Possibly, but the Virtual Boy was announced in Nov 1994 and demoed at the start of 1995 - so a very short period for development if they were still debating the

Possibly, but the Virtual Boy was announced in Nov 1994 and demoed at the start of 1995 - so a very short period for development if they were still debating the processor during 1994. Maybe Nintendo were concerned about code size given their experience with VB and that led to the challenge to the ARM team? Plus seems like the GBA was paused for a while in the 1990s too.