Virtual Boy Wario Land: The forgotten Wario game

 

1995 saw Nintendo release some of its best platformer titles. Yoshi's Island, Donkey Country 2, Donkey Kong Land, Kirby's Dream Land 2 – all were released this year for the SNES (the former) and Game Boy (the latter). There's one, however, that's been almost forgotten, along with the console it was released for, at least until Nintendo's surprising recent new for its Switch Online/Nintendo Classics service.

Virtual Boy Wario Land is the follow-up to 1994's excellent Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. Like that game, it was created by Gunpei Yokoi and Hiroji Kiyotake, leading Nintendo R&D1. Indeed, it was Yokoi and his team who had created the Virtual Boy itself. Nintendo's entry into the 32-bit console market (hence the development code VR32), the Virtual Boy was intended to maintain Nintendo's market share while the Nintendo 64 was in development, to follow the handheld success of the Game Boy and make the jump to true 3D gaming for the company. It was a bold experiment: a portable 3D gaming system. There were, however, some problems: it wasn't portable and was barely 3D.

The Virtual Boy used mirrors to create a basic stereoscopic 3D effect, housed within an all-encompassing headset that caused neck strain and motion sickness if used freely; instead, it sat on a tabletop tripod. The display used red LEDs (the lowest-energy colour to generate and therefore the cheapest) to create harsh, red-and-black graphics. Test users complained of nausea and headaches, so the system was released with mandated rest breaks built in which automatically paused games mid-play. The Virtual Boy, released unfinished and misconceived from the start, was a hopeless failure.

Some have blamed the quality of the games for its failure, but it was really the hardware that was at fault. Only twenty-two games were ever released for the system due to its short market life; a selection of twenty-two games plucked from the range for the NES, SNES or Game Boy would be unlikely to contain many classics. The planned Mario platformer title (known variously as VB Mario Land and Mario Adventure) never made it past the demo stage, with its included 3D version of Mario Bros. released separately as Mario Clash. There was no Zelda title, no Metroid, and a port of Donkey Kong Country 2 was written off early in development. Given time, though, it's probable that Nintendo's flagship series would have been represented, improving the sparse game library.

Virtual Boy Wario Land is the one Virtual Boy game that achieved consistently good reviews. Also known early on by its working titles, Wario Cruise and Wario's Treasure Hunt, and bearing the full title Virtual Boy Wario Land: Secret Treasure of the Awazon in Japan, the game is a direct sequel to the original Wario Land. Having loaded up with loot in the earlier game, Wario's enjoying a holiday at the Awazon river basin when he sees a troop of strange masked creatures disappear behind a waterfall. In the cave system hidden there, he spies vast treasures that he decides to add to his collection, before falling through into the depths of the cave network.

The game plays very much like its predecessor, with Wario smashing, barging and crashing his way through the levels. His primary moves remain the shoulder barge and the ground pound (now as a belly-flop bodyslam), and he is again reduced to a goblin-like stature when hit by an enemy, with another hit costing him a life. The power-ups are similar to those in the first game, albeit tweaked. A garlic pot again turns little Wario back to his full size. Three helmets give Wario powerful abilities: the bull helmet makes him super strong, the eagle helmet grants him flight, and the sea dragon helmet breathes fire. In a new twist, combining the sea dragon and eagle creates the King Dragon with both abilities.

The game employs the Virtual Boy's limited 3D to good effect. Wario can jump to areas in the background using special launch boards, allowing to access bonuses and sneak behind obstacles. While there's little practical difference between the 3D layers and moving up and down between areas by pipes and ladders, it's a fun gimmick that makes the levels stand out against other platformers of the time. Certain enemies also move back and forth, hiding in the depths and lunging at Wario. Aside from that, there's a small amount of 3D rendering to spice things up, but it's a minor cosmetic touch. There are coins to collect and monsters to beat aplenty; a great platform adventure in the classic Mario/Wario mould.

The big flaw with the game is its length. There are only fourteen levels, each of them a literal level in the cave system that Wario ascends using an elevator. This is less of a problem if, like me, you're not actually very good at gaming, since the levels are fairly challenging. A skilled player, though, wouldn't take very long to ascend the whole complex and complete the playthrough. Having all levels set within the caves makes good use of the black-and-red graphics, allowing for a suitably gloomy atmosphere, but it does make the levels a bit samey. Fourteen levels really isn't a lot, and four of them are boss-only levels. The bosses are fairly inventive, however, again utilising the depth effect in their attacks, although the first three are susceptible to the old-fashioned bounce-on-the-head-three-times method. The final boss, a floating demon with a nasty grin, is a little more complex, and again uses the depth process to great effect.

