A look at the development of Red Alarm for Virtual Boy

A portion of a Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Volume 2 interview with Mitsuto Nagashima, lead dev on Red Alarm...

Question: How did development of Red Alarm go?

MN: Now that I had the 3D effect working, I wanted to do something that could only be done in 3D. I wanted to be able to fly freely in 3D space, going forwards, backwards, up, down, left and right... But the company's leadership wanted a game that was more like Namco's Starblade, where the game scrolls automatically, and the player aligns a reticule over foes to shoot them.

Designing controls for flying freely in space is complicated, and I don't think they believed we could pull it off. It's certainly true that there weren't many games of that era that allowed for free flight, and even a small misstep could leave you with a game that felt like a flight simulator. And then you end up with a control scheme where reorienting your ship to dodge an enemy bullet fired from close range becomes nearly impossible.

While we ere developing the game, Nintendo was still internally debating what form the controller would take. I had heard the Yokoi-san wanted a second D-pad on the right side of the controller, and I was convinced that since he wanted this, it would happen. Fortunately, it did.