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The Official Virtual Boy Thread!


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I just got back into VB again, I have 18 out of the 22 games officially released. I still miss SD Gundam  Space War, Virtual Lab, Virtual Bowling, and Space Invaders.

 

Yes, the cool part is you can pick up repro cards with English hacks, and yet even those are getting expensive too, let alone the original Japanese official releases, those are commanding thousands now.

Edited by vincewy
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They're expensive because they have to buy and kill real carts since they're not worth the manufacturing expense to make a very specific plastic bracket and all those metal pin holes that read the carts unfortunately.

 

I've considered getting some bootlegs of the 4 exclusive Japanese titles or so (V-Tetris aside, it's cheap so I have it.)  Realistically I'd buy a reasonably not ripoffish priced Space Squash if I came across it as I did own that ages ago.  Glad I have the US library as ugh...just ugh.

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Yeah the two options currently out for flash just kind of suck, one less than the other, but both only slowly allow one game at a time to be loaded into its storage. The less annoying one at least doesn't make you have to use padded roms to fill the entire storage so it even works (the flash boy.)  Sad really, because another was made that uses a SD card, even has a nice little e-ink panel on it to pick games too from the cart itself, but it's not in production.

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18 hours ago, Austin said:

I still need to get mine modded. I have the Virtual Tap board, but still have to send it to someone to have it installed. And then I need a flash cart.. *sigh*.

 

Stuff's not cheap. :(

 

I'm new to this. Vintex64 says they're busy with Virtual Boy mods, what are the benefits of such?

 

Yes they're indeed expensive, just spent over $1000 on Gundam and Space Invaders (repros), 3 prototypes + Flash Boy+, and another spare VB.

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On 1/29/2019 at 10:14 AM, nick3092 said:

Each eye display/LCD panel is attached to the main unit via a ribbon cable to allow for the movement of the focus adjustment. It's pretty common for the glue holding them down to let go, and the cables stop making good contact. And will cause all kinds of graphical glitches.

 

 

Yeah, both of mine are having that :(

Anybody got a reliable guy for fixes who's not going to try putting it in the oven? ?

 

One of mine is one of those rental case units. Got it at the thrift store for $50 somewhere about 2009--wife thought I got ripped off. 

I didn't have an AC adaptor-adaptor before that one, but I'd probably still rather run on batteries.

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Over $1000 for that?  Rubles?  A reproduced VB game should be around $50, if you got repops of 3 protos from them, same value so we're up to $250.  YOu really didn't spend $750 on a flashboy and a vb did you??

 

 

The reliable fix is an easy but delicate one.  You pop it open, remove the 2 screws holding in the LED PCB which a ribbon cable is attached to it horribly with glue.  Gently done, but roughly explained, you burn off the glue and a bit of the super thin ribbon cable exterior away from the thin copper leads.  Then with a good healthy use of flux and a thin enough iron tip, you drag some solder from the exposed copper to the correct contact on the PCB until they're all good.  If for some horrid reason the ribbon is roasted or just done, it's a nightmare, but individual wires one at a time can be soldered at both ends joining it that way.  Once it is done, odds are something else will fail long before that gives out.

 

And running batteries isn't great, 3-4 hours use, but then again if you just regularly pop them into a charger if you go that route it's not going to add up ridiculously fast.

Edited by Tanooki
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1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

Over $1000 for that?  Rubles?  A reproduced VB game should be around $50, if you got repops of 3 protos from them, same value so we're up to $250.  YOu really didn't spend $750 on a flashboy and a vb did you??

 

Well here are the breakdowns:

 

$500 for English SD Gundam an Space Invaders (not sure if this is the original JP copy but both are high). If you're interested in Space Squash you can also reach out to Michael.

 

http://www.gooddealgames.com/inventory/Nintendo Virtual Boy.html

 

$287 after shipping for 3 proto games and FB+ from Vintex64

 

$350 for another JP Virtual Boy.

 

All these add up quickly.

Edited by vincewy
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42 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

And running batteries isn't great, 3-4 hours use, 

 

That's about half a decade worth in the virtual boy world! More than enough time for:

  • A couple credits in vertical force,
  • realize red alarm isn't what I remembered it being,
  • a couple more credits on galactic pinball,
  • remember that I suck at telroboxer, (no need to play to confirm)
  • and spend the rest of my time on nester's funky bowling.
  • critical: remember to remove the batteries when I'm done, because 'I'm good for a while' after that 90 min marathon.

 

Not that I don't love my virtual boy, I just only need to play it--probably 4 more times in my life.

 

Edited by Reaperman
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3 hours ago, vincewy said:

 

I'm new to this. Vintex64 says they're busy with Virtual Boy mods, what are the benefits of such?

 

Yes they're indeed expensive, just spent over $1000 on Gundam and Space Invaders (repros), 3 prototypes + Flash Boy+, and another spare VB.

Virtual Tap is a video-out mod to play on a television. My goal is to use it to stream the VB, while still playing on real hardware.

