Two games that Nintendo finished but never sold are finally reaching players. The company announced that D-Hopper and Zero Racers, both completed for the Virtual Boy in the 1990s but shelved when the console flopped, will join the Nintendo Switch Online library on 4 August 2026. Super Mario Sunshine, the GameCube platformer long locked behind a discontinued compilation, follows on 13 August. (VGC)

The Virtual Boy was Nintendo's ill-fated 1995 headset, a tabletop device with a red-and-black display that struggled commercially and was discontinued within a year. Nintendo Switch Online, the company's subscription service for classic games, began adding Virtual Boy titles earlier in 2026 under the "Virtual Boy – Nintendo Classics" label. The service requires a paid Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack membership and, for the Virtual Boy collection, a physical accessory. Most of the console's small library is now available through the service. (VGC)

Zero Racers, originally developed under the name G-Zero, is a spin-off from Nintendo's high-speed racing series F-Zero. It was finished but never released because the Virtual Boy's commercial failure cut its life short. D-Hopper rounds out the pair of newly unearthed titles. Alongside the two games, Nintendo will add the ability to customise screen colour in the Virtual Boy library, letting players adjust the signature red-on-black display. (VGC)

Several other Virtual Boy titles remain unlikely to appear. Games including Nester's Funky Bowling, Panic Bomber, SD Gundam Dimension War, Space Squash, Virtual Fighting, Virtual Lab, Virtual League Baseball, and Waterworld feature licensed intellectual properties, which complicates re-releasing them on the service. (VGC)

On the GameCube side, Super Mario Sunshine joins the Nintendo GameCube – Nintendo Classics lineup, a service available on Nintendo Switch 2 that also includes titles such as Pokémon Colosseum. (Nintendo UK) That catalogue requires the same paid Expansion Pack membership. Super Mario Sunshine was previously playable on modern hardware only through Super Mario 3D All-Stars, a limited-time collection that Nintendo discontinued in 2021.

For players who missed the 3D All-Stars window, 13 August opens a more permanent door. And for the small but dedicated crowd of Virtual Boy enthusiasts, two games that sat in Nintendo's vaults for roughly three decades are about to become playable for the first time.