Last evening, my two best friends since junior high school, Luke and Jared, surprised me with one of the greatest birthday gifts ever. They don’t have too much interest in the Virtual Boy but usually let me ramble on about it when I feel like doing so, so I was very shocked when I saw that the gifts they had made for me were very special Virtual Boy items indeed. I see two official-looking game boxes for Chris’s homebrew title, VUE Snake, before my eyes, a game that I had just happened to start playing recently and enjoy so much. At first, I am literally speechless and wonder if there could actually be something in one of them that I could logically expect, a working game cartridge of Chris’s game. I think… no. There is no way that my two friends who hardly have any interest in the Virtual Boy at all could have done something like that, for surely they would have had to have contacted at least the 2 people I know that would be necessary for such a thing. But sure enough, I open one of the game boxes and see a very official-looking game cartridge of VUE Snake. My first question was “how the heck did you do this?” And then I found out that they had gotten in touch with both Chris and Richard and got this amazing gift made for me, all the while keeping it a secret so well that I had no clue it was coming all the way up to receiving the gift last evening. But it didn’t end there, for Luke told me to put the game in his Virtual Boy that he hardly ever plays and test it out, and then I see that it is truly a special gift indeed. There on the title screen, beneath “VUE SNAKE” I see a special message to me which reads “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEN! SPECIAL EDITION”, and I am just blown away! I then ask for more details and find out that Luke had contacted Chris and asked if he could help make something special for me for my birthday and Chris gladly did, making both the special version of the game as well as the artwork for the sticker on the game cartridge, which Luke also used to make the artwork on one of the boxes. Luke simply used Photoshop on an emulator’s image of the title screen and added his own colors for the artwork on the second box. I then learn that Richard was responsible for making the reproduction cartridge of the game for me.
I already thanked Luke and Jared for having this gift made for me, so I would now like to send out a special thank you to Chris and Richard for doing this for me. This gift means a lot to me and is truly special. It is so incredibly cool! 🙂
Relevant pictures attached.
