Hindsight is 20/20, and these days it's easy enough to point out all the factors that coincided to make the Virtual Boy a critical and commercial failure. But as Nintendo gears up to give the VR console a celebratory spotlight on Switch and Switch 2, let's not forget that it inspired equal parts hope and skepticism even before its launch in the '90s. That clash occasionally had bosses and employees at video game studios at odds with each other.
Such was the case for Masaki Higuchi, who worked as a programmer at Human Entertainment in the '90s, just as a new generation of video game consoles was coming onto the scene. Higuchi's most famous work at Human was on Clock Tower 2 – the PS1 game released in the West as simply Clock Tower – which, despite mixed reviews at launch, would go on to develop a cult classic reputation that stands out even among the original PlayStation's lineup of horror greats.
