The one Virtual Boy game published by Nintendo that people ever really talk about. The second title in the Wario Land series, Virtual Boy Wario Land offers it's own take on the formula the original game developed.

In a rare turn for games on the Virtual Boy, this is actually a proper, in depth game. Yes it may be a short experience, beatable in under an hour if you know what you're doing but this doesn't feel compromised by the hardware, this feels like a proper Wario Land game and my gosh I have been hoping to find a Virtual Boy game like this.

This is Wario Land at it's core. Wario has his dash attack and through a few power ups he can gain a glide ability, breathe fire, or make himself stronger to break certain blocks and do a screen shaking ground pound, stunning all enemies. Wario becomes tiny upon taking damage in any form and will die if hit in his tiny form. You've got that fun and unique Wario moveset but not quite developed to the point stuff like Wario Land II and beyond would take it.

A platforming title with exploration at it's core, VB Wario Land sees you exploring it's well crafted levels to find a key to unlock the exit and progress. Each level also contains a hidden treasure which will change your ending depending on the amount you've collected. It's fun to explore these levels with Wario's unique moveset, barging through enemies and discovering secrets but this is a VB game and so it needs to make use of the 3D somehow right?
Well in VB Wario Land, levels are designed with a background and a foreground and you can hop between them using certain platforms you can find. Now these days, background/foreground hopping in a 2D platformer isn't that crazy. In 1995 and in 3D where you can see an actual depth to it all? Excellent stuff, fantastic use of the hardware and done in a way that fits the Wario Land gameplay naturally. A lot of VB games like to change the viewing angles of games to make the 3D effect more pronounced but Wario Land is a 2D platformer at heart and they keep it like that. You probably won't appreciate the 3D effect layering as you're playing but as soon as you try and play this in 2D you'll see just how much clearer the game looks in 3D with everything at different depths. It's great stuff and is worked into the level design well, often making you search for a way to get to the background because you see something interesting in it.

Throughout it's 14 levels there are 4 boss fights, each making decent use of the background/foreground mechanic for you to dodge attacks and find an opening to hit them. The final boss can be a bit of a pain to hit at times but otherwise, these are pretty good fights and help break up the main levels.

Every level has a 20 minute timer for some reason, probably more to do with them not wanting people spending hours in a single level on the Virtual Boy. 20 minutes is more than generous for these levels, so don't worry, you'll have plenty time to explore thoroughly and find the treasure and exit.

Virtual Boy Wario Land is the peak of Nintendo's library they put out on Virtual Boy. Despite being relatively short, it's one of the few titles that feels like a game with depth to it, that feels like it fits within its series, and it's something I wish the VB had more of. It's a fantastic Wario Land title that finds a way to work well with the 3D effect and not compromise on its core gameplay to do so

Virtual Boy Complete - Game #19

If you know anything about the Virtual Boy, you know that this is the The One. I played this many years ago and fell head over heels for it. It's no surprise that this is my #1 VB game, I knew it would be going in, no matter how good the other games are, and boy are some of 'em good! This might be hard to talk about because it's so good.

VB Wario Land is very much a direct sequel to Wario Land 1 - all of the Wario Lands have a very different formula from one another, but VB Wario Land just plays it safe, which works well for it, because the original Wario Land is also a very well-designed game, and this improves upon it. The thing that sets these two games apart from the other Wario games is their more conventional Mario structure, with power-ups in blocks, except you're a big burly bully who can destroy things and throw enemies around into one another.

Wario feels the heaviest he's ever been, yet also feels agile enough to freely navigate levels, even without his dash from WL4. This is really what makes the game so great, Wario just feels so good to control - even underwater - and despite the significantly slower pace than later WL games, Wario feels unstoppable if you're good enough at the game, the ground pound especially has a strong weight to it. The power-ups are the same as in WL1, but the jet is rethemed to an eagle, and you can combine the eagle and dragon. The dragon is kinda lame just like in WL1, a flame thrower that isn't terrible practically but isn't as fun as bull or eagle, but just like the jet, the eagle is extremely fun. The enemies are all super fun to plow through, though there are some invulnerable ones, which to me kinda defeats the point. One thing Wario could do in WL1 if memory serves correct, that he cannot do here, is throw enemies upwards. This isn't too big a deal, but it does make some situations a little less fun than they could be.

