Oh, man, so here’s a thing I stumbled across — Shuhei Yoshida, you know, that guy from PlayStation who had a pretty big role in shaping gaming as we know it, just dropped a tidbit about this VR adaptation of Jumping Flash! You remember Jumping Flash, right? That weird, kind-of-fun 1995 platformer? Yeah, apparently it almost made a comeback in VR. But, uh, then it didn’t. Because game dev is wild like that.
So Yoshida, who was, like, this big cheese at Sony Interactive Entertainment until a few years back, was chitchatting with VGC — side note, there’s always some interesting bits coming from those interviews. Yoshida’s interview revealed that before Sony started diving into today’s licensing trends, they were toying with the idea of reviving some old, seemingly forgotten franchises for VR ventures. And it sounds cooler than it probably is, but I’ll run with it.
When asked, “Hey, which games were on your list for this VR thing?” Yoshida spilled the beans (not all of them, mind you) about Jumping Flash being on the list. No idea which developers were eyeing it, but apparently, someone somewhere thought it was a good idea. Then, for reasons unknown — maybe they just had too many cups of coffee or something — the whole thing fizzled out.
Oh, but guess what actually worked out? Fantavision 202X. I’ll be honest, never expected to hear about Fantavision again. It was a puzzle game from one of PlayStation’s old studios. Anyway, it popped up as a launch game for PlayStation VR2. Crazy, right? Cosmo Machia ran with it and now gamers can enjoy it in VR on both PlayStation and Steam.
Yoshida, after stepping away from Sony, is still like this VR cheerleader. So, he’s not out of the picture, not even close. He even owned up to being “wrong” about Sony’s latest VR headset — imagine that, someone in gaming admitting they got something wrong. He’s got this thing for games like Synapse and Before Your Eyes. And apparently, he made an appearance at Summer Game Fest with nDreams, probably to hype up their new gig, Reach. Because, you know, once a gamer, always a gamer.
That’s the scoop. Game development is a rollercoaster, right?
