A pair of Nintendo games that were canceled, Zero Racers and D-Hopper, are arriving on the Nintendo Switch on August 4. Players will soon get to try out the games for the very first time on the Switch or any other Nintendo console, for that matter.
Earlier in 2026, Nintendo announced that it would be introducing Virtual Boy Nintendo Classics to its Expansion Pack subscription service. Most gamers have never tried any of these games, as the Virtual Boy was an unsuccessful system that launched back in 1995. The Virtual Boy was available in the US and Japan, but the system never made outside those markets at all. Through the Nintendo Classics system, these games have been revived, and among them, some are arriving for the first time.
Nintendo Revives Canceled Virtual Boy Games
Now, Nintendo is announcing that two canceled games will be added to its Virtual Boy Nintendo Classics lineup on August 4. The first is Zero Racers, which was slated for release back in 1996, but never made it to gamers because of the Virtual Boy’s sales failure. Zero Racers is an F-Zero spinoff, which lets players participate in high-speed races while playing as characters like Captain Falcon and James McCloud. Although the game was never released to the public, it had been completed, and according to a Nintendo localizer, even had completed packaging and an ESRB rating assigned.
Guess the games from the emojis.
Guess the games from the emojis.
Easy (120s)Medium (90s)Hard (60s)
The second title arriving on the same day is action game D-Hopper, which was previously known as Dragon Hopper. D-Hopper puts players in the role of a dragon prince called Dorin who has to save his allies and friends from captivity. Like Zero Racers, D-Hopper was completed prior to being canceled, though some people actually did get to try this one out. It was scheduled to release on August 26, 1996, and was demonstrated at E3 1996. After that, though, it was shelved, so this will be the first time that the vast majority of gamers have ever gotten to play it.
The Virtual Boy was an interesting experiment from Nintendo, albeit one that failed. Though the notion of 3D gaming was incredible for the time, it didn’t deliver the experience that players were hoping for, particularly with its limited red and black display that caused eye strain and dizziness in some people. Although the Virtual Boy failed to move even a million units, its development wasn’t a complete waste for Nintendo, though it would take years for its technology to be utilized in a new way. The same basic stereostopic technology that made the Virtual Boy work in 1995 would ultimately become the backbone of the Nintendo 3DS’ 3D effect. Given that the 3DS sold around 76 million units in its lifetime, the second attempt to utilize the tech was well worth it.
In addition to these two games, a number of both completed and unreleased titles for the Virtual Boy have gradually been added to the Switch subscription service. Some of them never released at all, like these two, while others didn’t make it to the US. Nintendo fans who haven’t checked out the games may want to at least take a peek at Mario’s Tennis, which preceded the now-successful Mario Tennis franchise.
