CN: Yokoi San, could you tell us how well has the Virtual Boy been received worldwide?
GY: Well it hasn’t yet penetrated the market as we expected it to, but with the development of more games we will reach our goals.
CN: How is the game development coming out in your opinion? Are developers taking advantage of the Virtual Boy hardware and learning how to push it to its limits or not yet?
GY: Well the concept of 3D is still pretty young, that is why each day we find ourselves with new ideas for new titles to develop, that is also the reason why not many titles have been developed for the system yet.
CN: What can you tell us about the Nintendo systems for 1996?
GY: Before the Virtual Boy I developed the Gameboy, let’s hope the Virtual Boy becomes a Gameboy for the people, and as for the Nintendo 64, it is our most modern machine and we trust a favourable future is approaching for it.
CN: Will there ever be a moment in the near future where the Virtual Boy connects with the N64, such as the Super Gameboy connected to the Super Nintendo?
GY: It is possible, from a technical point of view, and it may be done in the future, since Virtual Boy games in development are watched through a monitor, but to have that in the market right now would be very expensive, maybe in the future it could be cheaper, who knows…
CN: Is there any secret project you would like to tell us about?
GY: We can’t say anything yet, but there are a lot of projects in mind, which we may be able to announce next year (referring to 1996). It could be something ranging from games to new consoles.
CN: A CD-ROM maybe?
GY: Well we are not in favor of the CD technology yet, since even though it has lots of favorable points, such as the low production costs, it also has many unfavorable ones, such as long loading times, and what we aim for is to improve the fun factor for gamers, and since it takes a long time to load we consider it shortens the excitement of the game, that is why we don’t support the technology.
CN: We are very impressed with the Nintendo 64, what will be the future of videogames?
GY: For the moment we are going to focus on what we have, that is to say, Nintendo 64, SNES, and Virtual Boy, and we are also thinking about other entertainment machines. Gamers will have lots of entertainment, that is for sure.
CN: Arigato gozaymas.
Another title presented by Hudson was Virtual Bomber Man. Because, in the scenes we saw, the game takes place with 3 or 4 characters, it seemed much like the SNES version of Super Bomber Man 3, except that the developers obviously tried to exploit the qualities of the Virtual Boy. Keeping in mind that it is only an incomplete prototype, the graphics are very good, especially the cut scene images which appear to be prerendered.
The photos on the right are stereoscopic screen-shots from the Virtual Bomber Man game presentation. If you’ve never seen a stereogram, we recommend viewing the magazine from about 50 cm away to make it easier (once you have practice you can get a little closer). The area where you are should be well lit. Avoid viewing the stereograms for long periods.