Cancelled Early Development of a Jumping Flash PlayStation VR Game

Hey, so I recently stumbled upon this story about Shuhei Yoshida, you know, the former PlayStation bigwig? He casually dropped some juicy details about this VR idea they had—though, spoiler alert, it got canned. Anyway, Yoshida was chatting with VGC, I think—wait, was it VGC? Yeah, I’m sure it was. He was this huge deal at Sony, ran the show at PlayStation Studios from, like, 2008 to 2019. Then he kind of moved on earlier this year. Or was it last year? Whatever.

So, the bit that really got me was this whole thing about adapting old franchises into VR. Imagine licensing old classics? Turns out they were eyeing ‘Jumping Flash’—remember that quirky first-person platformer from 1995? Yeah, it was in this “super early” phase of VR development, but then, poof—gone. No clue who would’ve made it. I mean, maybe some devs wanted to include it in their new VR adventure. Who knows?

But hey, while Jumping Flash VR never saw the light of day, there was a win. Fantavision 202X actually made it. They brought back that puzzle game from 2000. Ah, the nostalgia! It launched with PlayStation VR2 and even hit Steam. Cosmo Machia developed it, and it’s got VR too, if you’re into that.

Anyway, Yoshida’s been chilling since his “retirement,” still waving the PlayStation VR2 flag. He even admitted he was “wrong” about the headset in a chat on Kinda Funny. But he’s all about games like Synapse and Before Your Eyes. Oh, and he popped up at Summer Game Fest with nDreams. They’re hyping up this new game, Reach. Just a handful of gaming stuff that keeps popping up—I mean, isn’t it cool how the past sneaks back into the present sometimes?