There are tons of virtual reality headsets you can buy right now all over the place like the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift and of course the PlayStation VR. And those are just the ones you actually need to be plugged up to a computer or a system. A lot of people assume that this kind of technology only exists now and it was never something that existed in the past. But that's not true see in the ‘90s we had Virtuality a really big arcade system that cost about as much as a car and didn't make a lot of money for people at arcades at the time. The thing eventually failed and we just don't have those around anymore but that technology was there and people were paying attention and wanted to make something that you could use in the comfort of your own home that didn't require that huge investment. So that's where this company came in making their own at-home VR headset that simply sucks. This is the Victormaxx StuntMaster a virtual reality headset that came out for the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.
Modern VR headsets have a flat screen that has a stereoscopic image, a left image and a right image, giving you that sense of depth and that works really well with today's technology. And while virtual reality machines back in the day in arcades did utilize a left and right image that kind of tech at home would have been really expensive and most likely impossible. Seeing as how the headset that we're looking at today utilized the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo which were not capable of showing two different images at the same time natively from those machines. So instead they opted not to do a 3D image and they just put a tiny little screen in the center of your vision that was four by three and super, super low resolution. Due to the small size of the screen they had to figure out some way to make the image look a lot bigger when you put on the headset so they created this plastic magnifying glass type thing that goes right in front of your vision and kind of magnifies the image and makes it incredibly blurry and hard to read which makes it really bad. But what makes it even worse is the fact that this screen is running at such a low resolution underneath what the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo could natively run that you can't read text. It's really unfortunate because some of these games would probably look really cool in a VR headset but because of how bad the screen is on here it's really hard to see it so you're not going to be playing things like Final Fantasy 6 or anything like that. But you can play Sega Genesis games like Sonic the Hedgehog or even some Super Nintendo games that are more action oriented as long as you don't need to read the text you should be OK.
So this headset is incredibly uncomfortable. It has no padding on the nose bridge so it's just this hard chunk of plastic that kind of rests on your nose which just isn't fun. The only way to get around that is by really squeezing your head up top with these straps and that's not fun because that tends to give you a headache after a while. And if that doesn't give you a headache the stupid small resolution bright-ass screen is going to make your eyes bleed out of your sockets. But I digress they did one thing on this headset that was probably revolutionary for its time but still really stupid. You see Virtuality headsets actually utilize motion controls but you couldn't mimic that at home because it would've been way too expensive. When Nintendo made the Virtual Boy they just had a controller that was bundled with it and while you still need to use a controller while playing this thing they wanted to have some kind of motion control system work with it. The one they used is really stupid. Now this little thing on the side here rotates left and right and that's the left and right direction on your D-pad on whatever controller you’re using whether it be the Sega Genesis controller or the Super Nintendo controller. Now originally there was this black pipe that came out and it just rested on your shoulder and moved it back and forth engaging the left and right movement. Now this was dumb because when you moved left and you moved back to center it would just stick there and it wouldn't follow you. So your control would be stuck.
So would I recommend trying out this VR headset? Yes not because it's good it's actually awful. This is one of the worst headsets you can ever buy but I think it's important for people to try it out to see what bad VR really is. A whole bunch of companies right now like Sony, Microsoft and Valve and Facebook are running out to make VR headsets as quick as they can but here's the trick. VR in the ‘90s died. It died in a fast horrible way losing tons and tons of dollars from all these companies that were investing into the technology. And if that replicates again from bad headset designs from poor customer interaction and from poor customer satisfaction we might actually see VR headsets die again. Now while they’re a lot more successful now than they ever were in the ‘90s there's always that slim chance that something might go wrong. So as far as I'm concerned I think it's important to try these really poor headsets out and see what was so wrong with them. Now a lot of people want to ask me if this VR headset is worse than the Virtual Boy and yeah this is. This is way worse but it's still something you should try out and it's a great way to give yourself a headache I guess.
Extraordinary friend