The Virtual Boy is perhaps the most separate console that Nintendo has released. Although the device flopped, the Virtual Boy has been given a fan base over the years. One of those fans even designed two arcade sticks for the console.

Tech journalist Benj Edwards, who writes for The Atlantic and Ars Technica among others, has been designing and building arcade sticks for older consoles since 2016. After a good friend and colleague of him bought several Virtual Boys, Edwards seemed to like making an arcade stick for the console. He started making it because of the obscurity of the Virtual Boy and the fact that he had not yet made an arcade stick for a ‘3d system’, says Edwards to Kotaku . He has made two versions of the arcade stick.

The first design is called the BX-250 , whose position of the buttons seems to match that of the Virtual Boy controller. Edwards used defective controllers as a frame of reference for the arcade sticks. In addition, it was necessary to use the connection of the broken Virtual Boy controllers, because it is no longer produced on a large scale. Edwards designed the pcb itself, just like the appearance of the peripherals.

BX-240 and BX-250 Virtual Boy Arcade SticksBX-240 and BX-250 Virtual Boy Arcade SticksBX-240 and BX-250 Virtual Boy Arcade Sticks
Then came the BX-240 . Although this version of the arcade stick was designed with the use of Hyper Fighter, the Virtual Boy port from Street Fighter II, it can also be used for other games. “It has” shoulder buttons “on the back, which work the same as the trigger buttons on the Virtual Boy controller.The two buttons on the front are the same as those trigger buttons, so you can use your thumb for pressing while playing Wario Land with the A and B buttons, “explains Edwards.

The designer does not intend to produce the arcade sticks on a large scale, at most on request. He has now received a ‘handful of orders’. Edwards does not yet have a fixed target price for the BX-240 or for the BX-250.