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The other day I was reading about a Virtual Boy emulator that used Anaglyph 3D (red/cyan glasses, like from old 3D movies) to make the graphics pop. Anyone ever try that? 
 

(my virtual boy was a Blockbuster demo unit and I had my fun with it, but I’m curious to dabble again, so long as it’s free and doesn’t require me to scrounge 90s tech)

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There's no good deal there at good deal games...ouch.

 

Vintex I was pretty close as I last remembered those around 50/ea and 100-110 on the FB+ and I just checked, still are.  The others, that's insane asking that on a bootleg.

 

$285 for a hacked original cart pintout on another board with a swiped english translation, and then a generic english copy of the manual and box is nuts.  I've never seen a repop that high before.  Space Invaders loose I think is a $300-500 game for VB for a legit one, so you basically bought bootlegs for that much.

 

$350 isn't bad at all for a complete VB whatever region it may be so that was pretty good.  Baddealgames is on crack, sorry, but that was insane.  Uncletuck makes those types of manuals and boxes, or at least did a couple years ago, and they were nothing like that level of cost, but his print quality was #1.  He was around $80 for a custom box, manual, tray, inserts...everything but the game and he did them as one offs when people requested them, had they been done in bulk price drops.

 

@Flojomojo I think that was the canceled but basically done vbjin, and if not that, earlier ones did it, one called dragon something I forget did.  I've got glasses like that and they worked great.  Sadly not updated since 2013 at least for this build -- https://www.emulator-zone.com/doc.php/virtualboy/vbjin.html  There is a more recent OVR build that handles those 3d goggles so maybe that'll work with or without depending how into the weeds it is requiring that.  https://www.virtual-boy.com/tools/vbjin-ovr/

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So there are anaglyph glasses that don't make you look like an idiot, then! ?

They should indeed work well with the Virtual Boy since it's monochrome anyway. Anaglyph is terrible for color, though, but the main problem is using them with a PC monitor for instance, because everything that's white or light (so a lot of things unless you use dark mode with everything), especially YouTube's interface, will burn your eyes. ?

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You can run a VB emulator in VR as well and supposedly it works quite well. I've still yet to try it. My only concern would be controller usage. Pretty much no modern controller has fully replicated the VB's unique layout. It just wouldn't feel the same.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Good on you, given the scarcity of flash kits for these, and given what they do sell for anyway, you're better off with just english cheap(perspective here) nice copies of the few unique Japanese games to round it all out.  The homebrew for the thing has stalled and sputtered pretty badly with largely just trashy low rent learning jobs than actual quality games to play outside of Street Fighter (hyper fighting) and little else which you can get a copy of and recommend highly.

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Well, kind of.  Bound High was a finished unpublished game.  Faceball wasn't finished and wasn't completed either that's why there are two copies you can find.  One of them is incomplete and had the lower amount of puzzles to do and the menu will not change to other puzzles but loop, and the other version someone took all the legit FB2000 maps from I think it was Gameboy and slapped them in there so the full menu worked and had choices or it was that and a mix of made up ones, it's the preferred one.  Space Pinball was just a CES/E3 style floor demo, it's incomplete, and parts of it don't work right as it never was finished, yet it's cool because it's utterly different than Galactic Pinball so it's like a new game in a way.

 

I wish someone would find and release the finished Dragon Hopper. 😕

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  • 2 weeks later...
7 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Space Pinball is like getting a whole new set of tables for Galactic Pinball, which is one of the major reasons to play the system.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Definitely want to give it a try if I ever manage to get a VB flash cart. Galactic Pinball is one of my favorite games on the system.

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I had one of those annoyingly strange flashboy+ units a few years back and tried it.  It's similar, very, but with some good changes.  The problem is, the rom as it sits, unless someone patched it in the last couple of years isn't friendly.  You get ONE ball if I remember right, and then you don't get a high score, it kicks you back to the menu so it's a pro-pinball gamers game where it's like a one life, one hit point type hardcore video game.

I was more active around those who did the homebrew, patches, etc in 2019 early 20, and a few of us would poke a stick at people there was some interest, but no one ever tried to patch the game so it would play all the balls, save those high scores, and behave like galactic pinball in that respect to feel 'right' to be actually enjoyable.  it's not unheard of because Faceball was incomplete, it had stages, a good number, but half what it should have so the game would just re-do the existing set on the back series. Someone then made a 'remastered' hack that lifted all the original FB2000 arenas into it making a complete title.

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  • 10 months later...

Wow, this thread hasn't been bumped in a while.

 

Finally purchased a Hyperboy flash cart, which means I can also finally dig into this library again. Also, one step closer to having reason to get it A/V modded (figured it'd be best to have access to the library first).

 

I hope my ribbons have held up. I did the "oven trick" years ago and it worked, and it has been stored in a cool environment, but my expectations/hopes aren't all that high right now. We'll see, haha.

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