I enjoy imagining how various game types could look and work like on the Virtual Boy and would be interested in learning what you guys are having in mind. What are you dreaming to see on Virtual Boy?

Let’s all go crazy in this thread and sketch our wildest game ideas in the form of writeups, mockup screenshots or whatever.

Hopefully homebrewers can draw some inspiration, maybe even team up with mockup artists to make their dream a reality. Who knows what can come out of sharing your ideas here! :vb:

$16 and a lifetime supply of barbecue sauce for anyone willing to port REZ to the Virtual Boy!

(here’s a link for those unfamiliar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZL4Cbt-knk)

Those wireframe graphics are just begging to be fleshed out in red and black. (and if memory serves, there was a first person mode as well!)

I’d love to see a port of Atari’s Assault. The game could be a true gem on Vb: two joysticks, top down view with nice “3D” effect when the tank jumps, rotations, fast pacing combats…

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=6935

Here is a view of the control panel: http://www.arcade-museum.com/images/109/1097074134.jpg

(on the attached file I redrawed the right tower, the left one is not modified. I also redefined the tank and the bullets, and the grass)

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Just did a play through of Red Zone for the Sega Genesis. This is a very interesting game and has some awesome 3D depth effects that would work amazingly well on the VB. It even has cutscenes in red and black!

Actually Red Zone would look pretty awesome on the VB. Not to mention it has one of the most fitting names for a VB game ever.

I’ve been mulling over an idea for a game this last week, but again the story is one of those “don’t spoil it until the big reveal” things, so I can’t really say what makes it so great! )-:< But hey, a marketing blurb wouldn't hurt: __________ Name: To Exist
Genre: Probably RPG, but if not, then vanilla adventure
Synopsis:
There you are. Others are here with you, but there isn’t anything here, and no one can remember what happened prior to right now. Slowly, the world begins to take form, and you and the others can craft it into just the kind place you’d like it to be. But a sense of dread starts to cover the land when you come across some people who claim to know what’s going on. Seemingly immortal, they tell you that universes come and go periodically, and only they are protected from the oblivion that will overcome everything you’ve ever known. Not all hope is lost, for there is a way to persist yourself! How can you survive? What will happen to the world, and when will it end? Who is the mysterious figure that the events of the world seem to focus on?
__________

Sounds pretty grim at a glance, right? But the tone of the game is exactly the opposite: it’s full of looking for the potential in every moment and making your dreams a reality. The fact that the universe is doomed to erasure stands as a stark contrast to the bright outlook of the content at large.

As a citizen of this otherworldly realm, you have the power to conjure up manifestations of your own ideas and implement them into the world. This requires a sort of power source from a free-floating form of energy that naturally coheres into non-sentient organisms known as Figments. When you defeat a Figment, its energy becomes your own, and you become empowered to create in proportion to the energy absorbed. It’s through this means that you and the others create the world at the dawn of time, and through this means that the events of the game transpire.

Departing from traditional territory, this story is not one of good-versus-evil as so many games tend to be, nor is it one of survival-of-the-fittest. It’s a tale of understanding, and coming to terms with the notion that everything you’ve ever worked for may one day be lost–the importance of focusing on what matters most… whatever that is. Nonetneless, the game still has an extraordinarily uplifting mood, as everyone you encounter has their own hopes and aspirations, and through Figment energy, everyone can work to make their dreams come true. The game straddles the border of hope and despair, and your character sets out on a quest to discover the truth of exactly what’s going on… and find out what can be done about it.

The game plays in a sort of episodic way: you travel from place to place interacting with the local populous. You listen to their stories, go on adventures with them, and solve mysteries together. As you progress, you start to pick up on the true nature of the world, but as your understanding grows, the amount of time you have left shrinks. In your travels, you learn of individuals who existed before you did: people who originated in some prior universe and are somehow immune to the destruction at the end of all things. These individuals, known as Immortals, are your best bet to learning the truth, as well as learning why they never vanished when the rest of their worlds did.

At the pinnacle of mystique is an individual the Immortals refer to as “the Subject”. They don’t seem all that different from anyone else, but they can manifest their ideas without Figment energy and apparently have the ability to travel through time… it’s hard to say, really. But if the Immortals think highly of the Subject, then there are probably more answers there.

