Originally developed by Japan System Supply, Nintendo liked the game idea of Bound High! and took over the project later. The game was, besides Dragon Hopper, going to be one of the games, which should have saved the system with a relaunch, but it was delayed again and again until it was cancelled because of the lack of success of the Virtual Boy. At this time, the game already was completely finished. In Bound High!, Chalvo, the bouncing robot, travels through space In full 3d-D motion in pursuit of alien invaders that threaten the peaceful inhabitants of Earth. Angling from above, players control rolled up Chalvo, who must destroy all enemies on the playfield by landing on them and throwing them down from the playfield. Falling off the playfield himself, Chalvo will loose a life. The playfield is in space, or high above the earth, and is made of many little squares, which are composed differently from level to level, once big plain areas, once many small, scattered blocks. Bouncing over the platforms can be quite incalculable and dangerous, while some are solid, other ones vanish after one hit or reveal puzzles, items or other objects and besides a lot of different enemies, Chalvo also has to carefully avoid winds, the deep crevices, sharp spikes and highly charged electric "shockers" that cause his demise. Adding to the difficulty is the rebound angle when you hit a moving enemy - you don't necessarily bounce straight up in the air. Sometimes blocks lead to an "Another Stage", some kind of mirrored parallel universe with inverted colors and without the dangerous winds.
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I went into Bound High expecting a game on par with VB Wario Land, as it's always been known as "the mythical cancelled game that could've saved the Virtual Boy". This was not a good way to go into Bound High, and for the first few minutes, I was very much put off - but once I put myself into the right mindset, of a score attack game and not an unconventional Jumping Flash-style psuedo 3D platformer, it clicked!
You play as this little Bakugan fella who uncontrollably bounds-bounds-bounds-and-rebounds off of evaporating blocks, and has to push enemies off of the blocks he evaporates Motos-style, at the expense of having less room to land - the controls work really well, I never really had any issue landing on the right blocks or enemies, and I found the idea decently easy to figure out.
It's a good concept and decently executed, but not addictive as it should be, landing on enemies feels fine, and the chain reactions are fun, but the visuals and sounds should have more oomph, landing on a destructible enemy makes a dinky little "blip" sound instead of a destructive pound, and while the sound of a falling enemy is clearly meant to evoke the cartoon slide-whistle, it's extremely short and finishes by the time you can even process that they're falling. I don't know if this would've been fixed should the game have released. You can collect power-ups, but I couldn't really tell what any of them did, either in practice or in visuals (with the exception of the freeze power up). Quite egregiously, there's one power-up which makes your character fat, but it doesn't increase the size of their hitbox.
I only got to world 2 in the regular story mode, and had to stop due to a pretty awful wind gimmick - however, I did play the endless random mode, which appears to remove said gimmick from World 2 stages, and I assume would remove any other gimmicks, so it's all good. There's also a golf mode, but it's very clunky and unintuitive, as much as "optional sports mode" is appreciated in any game (NASB1 lover here).
I had no issues with the motion, something I did have with 3D Tetris, but can absolutely understand why it'd be a concern for some.
Would it have saved the Virtual Boy? No, absolutely not. It would've worked just fine as a Mode 7 SNES game, in fact you could've probably gotten this gameplay loop working on the Mega Drive, and ironically gets more good 3D use out of its intro cutscene than the actual gameplay.
This game actually rules; like a boiled down Jumping Flash puzzler that feels great to play.
IT CAUSES GENUINE EYE STRAIN
EDIT: I gave in lol