, so what would the 'Super Visor' have cost 20+ years ago? I think VR stuff cost thousands back then. And if some people feel nauseous using state of the art modern VR, imagine the affect that old tech would have on people.

    I used VR in the arcades back in the mid-90s - and the games were designed for 5 minutes of action. I guess using it for longer than that might have really messed with people's eyes and brain.

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      #3
      Yeah, I can't imagine it would have fared much better than the Virtual Boy.

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        #4
        Hmm, didn't Jez San also once claim that Super Mario 64 was ripped off an early demo of Croc he showed to Nintendo? I don't believe him, TBH, and if he had designed something like that circa 1994, it'd have been unimaginably expensive to the consumer, which has never been how Nintendo usually operates.

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          #5
          I met him a couple of times, nice chap and always seemed entirely genuine and very smart. He helped make the Super FX chip and the Argasm assembler on the Amiga (which assembled so fast compared to DevPac that we used to think it had failed) and I believe he could well have had a hand in VR way back then.

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            #6
            Originally posted by Brad View Post
            I met him a couple of times, nice chap and always seemed entirely genuine and very smart. He helped make the Super FX chip and the Argasm assembler on the Amiga (which assembled so fast compared to DevPac that we used to think it had failed) and I believe he could well have had a hand in VR way back then.
            Fair enough. I trust your opinion.

            I just think though... Nintendo built their first handhelds around calculators, didn't release a handheld with a colour screen until 1998, didn't adopt optical discs until 2001 and high-definition graphics until 2012, are rather backwards still about the Internet... I'm not entirely surprised that Nintendo went for a (relatively) cheap machine based around red LEDs instead.

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              #7
              Originally posted by Brad View Post
              and I believe he could well have had a hand in VR way back then.
              He's a clever entrepreneur who knows his stuff when it comes to coding and computer tech, so I believe he was involved with the VR tech he's talking about, but the situation was probably far more complicated than Nintendo just choosing the Virtual Boy instead for no good reason(s).

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                #8
                I read somewhere there was a prototype VirtualBoy that used full RGB LEDs but it was too expensive to manufacture. Maybe that was just made up for the magazine or maybe it had something to do with the SV?

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                  #9
                  Yeah maybe he didn’t really consider the business aspects of this. They likely just built something cool that couldn’t possibly be productised at the time. Or maybe he made the whole thing up lol.

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                    #10
                    Dont believe for a second that this would have been any good considering the power needed back then to even get janky pc games running in vr. Even the obscenely expensive virtuality machines has a piss poor frame rate.

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                      #11
                      I’ve played Dactyl Nightmare and one of the fantasy games on the original Virtuality systems and it didn’t do me any good when the session finished. The resolution was too low and it was far too disorientating, my legs went to jelly and I had to sit down for a while.

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                        #12
                        It would've only had one good game on release followed by a drought for two years anyway.

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                          #13
                          Wayahay!!!

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                            #14
                            How did the Japanese refer to him in Japan? "San San"?

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                              #15
                              I worked with a bunch of (great) guys that used to work for Argonaut and while Jez San is a very clever dude (he has a massive hand in online gambling sites and technology these days), he's also a bit of an autocratic dick (they say) and there's a reason his car was teabagged at ECTS 1998!

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