Virtual Boy is poised for what once seemed like an unlikely comeback on Switch 2, but while Nintendo might want to celebrate the VR console as a kitschy throwback nowadays, in the '90s, the consequences for the platform's failure were a lot more dire. At least one of Nintendo's closest third-party collaborators still seems a bit incredulous about what happened to Gunpei Yokoi in the wake of Virtual Boy's failure.
Yokoi worked at Nintendo for decades before the company even started making video games. He designed the 1966 Ultra Hand toy and the 1974 electro-mechanical arcade machine Wild Gunman, two bits of Nintendo lore that continue to be referenced in the publisher's modern games. He created the Game & Watch series, mentored Shigeru Miyamoto during the development of Donkey Kong, and led the design of the original Game Boy.
In short, Nintendo and the whole video game industry would be a whole lot different without Yokoi's involvement. Nonetheless, Yokoi also designed the Virtual Boy, and retired from Nintendo shortly after the console's dismal launch. There's some debate over whether Yokoi was forced into retirement due to the platform's failure – Nintendo has always maintained that the timing was coincidental – but a popular theory has long portrayed him as the Virtual Boy's development martyr.
"Virtual Boy was dead on arrival," according to Henk Rogers, who, as head of Bullet-Proof Software, was instrumental in bringing Tetris to the world. In a recent interview republished by Time Extension, Rogers was asked about the competing Tetris games released for the Virtual Boy – one published by Bullet-Proof Software and another by Nintendo. Rogers doesn't have much concern about Nintendo facilitating a rival product here, since "we sold more copies of Tetris for Virtual Boy than Nintendo sold of the Virtual Boy!"
Rogers says he didn't speak much of Virtual Boy with his friend and then-Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, and it might have been a bit of a taboo subject. "Yokoi left the company as a result," Rogers says. "I mean that guy made Nintendo's game business, for chrissakes! He invented all that stuff. I take my hat off to that guy. And then to leave the company because of... Virtual Boy? Hey, he's not the only one that's responsible for that product. Anyway, but that's the way Nintendo is. Or that's the way Japanese companies are. Somebody has to take responsibility."
Yokoi designed the Game Boy Pocket after the Virtual Boy, and when it hit the market shortly after his retirement from Nintendo, it proved to be a much more successful product. He would go on to lead development of the Japan-only WonderSwan handheld from Bandai, which was ultimately released two years after his death in 1997.
Remember the better parts of Yokoi's legacy with the best Game Boy games.
