Space Squash is a Japanese only Virtual Boy that is essentially a fancy 3D pong. It is, however, done really well. While I had trouble figuring out depth in Mario’s Tennis, I had zero issues following the ball in Space Squash. The addition of a textured floor and a shadow certainly help things out. In Space Squash, you move your character on a 2D plane, getting in position to hit the ball back (the right D-Pad provides different shots). It’s really good fun.

Throughout the campaign, you’ll encounter various robotic opponents and the courses will have different obstacles and sometimes even be different sizes, which helps somewhat with adding some variety. The campaign (which is the only mode, due to no multiplayer) has you play a colossal amount of matches, with branching paths so you have different matches on different playthroughs .

The problem is, it’s far longer than anyone would want to play in one sitting, and there’s no save or password system, so on the Virtual Boy you had no choice but to do it in one go. With the emulator on 3DS, you can get around this with save states. At the end of each stage is a boss, all of which have far too much health so the battles last ages – especially as they regain their health if you miss the ball once. Still, the main matches are enjoyable.

Fun

Remake or remaster?

This would have been fun on the 3DS, especially with multiplayer.