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The Official Virtual Boy Thread!


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I've been tempted by that kit but it hurts wanting to drop so much money on a cart that only holds one game at a time, and knowing I have the entire US library too.  Dividing up the costs of Insmouse, Gundam(which I'd likely hate due to genre), Space Invaders, and Bowling it doesn't make much sense to me so I just ignore its existence.  If a cheaper option other than metal shell+e-ink shows up which like an everdrive can house a library and play off a menu system popped up I'd be on board.  Right now it's too premium and limited for need, but anyone with a system and few to no games, it's a life saver in these days god awful market pricing on stuff.

 

Also the oven trick doesn't hold up typically over time and I wouldn't be comfy re-heating such a frail cable.  I'd get it solder fixed.

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  • 1 year later...
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On 8/4/2024 at 2:27 PM, segasonicfan_designs said:

Virtual Boy ended up being the most popular thing at my booth at VCF this year!
also, was my first time ever booth-ing.  Pretty awesome meeting people in the scene and some of them being like, "yeah I have your board inside my Virtual Boy!" :D
Amazingly, the kids didn't destroy the tripod hah

Virtual Boy display.jpg

got a video up of the show now :)

 

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It's nice to see people still care, as novelty as it is, as much as people like to collectively delude themselves how bad it is, it really isn't that bad.  What's bad was the tiny library and Nintendo killing it off early because...n64 that delayed over a year.  It got a rocky start but had some good games and better appearing and would have appeared given another 6 months too which is a shame.  At least some people now are making new stuff that isn't utter garbage so that's a good thing.

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Thanks.  I guess the thing is for me, even if we put to the side now 5 years ago me going on this rapid fire massive savings through smart means crusade to nail down the whole US library, most of it complete too, and then some I always did like it.  I got one when it came out.  The few games (5-6) I had I played a lot and got at the time quite good at too.  Unlike most, which is why (beyond penny pinching too) we are where we are at now... I read the manuals most don't.  I never had a headache, no vertigo, no strain, nothing.  I could sit in it for 30min or well over an hour or two fine and it was good.  THe library for quantity sucks, but quality wise, outside of that baseball game, and arguably maybe water world depending what you want in a game (it's like robotron and cobra triangle had a baby) isn't that great either.  Most of them though are, had they been flat games on the Gameboy they'd have sold, some of them into the millions no doubt.  It was puffed up, dumbed down, then rudely dumped because of a rocky start and their wet dream of a Summer of Ultra 64 in 1995 that never happened and ended up being Sept of 1996.  That added 1 year worth of space would have had the F-Zero game, a real Mario title, Dragon Hopper which seemingly works like Link to the Past/Link's Awakening, the finished Bound HIgh that was leaked, the Faceball title we got leaked, and notably more looking at the scraps at Planet Virtual Boy.  It had legs, and well, they were lead piped by Nintendo mafia style. 

 

They've had times since to honor it, and they do it in weak ways with pop ups of appearances in games at a prop or trophy to a few hot takes of it in mini games in Wario Ware titles too... yet no compilation, no downloads, even of all things on the 3DS shop which would have been ideal...nothing.

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Another?  I guess you're kind of thinking of Insmouse House?  I don't know if the setup has the power to pull it off, if worked from the ground up, but that meme just BEGS for it.  I'd like to see someone see if they could recreate a fully playable and working Doom E1M1 on there, and depending how hungry and functional that is, perhaps keep adding to it.  The game pad with its setup would be really solid.  But if that's asking too much, even in a stripped form removing floors/ceilings like SNES did, then ...Wolfenstein?

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I loved virtual boy, the hate for the thing is completely overblown (not the hate itself, but rather the reason) it is essentially similar hardware to gameboy advance, one of my favorite systems of all time, but you always get the "it'll give you eye cancer" number from people who don't want to like it. I played a ton bitd, and never had issues, even having some hours long sessions. Its really about the competence of the user, and adjusting the screen, once its properly adjusted, zero problems, even if you blow past the 30 minute warning that keeps popping up.

