Hello all, I’m new here, after purchasing my first Virtual Boy. Here are the events that led up to this:

So I was about 10 years old when the VB first came out, and I have always been a techical-minded person; I was fascinated with “virtual reality” and stereoscopic 3D aspects of the VB. My parents were very anti-videogame and the most I had managed to get out of them was a gameboy with a few games. I pretty much knew I wouldn’t ever get a VB, but I still wanted one. We had a local movie rental place that also rented games, and they were known to have a few console displays from time to time. They received a VB demo unit and set it on the counter where you pay. Every time we went my parents wouldn’t let me go near it, because they were paranoid about it hurting my eyes or whatever. So I would keep track of them and when they weren’t looking I would run up to the counter and try to play for a minute. Needless to say I didn’t get much out of that, and I never really got to experience the VB. But as I got older, I never really forgot about it. To me it always seemed “ominous” and “mysterious” in a way, and I wanted to play it more than anything.

We moved to another town, and I became friends with the neighbors. After about a year, I found out the older brother had a VB in his room, so I finally worked up the courage to ask if I could play it. They tried to find it in his closet, but they never did, so I again did not get to play it.

Then when I was either in 8th or 9th grade I was asking some of my friends if they remembered the Virtual Boy. Most didn’t, but one guy responded, “I heard they’re selling those really cheap at Best Buy right now.” I hadn’t heard that, so I got really excited. Maybe it was fate that I hadn’t played it for this long and now I get to buy one for like $20 on clearance. So the next day I convinced someone to drive me there and I practically ran back to the games section. I couldn’t find any VB’s on the shelves so I asked the nearest employee. He knew what I was talking about, so he checked inventory. Turns out they had just sold the last of their VB stock earlier that morning, so I was out of luck.

Fast forward to today. I’m in college and I’m sort of in that nostalgic/revist-childhood phase, so naturally I’ve been interested in the VB. I’ve been keeping an eye on ebay auctions for VB’s for the past couple of years, but I never pulled the trigger. I finally decided “It’s time” so yesterday I bought a good-condition/working VB with all the important accessories and 6 games. It should get here some time this week. Needless to say, I’m incredibly excited! 😀 I am also an electrical/computer engineer, and the programming aspect of the VB really fascinates me. Perhaps if I get some free time I might try toying around with some code. I see there is a small homebrew community here and I think that’s awesome! I didn’t realize there were so many people passionate about the VB. If you go to youtube, all the videos about the VB are filled with ignorance and about how “it will make you go blind” or whatever. Totally bogus. Anyway, thanks for listening to my long story, that’s about it. I’m looking forward to revisiting some fond memories.

Welcome to Planet Virtual Boy :thumpup:

I’m here for the incredible long time of a few days :rolleyes
Your story is very good and realy dramatic.

My Story is very short: I live in Germany. There we could NEVER buy a VirtualBoy in any store…

That’s realy sad.
But Ebay is your friend!

Have fun!

Welcome to the club.

RAD:
At least some German magazines reported about the VB… Here in Slovenia, probably the only people who know what a VB is (they claim to have one) are some folks writing for a particular video game magazine.

Welcome and happy gaming – isn’t it great you can get all the stuff you wanted as a kid but never got… 😉

[VBrulez]

Good for you happy 😮 🙂 to hear that youre getting one, and I know you probuly already know this but youre really in for a treat there are so many great games on the system, speaking of games what all games did are you getting with youre system?

• This reply was modified 14 years, 10 months ago by VBrulez.

The games included in the auction are:

– Panic bomber ( Game only )
– Nester’s Funky bowling ( Game only )
– Vertical force ( With box and manual )
– Mario Clash ( With box )
– Red Alarm ( With box and manual )
– Mario tennis x2 ( with 1 manual )

Right now I’m most excited for Red Alarm and Vertical Force, based on the gameplay videos I have seen.

I’m also planning on getting Wario Land and Teleroboxer for sure. I might see if I can get an order in for a Flashboy when the next batch are made as well.

