I met David Demers as a client some years ago. He designed advertising signage and kiosks for Nintendo, Sony, HP, and many other companies back in the 80’s-90’s. He worked under Thomas A. Schutz co. and was specifically assigned projects with Nintendo at the time, something he described as “some of the best and worst projects of my career”.

As evidence, I have taken pictures of many of the awards and documentation David has in his possession, including the “Nintendo Virtual Boy 1996 Design of the Times Award” for his Floor standing virtual boy display. He is cleaning house and selling off many if his old awards.

David has a storied history and much to contribute in regards to the virtual boy’ advertising, appearance at trade shows and general public perception. Please feel free to ask anything you want to know, and I can get the answers from David himself!

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Thank you for this opportunity.

Speaking of “appearance at trade shows”: I might be totally off here, but has he been on shows where cancelled VB games have been presented? And if yes, what can he say about those games?

Hello! What an awesome opportunity! Here are my questions

1. have you heard of ImagiCorps? Seems they submitted a prototype VB kiosk design to Nintendo, and ultimately Nintendo didnt choose them and went with your company Design Phase. (Details here https://www.virtual-boy.com/forums/t/imagicorps-virtual-boy-store-display-unit/)

2. What was the typical timeline from the moment Nintendo asked for a kiosk, to prototype, to mass production?

3. Do you have any materials left for the VB kiosk design documents? Or any design documents so we can understand the process better. Did Nintendo give you exactly what they wanted or did they give you free range to design what you wanted as long as it met a smaller set of technical requirements?

4. Was the manufacturing cost of a kiosk for Design Phase a main part of the chosen design? Did Design Phase manufacture the kiosks as well, or just design them, give the technical data to Nintendo, and Nintendo went and manufactured the kiosks?

Thanks for this opportunity!

So cool, thanks for doing this!

@dudeway4 already asked all the good questions. I have just one to add on my mind right now:

Do you have any info on these displays that were around in Mexico at the time? https://www.virtual-boy.com/forums/t/prototype-virtual-boy-kiosk/

Did David ever play the Virtual Boy? Does he have a favorite game? Seems it wasn’t uncommon back then for a person to be employed or contracted for video game related work but weren’t gamers themselves. I’d love to know an answer on this!

From David:

Thanks for your interest in Virtual Boy questions!

No, I don’t know anything about the VB software. I remember looking into the viewfinder a couple of times during CES Trade Shows all those years ago and seeing a rather annoying red stick figure or other such element and thought that was rather rediculous!

My job at the Shows was to ensure the displays remained in good working order at all times, and to manage the crowd of mostly young boys who were desperately trying to hang out and see what VB was all about.

My biggest concern was the durability of the floor and counter units as the VB system was so popular at the time. These initial units were hand-made prototypes produced in our large model shop in Morton Grove, Illinois, so they were by nature rather fragile.

After Nintendo issued purchase orders to me for the initial production runs (1000 floor units and 500 counter units. If memory serves) then we made the necessary injection molds and metal fixtures to produce durable production components and secure packaging.

From David:

As to Imagicorps, I worked with them rather extensively for years as their main function at the time was Trade Show booth design, production and set-up, a difficult and dirty job. It wasn’t until years later that they morphed into actual display production, with some success. They were physically located close to Nintendo Headquarters in Redmond, Washington. I’m interested to see the article with the photo of their display prototype asI was unaware they had submitted their unit for consideration. My main competition for the display order was Frank Mayer and Associates from Wisconsin, and my company was ultimately awarded the production order over FMA’s original design. BTW, my company was The Thomas A. Schutz Company from Morton Grove, Illinois, not Design Phase.

Interestingly, when I arrived at the CES Show with my design prototypes I immediately noticed FMA had already set up their units on the show floor. As soon as John Sakaley viewed our VB prototype submission, he ordered the FMA units removed from the floor and ours put in their place! FMA was so pissed, as recall!

From David:

In all my 10 plus years working with Nintendo, our timeline for prototypes and production was always more extensive than what Nintendo demanded. NOA was always seat of the pants in a hurry and they ALWAYS demanded us to be faster and better. Normal model production was three to six weeks. After order receipt, production start could run six to 12 weeks or longer, based on if tooling had to be built, production fixtures made, etc. NOA always demanded shorter timelines than what we proposed, or they threatened to pull the order from us and give it to a competitor. This incentivised us to always do better and be faster. Mr Sakaley always said “I don’t care if you have to work 24/7, just get it done!”

(Apologies if David’s aswers are a bit scattered, when I send them to him he combines certain questions with others. If anything gets missed feel free to ask again)

Well, if nothing else, the Virtual Boy was officially supported by Nintendo Company Ltd. for less than a year, pretty much just 6 months. Nintendo of America held out longer until suddenly pulling the plug, probably at NCL’s orders. So… Demanding contractors to be faster and better ends up tracking pretty close here. VB was a very quick in and out, one and done, as it were…

Very insightful stuff though! Thanks for sharing.

From David:

As to your question about design parameters, NOA always had basic parameters, plus what we had gleaned from our many years working with Wal-Mart, Target, Game Stop, et. al. The footprint had to be modest yet appropriate for whatever NOA game device required, be that for a floor, counter or wall demonstrator, and we were always concerned with stability in-store. The kids were all over these units and so they had to be durable and safe for liability reasons. NOA provided a sample of the game itself plus basic color, texture and graphic parameters. we would extrapolate from that information and then create several different options for them to consider. Hopefully, NOA would be excited about one of our designs, and then we would prototype a hand-made model in our shop. Then the order would follow and subsequently production and shipping would occur.

We would submit initial costs and Nintendo would ALWAYS complain that they were too high. We would then negotiate and finally come to terms. NOA would NEVER allow us to substitute cheaper materials or cut production corners in any way. Our whole raison d’etra was to manufacture the displays ourselves. Design, prototyping, etc. was simply a means to an end and manufacturing was how we made our money. Design and prototype costs were generally free or carried minimal costs but rarely did we profit by marking them up.

Great to get this insight from David and I’ve got a little question more general Nintendo related: what other projects did he work on with Nintendo, what systems and which ones were successful and also what ones maybe weren’t and finally does he have and images of those too?

Can you please ask David more about Design Phase. Specifically this website of theirs, actually shows the VB award you recently sold, and says they designed the VB kiosk. All of the paperwork and story from David prove otherwise. Can you help me understand why the Design Phase website would say all this? https://mirror.virtual-boy.com/www.dphase.com/Portfolio/Port_VB/port_vb.html

From David:
All of the Nintendo programs I spearheaded with Schutz were successful, to put it mildly, EXCEPT Virtual Boy, which was an almost immediate flop.
I worked on Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Virtual Boy, The Starlight Foundation kiosks, and was associated tangentially with World of Nintendo, Game Boy, etc

I do have color sell sheets I can provide.

From David:

For the Virtual Boy Kiosks, I believe that was when I was associated with Schutz. HOWEVER, our head of design. Ron Eckert, was the father of Mike Eckert who was one of our outside vendors at that time and if memory serves Mike WAS the designer of the VB kiosk, but only as a Schutz vendor. Actually, Mike designed most if not all of my Nintendo kiosk work right from the start.