The levels are quite cleverly designed for Wario to plow through, they hit that classic Mario sweet spot of being direct and linear while also having secrets to find, and have some clever placements (like a particularly hard vertical segment where you can hit a box before going into it that summons an item at the end). The game uses background and foreground layers - as I've said a few times, "because Virtual Boy" - which doesn't add or take much really

This game has an interesting collectable system - there are hearts which give you extra lives, and coins you can collect for different endings, it doesn't change the gameplay much but it's a cool idea. There are similar end-level minigames to WL1 you can spend coins on, but the chance of getting something out of them is pretty low so best to just go past them.

I struggle to think of major flaws with this game, everything I've mentioned so far is a nitpick or minor gripe, but there is one glaring issue: keys. This games falls into the unfortunate trap of "linear levels with a tacked on key collection objective". Think Crash 2 and 3. Yuck yuck yuck. At the very least, they keys do actually gate you from completing the level, so you don't have to restart should you forget a key.

This game is kinda BASED actually??

Let me start off by saying I actually really like the red and black Virtual Boy look. Sure it can be grating when staring at it a long time, but I think it’s a cool look.

This is my second Wario Land game, and honestly, I enjoyed it a lot. More than the first one even! Something fun about having to make your way back to the top floor of the Awazon cave. Perfect middle ground of not too hard and not too easy. I loved that each floor of the cave was a different theme and it wasn’t just “cave level” for each one. Great designs for the bosses.

It was just a fun, pleasant time. Loved it!

You know those video game picture frames you see in stores?
This game is like a playable one of those, it's really neat when things line up just right. It's a shame the Virtual Boy hurt your eyes and forced you to play in this super awkward way. Thankfully we're in the year 2024 where you can mod your 3DS to play Virtual Boy games in a way that doesn't hurt your eyes while retaining the intended 3D effects. Still docking points because that is not the state the game was released in, but it fixes a lot of the issues of every single VB title.

It's Wario Land! It plays closer to Wario Land 1 than 2 , with a focus on exploration and puzzles with a few hat power-ups. The artwork on display is really well done and you'll have to use your noggin a few times to find all the hidden treasures.

The gimmick here is foreground/background, much like the far later released Kirby's Triple Deluxe. But in this game, it's much quicker to switch sides and it factors into some of the puzzles and boss fights in creative ways. Scrolling between one side and the next is satisfying as well.

My main gripe with the game is like in Wario Land 1, Tiny Wario is absolutely useless and not fun to control at all, so you just pray to god you find a power-up so you can get back to actually playing the game. In addition, if you somehow manage a Game Over, you will lose the most recent Treasure you found, forcing you to backtrack to that level and grab it again if you want 100% completion.

Is this the best game on the Virtual Boy? I dunno, it's the first one I've played, and even then the Virtual Boy doesn't exactly have a lot of competition, but it's a pretty safe "Yeah probably" until I play more, and is at the very least a recommendation.

Everything about this Wario Land game is so fun, I only wish it was longer because I beat it with only an hour of playtime.

This title keeps mostly everything from the first game but the movement feels smoother and the level design is infinitely better and much more enjoyable. The 3D aspects of the Virtual Boy were shown off well in this game through the ability to jump to and from the background of the level. This feature was so much fun and used well in each level to hide cool secrets. The boss fights were also cool in this title but were a bit too easy; the only one I didn't beat first try was the final boss.

I highly recommend this game to fans of the Wario Land series!

It is a crime that Nintendo has let this one fade to obscurity. Wario Land '95 isn't just one of the best games on the Virtual Boy, I'd go as far as to say it's one of the best games in the series. An incredible platformer with astounding presentation, fantastic level design, tight controls, and a sharp runtime of about two hours. The art direction is top-notch, with wonderful pixel-art and detailed animation. The stereoscopic 3D is masterfully executed, and hasn't aged a day. If you have hardware that lets you experience this game as intended, don't miss out. It transforms an already gorgeous game into a visual dessert.

I've always had a weird relationship with the first Wario Land. There were things I enjoyed about it. Though I found it OK overall, and always wanted to like it more than I did. Wario Land VB cleans up the majority of its issues, tightens up the runtime, and elevates the visual presentation, resulting in a really solid, quirky platformer. It gives me the measured delight that a game like the first Kirby's Dreamland does. It's a shame Nintendo hasn't preserved this wonderful experience on any of their more recent hardware, but it's absolutely their loss. If you're a fan of platformers, find any way to experience this gem.

Played this using a Virtual Boy emulator on Meta Quest 2 (in 3D no less!!!). Worked great.

Between this, Wario Land 4, and Wario World, this is my favorite of the three. The structure here is that you drop to the bottom of a cave and have to climb out through 14 levels, collecting treasure along the way. Played through all of it today, took maybe 2.5-3 hours?