What the levels are, though, is fun. Like in the first game, there are special treasures to collect; one for each of the non-boss levels, hidden throughout the caves. Again, like the original Wario Land, the ending depends on how rich you are when you beat the final boss. The exact ending depends on your coin count, whether you collect all the treasures, and how quickly you reached the end, with a timer continually running as you play. Upon completion, a hard mode is unlocked, which needs to be beaten to see the final ending. The tricky, entertaining levels and the additional challenge of getting the best possible result add a lot of replay value.

It's a real shame that so few people got to play this game back in the day. Virtual Boy Wario Land was the highlight for the system, but with such a limited run for the console, not even being released in PAL regions, it never got the exposure it deserved. Nintendo's surprise announcement that Virtual Boy games will be made downloadable on the Switch and Switch 2 from February 2026 will hopefully grant this game a new audience. However, Nintendo's baffling insistence to make the games playable only with a new headset attachment (which essentially requires strapping the Switch to your head) will surely limit the appeal. While 3D imagery was always intended to be the Virtual Boy's selling point, most of the games – Wario Land included – can be played perfectly well without it, the depth feature still working from a gameplay point of view. With the hardware always being the Virtual Boy's biggest issue, it's a bizarre decision.

Still, it's refreshing to see Nintendo actually embracing the Virtual Boy for once. After Virtual Boy Wario Land vanished along with its console, Nintendo developed Wario Land II for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, implicitly dismissing the Virtual Boy game from the series. Wario Land II went down a different route, more of a puzzle-platform hybrid with drastically rethought gameplay. In some ways, the real successors to Virtual Boy Wario Land are other game entirely. Donkey Kong Country Returns, Mutant Mudds, and especially the recent AntonBlast are all influenced by the game, most obviously through the use of depth levels. The developer of Mutant Mudds, Renegade Kid, even pitched a full colour remake of Virtual Boy Wario Land for the 3DS – Nintendo's eventual successful attempt at a 3D handheld. Bafflingly, Nintendo passed on this, what was surely the ideal way to bring this game back.

If you're a fan of the original Game Boy Wario Land and would love to play a handful of challenging extra levels, you're a Mario universe completist, or you just love great platformers, Virtual Boy Wario Land is worth seeking out. If the costs and discomfort of a new headset puts you off, there are plenty of Virtual Boy emulators out there which can run the game, many of which allow you to play with either the old black-and-red graphics or in a more retina-friendly greyscale. Give it a go if you get the chance. It's smashing.

Aliens, savages and evil computers

My latest reviews up at Television Heaven include Alien: Earth, the best installment of the Alien franchise since 1986, and the last two serials of Doctor Who season three, The Savages and The War Machines. I should hopefully have more up before the month's out. 

Next on the blog itself I'm planning to review Strange New Worlds season three, and mabe get back onto the Lower Decks and Prodigy reviews when I have time.

REVIEW: The Long Walk

 

Fifty boys walk in a straight line at three miles per hour for as long as they can. If they slow down or stop for too long, they’re shot dead. If they try to escape or even step off the road, they’re shot dead. The last boy walking wins untold riches and his heart’s desire.

It’s a grim premise for a story, and slim basis for a film. Frankly, that Stephen King managed to wring a novel out of it is impressive enough. The fact that he was nineteen when he did so is even more impressive, although it also explains a lot about the story, an angry adolescent polemic against society. Long dismissed as unfilmable, The Long Walk has actually been rattling round Development Hell for years, until finally being picked up by Vertigo with Francis Lawrence as director.

It's probably going to be my film of the year.

It’s one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time, albeit one that I will probably never watch again. It’s a harrowing experience as you are pulled along with the young men as they trudge painfully on. There’s levity there, but it’s gallows humour, the brutal laughing in the face of misery that so many of us learn in order to survive. The original 4 mph rule of the book was knocked down for being frankly impossible, but even keeping up 3 mph for hundreds of miles without rest is pretty unfeasible for all but the most immaculately trained superhuman. (You just know there are some hypermasculine pricks in the audience scoffing and insisting that they could win it.)

Cooper Hoffman is excellent as the central protagonist Ray Garraty, perfectly cast as a believable but damaged everyman, but it’s David Jonsson who really steals the film as the resolutely optimistic Pete McVries. The friendship between the two is the heart of the film, a friendship built in the most unfriendly of circumstances. We see the best of masculinity as well as the worst, with even the most unpleasant of the walkers (that’ll be Charlie Plummer’s Barkovitch) being sympathetic as we know they are all here out of desperation. Not one of them truly grasps just how brutal the Walk is going to be, with the possible exception of the stoic Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), and even he isn’t truly prepared for it.

