Quote:
Originally Posted by ankoku
In the case of the Virtual Boy though Gunpei wasn't directly at fault. It's a great machine, and was/is far ahead of its time. It was the lack of support Nintendo had when it came to pushing the product that resulted in its failure, the biggest of which was very limited party support (only 22 games total were ever produced), poor advertising (saying it was portable when it actually wasn't), and with the Nintendo 64 right around the corner the company had more important things to worry about. All they really cared about was having a product out to steal the light from the Playstation, since the Super NES/Famicom was on its way out and the Nintendo 64 was facing more delays.
In short, it was dead on arrival. Gunpei took the fall, however his legacy is the huge portable market that kept Nintendo alive when Sony rose to power and dominated.
It's a good Wikipedia read on the summation of the life and death of the Virtual Boy.
Personally I think the only problem with Lucky Star is that it's a victim of hype. Expectations ran high, it didn't deliver for those people, and thus there's a backlash from those who want it to be something it's not. |
Dunno how the heck we got off on the virtual boy, but if you notice the shape of the controller, it's pretty much the progenitor of the Wavebird controller (for the GC), and even though they're not analog, the dual control sticks have pretty much become the industry standard (until the Wii changed that completely).