The world below Temple (a floating-yet-otherwise-stationary structure in the sky) spans surprisingly far. Corneria (the Star Fox level) is a two-dimensional battle on a starship that looks to be actually flying through a small track (ditto the F-Zero level Mute City). It's a testament to Nintendo's designers that they've fleshed out parts of the stages that they never expected to be seen in full view. So there I was, wearing the Oculus Rift, holding an Xbox 360 controller, beating up Pikachu I've used the Oculus Rift plenty before, but this was a chance to see one of my all-time favorites from (literally) an entirely new angle. I could move my body closer to it, farther away, rotate my head to and fro - the usual head gestures people make when they start exploring a virtual world. The character select screen was a giant IMAX screen floating in midair.

The entire experience made me giddy, from the title screen onward. So there I was, wearing an Oculus Rift headset, holding an Xbox 360 controller, and beating up Pikachu. is just one of many games Nintendo games compatible with the Rift.) The only missing piece is a (legally obtained) unaltered ROM file of your favorite Nintendo game. The experience is imperfect - an emulator works by trying to recreate custom hardware via software - but it does mean the community can do crazy things like, say, program support for VR. Dolphin is an open-source emulator that lets people play GameCube and Wii games on a PC or Mac - in HD, no less, something the actual GameCube and Wii aren't capable of. Let's back up a second and explain how this came to be. As in, the GameCube version from 2001 - but through the Oculus Rift. And that's when we played Super Smash Bros.

I ran through the usual motley crew of demos - sitting in a chair as civilization rises and falls around me, sitting in a mouse-sized roller coaster set up around a studio apartment, and 'standing' (virtually) while Totoro steals my umbrella and leaves me in the pouring rain in the woods.īut what I really wanted was a game. So late last week, I re-entered the virtual world by way of an off-white desk chair in the middle of Scott's living room. The first time I tried the headset was well over two years ago, and admittedly I haven't used it but once or twice since. For the last month or so, Scott Kellum - a VR enthusiast and Vox Media's senior front-end designer - has been inviting people over to try out the Oculus Rift.

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