+The VB red/black aesthetic is PERFECT for a game set in a cave.
+The 3D effect is excellent, subtle but necessary for the full experience. It does a lot of tricks like spike ball pendulums swinging back and forth between the fore and background and you really get immersed. Feels like a precursor to 3DS, unbelievable that this came out in the mid-90s.
++++AWESOME boss fights. There are only 4, but they all utilize the foreground/background in interesting ways and I feel these are top tier Nintendo bosses.
+The Mario Land 1/2/3 vibes are fully present here. Just a little weird, just a little silly. It really feels like the unsung fourth game before the WL series (as I understand) got more puzzly.
+Awesome chunky Wario platforming, cool powerups, fun secrets, (mostly) great level design
+Unlike WL4, you only need to get a key in each level to see the next one (rather than 5 treasures). The one-per-level treasures are technically necessary for the better endings/second quest (which I haven't seen), but they're fun and manageable.
+Friendly difficulty (in 3D). Never saw a game over.

-I didn't really like the two super-labyrinthy levels (13 and then whatever the haunted house one was). They force you to run all over the place and have kind of BS ways to get the keys (13 especially).
-Little bit of eye strain from the red and black -- can't imagine what it was like playing this on a real VB.

Someone else wanted to use the television I use for Yakuza, so I took the down time, instead of doing something productive, to finish the Virtual Boy game I bought special. It's not too long, especially compared to Wario Land on Gameboy, as it took me 2.5 hours with a fair bit of faffing around looking for secrets.

It's Wario Land! It's great, of course! An action game all about finding treasure, punching baddies, and looking for secrets to get more treasure! The controls take a little getting used to, as Wario walks by default and runs when you hold a shoulder button, but other than that it's standard Wario. Another odd difference is that pressing B doesn't make you punch-dash. Instead, it makes you enter a kind of punch-mode, and then by pressing right or left you will initiate a punch-dash in that direction. Again, not bad, just different.

The level design in this one is a little strange, almost like they expect you to lose really, in a kind of Dead Rising-style (although I never ran out of lives to confirm this). The game has several stages, but no stage select. Instead, the game is essentially one looooong stage, where you can actually run back to the elevator at the beginning of a stage if for some reason you want to go back to a previous one: You just gotta run all the way back to it. Useful if you wanna run back for treasure you missed (and you're gonna want all of the special treasures (like they have in the Game Boy game) if you want the best ending!). There's also the Virtual Boy 3D-gimmick of this game, where you can hop into the background of a stage for more stage but with the same paralax scrolling.

Verdict: Very Recommended. It's Wario Land, so of course it's great. The only real fault I can say is the old problem that IT'S ON VIRTUAL BOY. If it were on anything else, it'd be an absolute classic, but just getting a Virtual Boy and then using it for any period of time are just both such awful pains that it's still a fairly serious complain XP

Pros: Incredible 3D experience, the sprite-work and animation, how graphics are layered and stacked on the 2D plane, is really a sight to behold in stereoscopic 3D.

But that's just what jumps out at ya first, dig in and you've got a pretty solid 2D platformer adventure game! Levels are more exploratory focused where you need to find a key hidden in each stage in order to open the exit gate that leads to an elevator at the end of the level. Wario's got his signature shoulder barge and ground pound attacks after you get a number of power-ups, which, by the way are pretty excellent here. Unlike Mario games, these power-ups have a neat mix-n-match system, the bull horns gives you a stronger charge and a ground pound, the gator lets you breathe fire, and the eagle lets you glide, but then there's the ultimate combo that gives you a dragon that lets you glide, breath fireballs, and a ground pound. It's pretty satisfying! Another signature element of the game are the separate planes you can jump between, the foreground and background, which to my knowledge, this was the first game to really achieve that style of gameplay, prior to Donkey Kong Country Returns, the Paper Mario games, Kirby on 3DS, and Mario Wonder... And you know what? It may have done them even BETTER! And that's saying a lot coming from me, I don't even like Wario that much, heck, I'm not even a fan of the other Wario Land titles... But this one impresses! Those foreground/background interactions are probably the most impressive during boss fights! The boss battles are a huge spectacle, and make great use of the 3D planes, with the final boss having you jump between foreground and background in a very effective and satisfying way. Great boss fights!