 

I only quit playing, like many loved systems, due to no new releases, and its really small library (something like gameboy, there's always more to find)

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The hate for 3D is overblown in general, even though I can understand the red screen of the Virtual Boy makes it feel like it's worse. It's incredible how many people consider 3D is a gimmick as if they didn't see the reality in 3D constantly.

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Time and again I said it, you just said it... simps, kool-aid sucking simps.  They don't read the manual.  They don't read the forced popup about adjusting, then taking the 15min break Y/N box either.  What they do read, LIARS on the internet, or fake rage losers like AVGN playing itup like it'll give you vertigo, eye tumors, brain damage, vision loss, causes vomit, the works -- basically the warning label on any medication ad that should never be aired at all on TV in the last 20 years.  It's hipster cool to shit on the VB for fake reasons.  Sure some legit people have medical problems who get vertigo, can't dea with the thought of small spaces, get nausea(just as many have just on a CRT with DOOM since 1993), and the works.  But it's bullshit to say a Virtual Boy like for 6or7/10 people will fuck you up.  NO, it won't.

 

What's worse, and not just the cut short life over the failed N64 95 appearance, is the fact that what little library this thing has, outside of how mediocre to poor Virtual Baseball is, everything else is at least a B tier title, quite a few A tier games, at least stateside.  Virtual Lab is the utter worst thing ever, incomplete really, and the Gundam game is fine but has bugs to exploit but isn't awful either IF you like those strategy SD Gundam tactical games it's on par with the rest back then.  That library, and I own it, it's actually worth experiencing.  It's why I'll defend the thing in random places and correct peoples garbage about it, nicely at first, less nice if they double down.

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1 hour ago, SlidellMan said:

Well said, Tanooki. I see homebrew redeeming the Virtual Boy the same way it is doing for the Atari 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar.

It is, it's making waves now at a quicker pace.  Sadly almost every scrap has been utter trash, pet projects to learn, but very poor examples of a game that would be quality.  Even the few that kind of tried some have slapped illegitimately to carts to profit off it like that insecticide game are just not good.  The Blox games are basic puzzles, a bit light, but at least there's a spark of something good on that. The real game changer came from the ground up design of Street Fighter 2 Turbo as Hyper Fighting on there.  That game is god tier level homebrew, the quality is just oozes feels commercial, and that set a bar.  Since that and around that you have had a few drips of prototypes from a finished Bound High to an incomplete Faceball that some had patched to change that to a fully fleshed out remix debugged with a full true set of many stages into some half breed.  Beyond that, it has been a coasting until project VUE hit, games are coming from that, but on the other side that genius part/flash kit maker kevin mellott popped out that wicked Virtual Warzone tank game that feels a good bit like the classic battlezone giving a taste of more to come.  VB development in the 2020s is finally taking off, and the few gems we got from the half bred faceball, the other 2 I noted, and we have a project vue racing game due soon as well, the library is really starting to grow.

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Preach it yo!

 

I've never understood the seeming out and out hate for 3d. Like you, I was born with a congenital birth defect of having stereoscopic vision, which I use all the time, and would love to use more in games and movies too. Unfortunately, Joe blow average public voted against it so hard, those of us who want it literally can't get it.

 

I loved virtual boy, and 3DS (still play that all the time) several peoples PS3 consoles (supports 3d for most stuff, if you have a tv) and bluray 3d movies. Heck, 3d will encourage me to go to the theatre even and watch movies even if its not one I'm absolutely certain I want to see. But outside the occasional theatre release, all that stuff is gone now :( I even dug the crappy anaglyphic 3d from bitd.