Since the game is largely a web of interconnected sidequests, there is no one route you can take through the storyline. The choices you make–the places you go and people you interact with–influence the progression of the game and state of the world at large. This will hopefully lead to greater replay value because A) you don’t necessarily get all of the content after the first time or two through the game, and B) there’s ample room for experimentation to see just how much you can experience in a single playthrough (or the most efficient way to do everything).

Completing the smaller story arcs awards you with tokens of a sort that you can put towards improving your character. This directly encourages exploration and meeting lots of other characters in the game, as you don’t get to win by simply hitting the major plot points: you’ll be too weak to advance to more challenging content (and there’s no experienced-based level-up system here). Instead, take your time to have a look around and you’ll be much better off because of it.

I’m still toying with ideas for mechanics. I have some ideas for how character build and abilities will work, but nothing is set in stone just yet. The open-ended structure of the game means it’s very possible that it can be implemented as a 2-player RPG, where players can pop in and out of another’s game at any time without upsetting their own. I’m even trying to see if I can come up with a way for two linked systems to contribute to a larger, simultaneous world to experience the game in. The system has a link port, doggonnit, and it’s my civic duty to make use of it.

That sounds like a VERY interesting idea, Guy. I like the departure of the standard good vs evil plot, and what you’re putting in it’s place sounds very refreshing. I like the general attitude the game would have. And the 2 player aspect? If that actually came to be, mind = blown.

Has anyone played The Unfinished Swan by Giant Sparrow? It is a concept game where you paint the world around you from white to black. Tossing out blobs of black paint allow the world to be revealed, so that you can explore it. Along the way you uncover story elements that explain this world and find hidden objects that can be used to purchase different objects that later affect game play. It is an interesting take on a first person perspective game. It uses very simple graphics and unfolds at a smooth slow pace. I think it would work well, in some form, on the VB. Going from black to shades of red to reveal a 3D world.

Guy Perfect wrote:
I’ve been mulling over an idea for a game…

Holy crap… your idea sounds epic!

Making a game like that for the Virtual Boy would truly be revolutionary!

[Guy Perfect]

I’m glad my idea was well-received, even if I couldn’t elaborate on it a whole lot. (-: It means a lot to me!

And I’m a bit conflicted. I’m not really at a point where I can put a lot of time into such a game, so I’m not all that gung-ho about making it in the near future. But if I don’t, then I’ll be sitting here on the lore all by myself thinking, “I bet this would be a powerful narrative if only I could share it with someone.”

So here’s what I’m willing to do… First, ask yourself if you really want the story spoiled up-front, or wait until such a time that the game comes to fruition. To draw a parallel, think of The Sixth Sense, where Bruce Willis’s character was dead the whole time (spoiler alert!). Now imagine if you knew that the first time you saw the movie… If you’re still morbidly curious about whatever this oh-so-amazing plot point is that I keep talking about, shoot me a PM and I’ll tell you.

For everyone else, I’ve got a few more YouTunes links–mostly from my Chiptunes menu–showcasing some of the aesthetics I have in mind:

Mythology/Creation: Alinos #2 – Metroid Prime Hunters
Mood (potential in every moment): Godisregn – Malmen and Zalza
Mood (a fine day for success): Mind of a Dreamer – BeaT
Mood (destiny is what we make of it): Sunstreak – Radix
Mood (the things I want to do): Sunny Hollow – Wiklund
Mythology/Reminiscence: “Wapod” – Kirby’s Adventure Wii

• This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by Guy Perfect.

I don’t care if it takes years, I don’t want to spoil the surprise!

I like the chiptunes you’ve linked, just enough to get a little taste of the vibe you’re going for.

I’ve decided that even though I can’t draw good pictures, I’ll just have to find a way to make the game with sucky pictures instead. (-: I mean, really, think of some of the simpler cartoons you’ve seen. Do they not work well even with sucky graphics?

Look at that thing. It’s a circle with a rectangle for a body. If Craig McCracken could make The Powerpuff Girls out of that, then I gosh darn better be able to do something… I’ll have to think on it and see what I come up with.

Guess I’d better start fleshing out the details of the game, then. They look like they’ll come into play sooner than expected.

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South Park literally started out made of construction paper.

