The 90s Nintendo’s Virtual Boy gets revamped into interactive gaming headsets for the ultimate AR gaming experience!

Who remembers Virtual Boy from the ‘90s? The first three-dimensional, immersive gaming experience that was “so advanced” it couldn’t be viewed on conventional TV or LCD screens. After a successful nine-year-long streak of brilliant product design, Nintendo released Virtual Boy, code-named VR32. Unfortunately, due to weak hardware and rushed development, the first virtual reality gaming system of its kind flopped, becoming one of the worst-selling consoles of all time. Today, Virtual Boy is generally accepted as a failure on an otherwise long list of innovative successes from Nintendo, but its design still grips both gamers and designers. James Tsai, a Los Angeles-based designer, brought his creative chops to the drawing board and gave Virtual Boy a modern fine-tuning of his own.

Following the trends of today in regard to retro aesthetics and gameplay mobility, Tsai reimagined Nintendo’s virtual reality experience with Nintendo Switch Joy-Glasses. Tsai recognized Nintendo Switch’s hybridity that allows it to transform from a handheld gaming tablet to a plugged-in video game console for the television. This gives Nintendo Switch players the option of bringing a gaming console with them anywhere, making Nintendo Switch a mobile gaming device. This mobile hybridity gives the Switch a leg-up, and with today’s gamers being so nostalgic, it’s no wonder VR games like Pokémon Go are such global successes. Further, on the game’s market triumph, Tsai writes, “Successfully tapping into 1990s nostalgia, [Pokémon Go] is attracting millions of Millennials…Taking advantage of this retro hype, it’s about time to refashion existing technology and create something unique to connect with more recent generations.” And so his Joy-Glasses were born.

Snowballing off Nintendo Switch’s hybridity, through an integrated pairing feature, Tsai’s Joy-Glasses project games either to the integrated headset display or to external monitors like television or computer screens. Transition lenses also adapt to changing light when players switch between their headset display and external monitor gaming. The Joy-Glasses incorporate augmented reality and dual gameplay so that multiple users can enjoy an enhanced video game experience together. The Joy-Glasses come equipped with a built-in speaker and open-ear audio, allowing you to connect and communicate with other Joy-Glasses users. This incorporation of voice chats and social connectivity bridges the product’s augmented reality features with the gamer’s reality, delivering multi-layered interactivity. Similar to the infamous red-and-black onscreen color scheme of VR32, Tsai’s Joy-Glasses come with an infrared camera that, when switched on, turns the game and the player’s world into zones of varying degrees. MicroLED display technology fills the lenses of Joy-Glasses for better contrast, quicker response times, and energy efficiency for video games, another improvement made on the coattails of VR32’s failures. Soak in all the 90s feels and check out the rendering below.

Designer: James Tsai

Google Pixel Smartwatch, it’s finally your time to shine

It just makes perfect sense, given the fact that Google acquired Fitbit in 2019, and that Google still doesn’t have a horse in the smartwatch race, while its competitor Apple has more than half the smartwatch market share. Google famously entered the smartphone industry with the Pixel, its first, entirely ‘Made by Google’ smartphone. The Pixel smartphone went onto redefine what a pure Android experience could look like, becoming the gold standard in the Android OS experience. James Tsai’s Google Pixel Smartwatch concept does the same for the Android Wear OS.

Embodying Google’s playful-serious aesthetic, the Pixel Smartwatch concept comes in a traditional round format, and in a variety of quirkily named colors. The Android Wear OS logo displays clearly on the always-on display of the watch, transforming into a colorful set of watch hands every time you look at it to read the time. The watch comes with Google’s top-notch voice AI, all of Google’s native apps, and a heart-rate monitor on the back, which ties in well with Google’s acquisition of Fitbit and their entire fitness-tech ecosystem. I wouldn’t be surprised if this wearable concept were entirely waterproof too, just to fire shots at Apple!

Designer: James Tsai

Harman Kardon Smartphone concept comes with a massive “speaker bump”

This smartphone concept has curves where you wouldn’t expect!

Say hello to the Harman Kardon Harmony, a conceptual smartphone created by James Tsai that says “Hold my beer” to the camera bump. The Harmony, on the other hand, comes with a pretty pronounced protrusion on its rear, owing to the presence of a powerful 360° speaker on the back of the smartphone. Styled to match Harman Kardon’s other speakers, the Harmony smartphone concept sports a 45° grille sitting under a transparent clad that helps guide airflow to maximize sound output while also protecting the smartphone itself, almost like a case would.

Speakers are arguably more complicated than cameras, because a relatively less powerful camera can be made better by using computational photography, but that same advantage can’t be extended to less-powerful speakers… which explains the Harmony’s massive speaker-bump. That being said, I would assume the Harmony would be fitted with one of Harman’s finest audio drivers, resulting in a sound that rivals most smart speakers. There’s a single-lens camera on the back, but honestly, a person who buys the Harmony wouldn’t be buying it for the camera. Dual hole-punch cameras on the front, however, help sweeten the deal.

Clearly the Harmony is just a fan-made conceptual render, in part because Harman Kardon is owned by Samsung (which wouldn’t want to compete with itself), and also in part because it seems the interface running on the phone belongs to iOS. It’s still a fun exercise to look at companies and extend their technology and visual language/branding onto a product that they would arguably never make. Personally, I like the idea of a smartphone with better speakers, being an audiophile myself. Plus a smartphone that’s actually thicker and more grippy? Bring it on!

Designer: James Tsai