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This was five years before Mario 64 sussed out how players could move through 3D worlds, after all. Even if the player began to feel comfortable with the game and the gear after forking out dollar after dollar, the reward was minimal. Instead, they promoted what was (for the time) an uncommon sense of open-world exploration-hardly a recipe for success in arcades, where systems are designed for immediate sensory impact, not prolonged investment.

These weren’t simple button-mashing fighter games.

But players were quickly turned off.Īdded to that was the fact that it was nearly impossible to become accustomed to the complexity of the controls and the unfamiliar 3D worlds of these games in such a short amount of time. It was good economics for the arcade owners, who were eager to have players in and out of the pods to make up for the high cost of the unit and its necessary attendant. While players were accustomed to popping quarters into machines and playing until they ran out of lives, Virtuality games like Dactyl Nightmare or Legend Quest, where players sluggishly walked around a 3D castle or wooded area while dinosaurs or skeletons attacked them in stuttering, choppy animations, typically cost anywhere from three to five dollars to play and only lasted about three minutes. Economically, the pods couldn’t compete with the other machines in the arcade. Perhaps they were doomed from the beginning. The flashy gear could only temporarily mask the harsh reality. In the three years since the pods were introduced, Virtuality had shaped the future of VR gaming while subsequently demolishing it thanks to a thorough misunderstanding of what consumers expect from their gaming experiences. In many ways, Virtuality relied on performance, the hulking pods themselves part of a spectacle that hoped to capture the attention of moviegoers and arcade patrons.īy 1994, though, Virtuality-and the popularity of VR pods in general-was crashing, with the company and the rights to the entertainment machines having been sold numerous times throughout the ’90s. The initial draw of these pods was not, and would never really be, the games the units weren't being promoted on the basis of graphics, storytelling, or any other factors that commonly enticed people to play video games. Depending on the game, you either competed against other players or were transported into a world on your own. Virtuality’s first steps were with the 1000 series, which consisted of both sit-down and stand-up options, and started rolling into arcades in 1991. Films like Tron and, ten years later, The Lawnmower Man, suggested that all-encompassing digital worlds that users could interact with weren’t far away. VR technology and its implications for the world of gaming had long been discussed, but it wasn’t until the late ’80s and early ’90s that public interest and popular culture took hold of the VR narrative and made its infiltration into arcades-and perhaps homes-a viable option. graduate from the Loughborough University of Technology. The company that would position itself as the vanguard of the VR charge into arcades was Virtuality, founded by Jonathan Waldern, a Ph.D. Three minutes later, you stumbled out of the pod, an attendant wearily guiding your now vertigo-ravaged body away from the machine, praying that your vomit would subdue itself until you rounded the corner to Cinema #8. Meanwhile, a 3D world of prehistory or fantasy was blasted onto your eyes-a potentially riveting experience if not for the lingering smell of popcorn and the somewhat audible fizz of carbonated soda dispensers in the background. As you strapped on the headset, which was twice the size of a human head and just as heavy, you could literally sense the other players who'd come before you, their sucrose-laden sweat working its way into your pores. Each plastic pod encircled the player, but left limited room for movement.

Stepping into the pod, though, shattered any illusions. Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story Is an Undeniable Triumph David Sims