 

The reasons people come up with for not wanting it though, just mind blowing. Like "but I don't even notice it" um, yeah, if its good, you won't, or shouldn't notice it. Ill say, I damn sure notice when I go back to 2d after a 3d session though, good 3d or not. You may not notice, but your eyes and brain certainly do. Oh, or the piss poor excuse of "but everybody doesn't properly see 3D" um, so? So the rest of us should do without because a small number might not benefit? By that logic, HD is a waste (I have low res eyeballs, so legit don't see it, but do have incredible color depth perception, so despite not seeing the resolution, still benefit from BD and 4K just for color) but not everybody benefits, so do without. Oh, some people are colorblind, so don't benefit, so the rest of us should do without, or some people don't see at all, the rest of us should do without.

 

Now, the real reason 3d didn't go over, more than anything, was price. 10x the price to do 3d? In an era when the basic 2d screen would set you back a grand plus, yeah, can you say willing, but not able? I couldn't afford 10+ grand for a tv at the time. Just as they started dropping in price, and I became financially sound enough to do dumb shit like plunk down way to much for a tv, they declare it a failure and pull the plug. WTF!? Ill put it this way, 4k, which people are currently jizzing themselves over, if instead of $50 more for the 4k set, it was 10x the standard HD price, you think it would be selling? Heh, not that it is, really. Five ish years and still less than a thousand titles? To put it in perspective, 1997, DVD releases, and had over 800 titles, and broke 1000 by the end of the year.

 

I digress though, hopefully 4k will be the end of meer resolution whoring, and we can get some actual advances in video tech. Yes we could do 8k, but that absolutely exceeds human eye resolution, so anything beyond that is just preying on ignorant, no, stupid people. Ignorance implies they can't look up easily verify able facts.

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Yeah I think I get what you mean, costs did kill it.  The green LED was as cheap as red then, but blue only recently that mystery was cracked back then and it was a magnitude of expononential order more expensive.  I think I read somewhere a R G B trio of LEDs would have like 2 to 3x the price of the thing, NO one would have paid that other than rich technophiles and it would have been so DOA.  It would be like trying to find one of those mythic joke systems with like a few K in the wild at most.

 

Virtual Boy was basically killed because of doing it 'right' price, because the N64 supposedly released 3-4Q of 1995(which it didn't), and selfish whiny bitch baby attitude from the dawning era of the immature gaming media man chidren who were held less accountable in the dawn/pre-internet era where that shit would have been called out.  Price as is and more had it been colored entirely, a stunted console launch, and selfishness harmed it over and over again.

 

My pair of them mostly sleep, the personal one still in the case, the other on display on a higher shelf to see.  It's not I don't like the games, it's the time/convenience factor.  If I had a permanent counter space i could just drop it on and leave there to crank on at the flip of a switch I'd put more into it guaranteed.

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On 8/27/2024 at 11:04 PM, SlidellMan said:

Well said, Tanooki. I see homebrew redeeming the Virtual Boy the same way it is doing for the Atari 7800, Lynx, and Jaguar.

Not going to happen. It has an accessibility problem that none of those platforms currently experience. Sure, you can emulate, but then outside of a few VR enthusiasts, you lose its most compelling features (the 3D and its unique controller). The VB will continue to see homebrew, but not to the level that has been experienced on Atari's past consoles.

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On 8/29/2024 at 1:54 PM, Austin said:

Not going to happen. It has an accessibility problem that none of those platforms currently experience. Sure, you can emulate, but then outside of a few VR enthusiasts, you lose its most compelling features (the 3D and its unique controller). The VB will continue to see homebrew, but not to the level that has been experienced on Atari's past consoles.

Well I almost agree, they had one opportunity for a good many years and blew it entirely, the 3DS.  They could have made a physical or download only package (or individual downloads) of each of the VB games they controlled or could get permission to do.  The 3DS would have been ideal to drop that visual straight into that screen and not lose the effect while gaining not being in those goggles either.  Now it's just a VR wall.

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Yeah it was always a mind blow to me that Nintendo didn't drop VB games on the 3ds. Its not like their bad games or anything. Yes, monochrome (and had been done I would have required original 'red' mode) but Nintendo could have DX-ified the games making them color, if they thought that was a real issue.

