Hudson Soft’s Bonk was their mascot and appeared on a number of systems, and one he nearly appeared on was the Virtual Boy from Nintendo. A former Hudson Soft developer, Norihito Miyamoto, shared some never-before-seen documents for an abandoned Bonk game called Genjin Show ~Tobidase! VB Genjin~, which was under consideration for Nintendo’s Virtual Boy device. Norihito Miyamoto ( aka @nori_bomber) started their career on the Sega MK III before working as a planner and producer on the Bomberman, Bonk (or Genjin in Japan), Mario, and the Super Robo series.
Miyamoto shared the images after seeing a post about the Virtual Boy and gave some insight into what was planned. Miyamoto revealed that the project was being considered following the release of Super Bonk, and would have had you viewing the action from the perspective of an audience member looking at a stage. The game was planned to take advantage of the Virtual Boy’sportable device’s stereoscopic “3D” capabilities, to place you closer to the action, so you could watch Bonk as he battled enemies like Hatchets.
The game was cancelled and abandoned early in the presentation, and this was because of the failure of the Virtual Boy. Bonk saw a small number of games since but has been largely an untouched franchise in several generations. Who knows, maybe with VR Konami could revive this idea.
neat, pitch documents for "Genjin Show ~Tobidase! VB Genjin~" ie a Virtual Boy Bonk game presented as a play being viewed from the audience?? https://t.co/s37pO95v32
— GSK | https://cohost.org/gosokkyu (@gosokkyu) November 14, 2022