Higuchi remembers refusing the assignment and bracing for the worst. “I told my boss that I refused to work on the Virtual Boy. I half expected to be fired. Fortunately, plans to bring Clock Tower to PlayStation gathered momentum and the team moved forward with a proper sequel. My first major role became lead programmer for Clock Tower.”
He adds that his supervisor was a devoted Nintendo enthusiast who pressed the studio toward Virtual Boy development, while Higuchi believed PlayStation offered the superior platform. History sided with his instincts: the PlayStation became the dominant console of that generation, while the Virtual Boy remained a notorious misfire.
Although Higuchi avoided full Virtual Boy production, he did build development tools for the platform. Other teams at Human worked on a Virtual Boy title — described in the interview as a Space Harrier–style shooter — but that project was ultimately abandoned.
Colleague Hifumi Kouno told the same interviewer the title was canned because, by the time it neared completion, the Virtual Boy had already failed commercially. Kouno suggests the initial push to create Virtual Boy software may have been a Nintendo requirement: to win approval for Nintendo 64 development, Human might first have been asked to produce a Virtual Boy title.
The corporate fallout around the Virtual Boy is a separate story. Longstanding rumours claim Game Boy designer Gunpei Yokoi was pushed into early retirement after the system’s failure; Nintendo has maintained the timing was coincidental. Tetris pioneer Henk Rogers has described that kind of outcome as simply “the way Nintendo is.” GamesRadar.
If you’re looking for guidance on where to pre-order the Virtual Boy release for Nintendo Switch 2, we can point you in the right direction.
Source: gamesradar.com