 

Oh, nintendo made two dedicated 3d systems, what really got me was lack of FPS (VB might have admittedly been a bit weak, but 3ds?) GBA and DS both had a decent number of those. Hell, I've got COD for DS, so more modern fps was absolutely possible. Racing games. Yes, 3DS got a few, but nowhere close to what should have been. And Adventure games, think elder scrolls type stuff. Very minimal, or no launch of what I believe to be the top 3 gaming generas that SHOULD be on 3d, and if more people could have experienced it properly, I can guarantee the "3D sux though" attitude would change. 

 

Some of that stuff, once you experience it, its pretty hard to go back, heck, I wouldn't have if not absolutely forced to. Nintendo had two shots to showcase 3d and imo blew it both times. Think it might be time for someone else to try, preferably someone without some weird aversion to 3D. Maybe it could be Atari's thing?

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Don't know if that's intended as a joke, but I'd be all for a 3d switch. A handheld would be the best current option for 3d imo, as you can control access to 3d, rather than a console which would rely on people acquiring a maybe compatible TV. Just uh, do me a favor and leave that eye tracking crap off. I'd never seen that work very well, and always turned it off anyways.

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I'd be up to it too, but I think the problem then would be the same as the 3DS, it would be hobbled.  They can only charge X amount for their dockable handheld model before it gets too leaning into walled garden PC that's a console market that's like what $500 on average?  Because of that, and how Nintendo wisely won't sell hardware at a loss, they couldn't make the system too much more powerful than the existing switch because they'd need to do as with the 3DS, make room for a 2nd off set display in 3D mode, the same thing that even decades ago hobbled the NEC chip in the VB.  That's why the VB was more SNES/GB like than something more, because it had to 1/2 the potential to split to 2 screens doing 2 different displays to sync it up.  Something similar but more modern would be in play here.  Would you rather have a 1080p/1440(4k) style setup on the dock which can do something north of a PS4 south of a PS5 era type of output that'll keep it relevant for another 7-10 years?  Or, would you rather it do 3D, get hobbled unless you nuked the point of 3D, if it allowed that, which would not let it do m uch better in 3D mode than it does now?  That's not to say what is now is bad, but if that were the cap over 3D I don't think it would be worth it.  And then the vultures would be all over them whining how it's a shit handheld that can't do its namesake if developers go for power over visual fluff to NOT do 3D because of far better performance.  It would be fighitng itself as much as the media manbaby trolls.

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I was serious, but cautious. 😉 Given the new system will be more powerful than the current Switch, if it sticks to a 720p screen (which could be the case since the Steam Deck didn't try 1080p), I think it would be possible for it to display 3D at 30fps OR 2D at 60 fps while offering (even slightly) better graphics than the Switch. Which is a good deal imho because 3D makes 30fps look better than it is. And that would make games like Super Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild look completely new. Of course I'm sure some graphic whores would dismiss 3D to pick 60fps, until they (maybe) make the effort to really try 3D...

 

BUT one of the problems is because of 4K, raytracing, and stuff, graphic cards have to use many techniques these days to improve performance (like dynamic resolution), and several of them are 2D processes. Actually, if you take the example of Mario Kart 8, a lot of particle effects are pre-rendered 2D, so 3D would give them away. Maybe it would still look good, but it depends.

 

And most of all, the timing is not right. I was hoping Avatar 2 would bring back 3D a little, but Nintendo didn't even bother to make a 3D version of its Mario movie afaik, which is a shame imho (selling the 3DSwitch with the exclusive 3D version of the movie could be a nice move, though 😋). Even VR is fledgling, and I'm angry at VR apostles because a lot of them criticized 3D to distance themselves from it since it was unpopular, which was imho a douche move. There's no VR without 3D (well, yes, there is, but it sucks). So it would be pretty bold for Nintendo to actually lead the return of the trend... We'll see. I think Samsung just showed a new auto-stereoscopic screen for instance, so maybe it will start something, maybe not.

 

(by the way I watched again Avatar 2 on my 3D 4K TV last night and OMG it's visually incredible)

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