Even with the novel’s hundred walkers reduced to fifty, there are too many to fully focus on. Tut Nyuot, Ben Wang and Joshua Odjick all give strong performances as Baker, Olsen and Parker, respectively. Olsen, one of the more unlikely contestants, is especially likeable, but in a way that only drives home how unsuited he is for the gruelling challenge. There’s an unpleasant complicity in the Walk from the audience, spectating from comfort just like the gawping onlookers at the roadside. The brutal Walk is fiction, of course, but the cast still walked for miles in order to get realistic footage, with Hoffman reporting that on some days they walked for up to fifteen miles in the heat.

While King wrote and seemingly set his novel in the 1970s, and the aesthetic of the time has been carried over to the film, there’s no real indication of when the film is set. This is to the film’s benefit, since the themes are timeless and can’t be pinned down to one era. Many have read an allegory for the Viet Nam War in the novel, and while there’s a clear parallel between signing up for the Walk and volunteering for military service (down to youngsters lying about their age to get in), it’s a broader story of desperation and hope amongst hopelessness.

Whenever it’s set, The Long Walk occurs in some distorted alternative history, where the USA has become a fascist dictatorship and undergone economic collapse after an unspecified war devastated the nation. The idea that it would take a war to inflict this on America is laughable; given what you people actually voted for last year, a lot of you practically volunteered for this dystopia to be delivered. As outlandish as the idea of the Walk is, it’s also depressingly easy to believe that it would be enacted, for inspiration or entertainment, and that desperate souls would sign up for it even knowing that it would almost certainly mean a painful death.

So much of the film is spent just waiting for the inevitable, a chilling feeling that makes it an uncomfortable yet compelling experience. None of it would work were it not for the depth of the cast’s performances. While the boys, particularly Garraty, are our way into this disturbing world, it’s brought to life by Mark Hamill’s gloriously loathsome Major, seemingly the head of the military junta in this reality and a snarling figurehead for the oppressive regime. In contrast we have the always wonderful yet still sadly underrated Judy Greer as Ray’s mother Ginnie, who essentially represents all that is good and all that is feminine and nurturing in this brutal state.

There are no punches pulled in this film. Injuries and illness are depicted graphically; there are no clean, screen-friendly gunshots here. Lawrence lingers on the violence just long enough to feel repulsed before forcing us to move on with the rest of the walkers. For all that the Walk is a deliberately contrived kind of brutality, it’s none too far removed from reality in the worst places on Earth. Right now, Palestinians are being marched through Gaza for miles at gunpoint, while men and boys have been forced to walk in front of tanks as human shields. It’s disturbing to think that in Gaza, Sudan or Congo, young men likely would sign up for a gruelling trek with a 1-in-50 likelihood of survival if it meant a chance of escaping and providing for their families.

The film marches along with the boys with a crushing inevitability until we are left with only two. The ending is somewhat predictable (although different to the original ending in the book), yet this only makes the sense of the inevitable more foreboding. Throughout, the cast force you to care about the poor bastards you know you’re going to watch die. And yet, like the best of King adaptations, The Long Walk has an uplifting message at its core: to never give up and to go down fighting.

Pencil Tip Publishing: Sarah Jane and Space: 1999!

Good news from Pencil Tip Publishing: Roving Reporter II, the second collection of new adventures for Sarah Jane Smith will be available before the end of the year. This will feature my story "Remembrance" as well as a host of prose and graphic stories, such as Russell McGee's "The Cocoon of Despair," which you can now explore in this timelapse artwork video.

In the meantime, the original Roving Reporter (featuring my story "Exposure") is available for a short time again via Lulu. A full library of PTP fiction and non-fiction books are also available, such as the recent What the Fans Think - Space: 1999, for which I had the dubious honour of reviewing "Space Warp."

September reviews

 I'm roughly 47 years behind on everything I want to write, thanks to many, many real life concerns; however, I have managed to get a few write-ups and reviews done lately. September marked a couple of notable pop culture anniversaries that warranted some attention.

30th September 2025 marks the official 60th anniversary of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's classic series Thunderbirds. I've reviewed the first episode, "Trapped in the Sky," for Television Heaven. Meanwhile on TVH, we've been cracking ahead with season three of classic Doctor Who, with Galaxy 4, The Myth Makers and my beloved The Gunfighters as my latest contributions. I'd written up The Ark previously and Laurence Marcus has also added Mission to the Unknown. I've also reviewed Bookish, the wonderful new murder mystery series from Mark Gatiss.

In other media that gives you square eyes, 13th September was the 40th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. and thus the Super Mario franchise (although, of course, Mario goes back three years earlier, to 1981's Donkey Kong). Head over to Vocal for my two-part play through of every 20th century Super Mario platformer: Part One covers the 1980s (Super Mario Bros. to Super Mario Land) while Part Two takes on the 1990s (Super Mario World to Super Mario 64). Summer also saw two notable Nintendo anniversaries, with Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Land both hitting thirty. Just like my TV reviews, I can't help but delve into the history of the games as well as replaying them.