Cons: Great boss fights... except, the power-up system in this game is maybe a bit too punishing for my tastes, as one hit sends Wario, no matter how many power-ups you have, right back to tiny form, where then one more hit after that is death. Get a gameover, and the hidden treasures you've collected on the stage, will be kicked off of your inventory, making it so you have to retrieve them all over again... And backtracking in this game is a pain in the butt, I'll tell ya, there's no traditional worldmap here. But back to the bosses, they're fun and creative fights, but in order to discover how to defeat them, it takes some experimentation, and because of how the power-up system works when you get hit, that experimentation is far too punishing, making deaths during boss fights a pretty likely scenario, which, eh... Frustrating.

What it means to me: As stated previously, I'm not a fan of the Wario Land games, I've dipped my toes in most of the games in the series, at least the one across the Game Boy family of systems, and they just never did it for me. The game feel, the level design, the quirky "transform instead of dying" mechanic the series developed... I didn't gel with it. But, Virtual Boy Wario Land was before all that, and was more like Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land where it was a bit more Mario-like with its power-up and level system, but more polished here, and it absolutely is more polished! The level design, collision, gamefeel, sprites and animation, even the sound design, it's excellent! Certainly the best game on Virtual Boy, or at the very least, the game that the developers gave the most damn about! I don't have to like Wario to admit that this game is pretty good!

First I want to thank the folks that made Virtual Boy playable on the 3DS. Because of the VB failure, that 's something that never even crossed my mind and makes me sad Nintendo didn't make it themselves, as many more people would have had access to these games that are lost in time.

I've always heard this is one of the best games in the Virtual Boy library, so this was the first one I decided to try. Also because I've always wanted to try the Wario Land series. I did not expect, by any means, to be this blown away.

This game came out the year I was born. For a little more background about myself, I didn't grow up with a console at home, just a had some cheap chinese ones at some points. Point being, I'm no nostalgic for the NES, SNES or N64 era. So hear my word when I say Virtual Boy Wario Land is truly outstanding and has stood the test of time with flying colors.

The pixel art in this game is out of this world. You could have told me this is an indie game that released today and I would have believed you 100%. The controls are spot-on.

Besides some hiccups, like level 11 being a little too difficult for me (ONE OF THE PLATFORMS TAKES YOU TO THE BACK!), level 10 having the key so cryptically hidden (IT'S THE THREE CLOCKS!) and the final boss that took me 30+ lives where hitting the damn nose and not getting hit by the ice afterwards while being big Wario was near impossible, this was an incredible experience.

And oh god the 3D effect. Of course, I can't speak about this originally being technically a VR experience, but as a 3D one it was beyond any 3DS game, which is kinda hilarious.

It took me 4 hours and 49 minutes. Only missed the treasure at level 2. There is something additional you get for obtaining all of them at the end, but I didn't so I'll just watch a video. Apparently it took me way longer than everyone to beat this game, probably because of the treasure hunt and I was having just so much fun exploring everywhere. Can't wait to play another game in the series.

Ah, what the Virtual Boy could have been...

I love the change of pace that Wario Land games bring. From the more methodical platforming to the treasure/secret hunting. They're all around fun games. Virtual Boy Wario Land is no different. It's a complete Wario Land experience with tons to find and lots of levels.

I never had a Virtual Boy but boy did I play the heck out of the display unit at the local department store back when they came out. Shoving my child face right in the same view piece countless filthy strangers had before me. I always loved taking my eyes out of the piercing red graphics void after fifteen minutes and being blinded by the store's florescent lights. It's really a mystery how this platform didn't work...

They always had this and Red Alarm available to play. I'm very happy to have finally beat Virtual Boy Wario land. Albeit emulated with all the color choices that come with it. But I still had to sear my eyes in some manner; I busted out a cardboard pair of red/cyan 3D glasses and enabled anaglyph mode. The 3D elements were there with the Virtual Boy. Especially with a parallax platformer like this. AND they took advantage of the depth in the gameplay design. It's just a shame the only tech they had at the time was... That.

An amazing game that would've easily flagship'd the Virtual Boy if it was practical. Perhaps even my favorite Wario Land! I had fun finding all the treasures and figuring out the bosses (even if they were on the easier side).

[Emulated/played on Anbernic RG35XX w/ anaglyph red/cyan glasses]

I spent $8 on a pair of anaglyph 3D glasses from Amazon to play this in Mednafen and I had a surprisingly good time. My biggest problem with the game is that the bosses are really annoying, and I don't like that you lose the treasure you collect by getting a game over. So you need to backtrack through whatever the last stage you played was and play through it BACKWARDS just to get back to wherever the treasure was located. But tbh, the solution is to simply not die. Take some time getting a lot of coins so you can play the 1-up minigame between levels.

Otherwise, this was a serious improvement over the first Game Boy title. It's so much faster and more fluid than that game is.