People preferred my stick men comics to the ones where I actually flesh it out. It could be my crappy drawing skills, or maybe it was easier for me to inject personality into the simpler drawings.

Or maybe sometimes simplicity can tell a story better than complexity.

I always thought a haunted house simulator with a Texas Chainsaw massacre theme would be neat. You could play as leather face and hunt down as many victims in an aloted time or, you could be the hunted and try and survive for as long as possible.

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This thread deserves more views.

Also I’ve seen these mockups on a pixel art site:

http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/16450.htm

http://pixeljoint.com/pixelart/54631.htm

I’d be willing to help create an RPG. I can do all the writing, art work and music, if anyone else would like to write coding and help with development? I’d totally be in for the long haul. It might be a great segway into getting development teams together to create more homebrew games.

I update with a little idea I’d love to see realized, but infortunately I don’t have the skills to do it by myself, even if it should be easy to do.

I spend much time drawing in stereoscopy. But I can’t really see what I’ve done because red and blue anaglyph doesn’t work exactly like a full rendition on two displays. So I wonder if anyone could create a little piece of software to display anaglyphs on VB.

The software itself should just be two paths to complete, one for the right view and one for the left view. Then the software could write the two pictures inside an image viewer inside a VB rom. You then put the padded rom onto the flashboy, start the VB and can look at your picture in stereo on your VB !

I know the 3dVBConverteer, but it works differently, as it cannot “invent” the missing pixels. For example:

On the right view, 3dVBConverter cannot recreate the pixel along the right border. So you have to create two separate pictures to obtains full view.

So, is there anyone willing to help me (and the community altogether) by creating a software to merge two 2D pictures into one viewer rom ?

If I understand you right, I’d love to see it realized too. But it seems to me, you’re mixing up three different topics?

– Anaglyphs (color-composited 3D images for the corresponding 3D glasses)
– 3D conversion (converting a single 2D image to a 3D image = recontructing a second 2D image from slightly offset perspective)
– image-to-ROM converter for VB (merging left and right 3D image files into a Stereo-Viewer-ROM for VB)

I’d totally support the last one – and KR155E already provided me a nice workaround for this: a template project for VBDE 1.2.0, in which I can replace placeholder images (a fixed count of three images) with my own 3D images and then follow some easy steps to compile them into a ROM and finally browse them on VB – with zero developer skills 😀
KR155E also told me, that he will include an improved “stereo viewer template” in the upcoming release of VBDE :thumpup:

I guess, this is what you’re looking for too? If you already want to try this workaround with the current VBDE version, I could post the current stereo viewer template with a little step-by-step guide …

Yes, it’s totally what i’m looking for. I work currently with red and blue anaglyph on my computer but the result is bad. Or at least, it would be better on a VB.

Here is another example I made with ProMotion NG: the spaceship in 2001: Space Oddyssey. I think the red and blue looks good because I conceived the picture from start with anaglyph in mind, but it’s not as good as it would be on the VB. So all I need is a little software where I indicate left picture, right picture, and the software saves them as a rom, 2001.vb for my example. Then I put this rom into the Flashboy, and I can admire my work in full 3D. (of course the spaceship has too much colors, I used 12 colours, but it’s just an example).

It would be to the artist to be sure his pictures are in the good format (384*224, maybe .gif or .png, no alpha, 4 colours)

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The software I use for this is Virtual Boy Development Environment (VBDE) – which actually is a developer software, but I can use KR155E’s Stereo Viewer template without any programming skills. So this may not be the handy tool you have in mind, but it’s a nice workaround that works pretty well for me to visualize 3d images on the VB harware.

In consultation with KR155E, I’m going to post his Stereo Viewer template in a couple of days, along with a step-by-step guide on how I’m using it …

STEREO BOY wrote:
I’m going to post his Stereo Viewer template in a couple of days, along with a step-by-step guide on how I’m using it …

Oh, man … 😯
So sorry for that delay … 😉
But finally, the tool is released … happy ROM making! :thumpup: 😉

VUE-MASTER Template:
• included in VBDE (both Light & Pro version)

Tutorials (also included in VBDE download):
• How to prepare 3D images for the VIRTUAL BOY
• How to make a ROM from your PNG files

Demo ROM:
• The VUE-MASTER Demo Reel | download