Cool those are some good games nesters funky bowling,and mario clash are pretty fun to. Let me know when you get it in the mail im excited for you 🙂

Nice story, I am from the Netherlands and here they were never released. I do remember hearing about it from friends when I was about 12 years old and wanting it. Though never saw it coming out here. Now a few months ago I got to know about its release and jumped on a few auctions and am enjoying this superb device! So I kinda know your feeling, have fun with it when it arrives!

I’m getting a weird feeling about this VB auction I won. The guy had 100% positive feedback and the auction looked completely legit, but it has been 5 days and I still haven’t gotten the package or even a shipping notice from the seller. I contacted him and he hasn’t contacted me back. It’s like the universe doesn’t want me to have a Virtual Boy!

Give it a little more time. Lots of ebayers are too lazy to mark the item as shipped.

That’s true, but I find it fishy that seller won’t even contact me back. It was supposed to be delivered a couple days ago by US Priority but no sign of it yet. Maybe I’ll get home today and find a VB on my doorstep.

I got my VB package today! The system is in good working order. It was a little dusty/dirty, most likely from being in storage, but I gave it a thorough cleaning and it looks really nice. There are a few hairline scratches on the red eyepieces but they are not noticeable during gameplay. Both displays are in good working order and the 3D effects are awesome.

I’ve played every game in the auction for a few minutes just to check out the graphics. So far I’m pretty addicted to Mario Clash and Mario Tennis, and I like the shooter games as well. Panic Bomber is pretty cool – it reminds me of Tetris Attack, which is my all time favorite puzzle game. Nester’s FB is pretty cool but I could see myself getting tired of that one.

I already have copies of Galactic Pinball, Teleroboxer and Warioland on the way. I think I’ll stop my collection after that. I have no interest in some of the collector games, or Waterworld, haha.

Alright, enough talking, I’m gonna go play more VB.

Glad to hear that you got it :-).

It turns out the seller was having a problem with his email account, which is why he never contacted me. I was getting pretty worried but it all worked out.

Get a FlashBoy later this year and you’ll have your gaming needs fulfilled for the rest of your life (until someone releases a game that’s larger than 2MB)

Welcome. I’m passionate about old video-game consoles including the Virtual Boy but I don’t know a lick of code for the Virtual Boy. I’m very sad it was a failure.

Good to hear you got it finally and it is in perfect working condition! I hope you enjoy your VB as much as I do!!

So is the FlashBoy just used to load ROMs and hombrew games on the VB, or are there other uses I don’t know about? Is there any other way to test your own code on the VB hardware or do you need a flashboy?

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
So is the FlashBoy just used to load ROMs and hombrew games on the VB, or are there other uses I don’t know about? Is there any other way to test your own code on the VB hardware or do you need a flashboy?

You can just load any ROM on it as long as you padded it to 2MB which you can do with the padder that you can download for free here and will be supplied with the Flashboy. The only drawback of the Flashboy is that it does not hold savegames/highscores. Though it still plays the games that use it, after a power cycle the saves/highscores are gone.

There are other ways to test code and all that, but you either have to use an emulator or build your own card as DogP has a tutorial for. If you are good with a soldering iron and know your electronics, you are good. Though it might turn out to be more expensive. If you do this right you can use savegames if you used the right cart though!

TheForce81 wrote:

Vaughanabe13 wrote:
So is the FlashBoy just used to load ROMs and hombrew games on the VB, or are there other uses I don’t know about? Is there any other way to test your own code on the VB hardware or do you need a flashboy?

You can just load any ROM on it as long as you padded it to 2MB which you can do with the padder that you can download for free here and will be supplied with the Flashboy. The only drawback of the Flashboy is that it does not hold savegames/highscores. Though it still plays the games that use it, after a power cycle the saves/highscores are gone.

There are other ways to test code and all that, but you either have to use an emulator or build your own card as DogP has a tutorial for. If you are good with a soldering iron and know your electronics, you are good. Though it might turn out to be more expensive. If you do this right you can use savegames if you used the right cart though!

If it’s not too much trouble, can you link me to the flash cart tutorial? I am a master solderer, 😎 . Just kidding, but I can solder SMD components well and I know electronics so I should be able to handle it.

http://www.projectvb.com/progcart.html

Here are the few different versions! Choose which ever one you like!