Whoa, that’s an insanely lucky get for whoever scored that (I totally can’t tell if this is quoting the jack bros listing above from having clicked Reply, new site is weird), but I had similar luck with a niche listing once before. Hard to remember the details but I was watching a number of items from a seller that were all ending around the same time, and one in particular changed from having no starting price to maybe $10 or something. But somehow in doing so, that listing no longer appeared in the search that turned up the others I was keeping an eye on. In the end I managed to win that one uncontested while the others soared in price, perhaps could’ve been something similar here.
Oh, a homebrew thing is it? Must’ve missed catching that one before.
Wait, Mario Kart is a thing?
I know I’m years late on this but that first post is so cool, I had no idea Argonaut did any other 3D titles outside of X. I love that game just for the story of it, was lucky enough to chance upon a copy when looking for other things to pad out a play-asia order years and years and *years* ago.
Could probably spam up the thread going on about all sorts of things I’ve picked up that I think are cool, though I don’t quite have anything on the level of unreleased prototypes – most of my stuff was available at retail or whatever. Also a good chunk of it is more obscure in a local context, since we miss out on a whole lot of things down here and have to rely on imports. Mostly I’m mildly obsessed with weird/niche peripherals (hence getting on the VB bandwagon years ago) so most of the stuff I’ve amassed is centred around that.
One small-but-cool one, a few years back my boss was getting ready to move to another country and me and a friend were over at his place for one final board games night. In the process of tidying up he’d uncovered a few things that were still kicking around from back when he worked in the games industry. Pretty much said “oh hey I found these, I figured you might be interested in them” and just handed me what I recognised as a pair of E3 promo pins for Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. I kinda slipped up in my excitement mentioning how they go for a pretty high price, and he expressed some regret in not having thought to just try sell them instead. But still let me keep them anyway, such an awesome parting gift 😛
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Oh wow that’s actually not too far away from me.
Wonder if he’d let me come inspect, then I’ll offer him a 20 for it 😀
I brought the handsome, Guy brought the progress.
Interesting. I missed the original run too, and wouldn’t mind a copy. Not sure what games I’ve got to offer up as sacrifices though, would have to check. Shame it’s not the kind of thing you can easily put together yourself on your end, save on US shipping which always seems to be ridiculously expensive these days for some reason.
Dude, I am totally down. Two years ago I was about to dive into attempting to learn how to make a game for VB, I’d just read through all the documentation on here like the sacred scroll and such, then you posted that original emulator development thread. And talked about using C, and SDL which I’d just been using in a games programming course the years prior. Right at a time when I was looking for something to get my programming going again. Plus all your other threads were fascinating reads, and you really seemed to know your stuff. It seemed perfect.
Then suddenly I got pulled aside by some spontaneous full-time employment, and got well and truly side-tracked dealing with everything there, and kinda forgot about it all for a while.
Now I randomly decide to poke around on the forums again, and you’ve reappeared, proposing a similar thing, right as I’ve come off having another chance to refresh the old programming chops fall through (promising side-project at work which didn’t get off the ground before everything there came crashing down) and started pondering something else I could do. I don’t know what they say about second chances, but I’m sure it’s something.
So yeah, I’m keen 😛
Also, you lost a chunk of life to Splatoon too? Man I played that thing every day for three months straight when it came out. Went off for a while to play other things, but got back into it again recently in preparation for the final Splatfest. Such a good game.
Saw this a couple of days ago but then got struck down with computer troubles for a while… and now literally need to head out the door for the weekend so haven’t gotten to read the last few posts yet, but just wanted to jump in while I can and say that this sounds awesome and I’d love to be a part of it!
The moment I first powered up my VB, it totally had me thinking Game Boy. The graphical appearance, the way it sounded, it just felt very much like it was derived from the Game Boy line. Maybe like some kind of Super Game Boy. Not to be confused with that SNES adapter 😛
And in turn, playing the Max And The Mutant Mudds demo on 3DS had me immediately thinking “this feels like some kind of Super Virtual Boy game”. And then lo and behold I ended up in one of those strangely red-tinted bonus levels…
It’s hard to tell, my fingernails are pretty rough on the edge most of the time so precision isn’t all that easy. I couldn’t feel it with the toothpick, but I think RunnerPack might be right. Trying to place the point on it and move the board around, it seems like it might indeed be inside the window.
Which is totally perplexing, considering how the damn thing seems to be practically sealed 😛
Wondering how to get a blast of air in there at the moment. I’ve got a ball pump with the needle end on it which seems like it could do the job, though it’s a big unwieldy. Also not entirely sure about removing the window completely, since the little plastic plugs look like they’re melted in place. Doesn’t seem like it’d be all that easy to remove, or to replace?
If I were to guess it sounds like it could have a solder bridge. Did you test all the connections with a multimeter when you were done, to make sure none were crossing paths?
I could have no idea what I’m talking about though 😛
Good call, DogP. Just had another look and there is indeed a tiny little speck that got past me when I checked. Switched the LED boards around just to check, and sure enough it had migrated to the left eye.
You can only just kind of see it in the middle there, about 3/4 down the right dark strip running down the middle of the panel there. I can only *just* make it out when reflecting light on it in just the right way. It doesn’t seem to respond to being wiped off with a cotton bud though, nor doing so after a huff of breath. Any suggestions to (safely) fix it?
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I have opened it a few times now, yeah. A few oven fixes for the LED displays, before eventually taking the plunge on a solder fix for it. Don’t *think* there’s been anything since, but I can’t say for sure whether this wasn’t there the last time I used it or I just never noticed before. Although I think I might have a few pictures of the screens somewhere I could check, though not sure where they are or whether I’d be able to tell which display was photographed.
Those pictures were all taken with the red lens out though, so it’s definitely not from that. Might try and have another play with it tomorrow, I can’t remember what effect disrupting the mirror (lightly touching with cotton bud to distort the image) had on it. I mean I figured that the shape of the artefact must be down to the horizontal movement of the mirrors, but I don’t think it seemed to come down to the mirrors at all. So strange.
Daaaaaamn, looks like a whole load of stuff went down since my last visit. Bummed I missed out on the Gundam release. Would’ve totally grabbed a copy if I’d caught it. Currently eyeing off Space Pinball and Faceball Remastered, though just not sure how wise it is given my current income situation… I’m sure I’ll crack before long 😛
Really great stuff, guys. Loved what you did with Bound High.
So, I just had a go at the NaOH + solder method. Which I started ABOUT NINE HOURS AGO??
I have no idea what was going on, but for some reason the film on the ribbon cable just wouldn’t dissolve. When I opened up the tub of caustic soda I found up in the laundry, it was kind of gooey and sludgey (though still mostly solid), I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. But yeah, it took forever to even look like it was doing anything. Maybe after three hours or so I started to notice a difference, I forget when I noticed I could see a bit of bare copper appearing, but either way it took ages. For some reason it seemed to start in a thin strip across the lower edge of where the solution ended, while everything above it was normal. Weird.
Anyway, after about seven hours it was all gone and out of the way, so I went on to soldering. And… it all just went on like magic? I mean I’m a total novice, I’ve only done a bit of soldering for an assignment a good decade ago in school, then another little project around five years or so where I had a few electrical things that needed to go together. But it just seemed really easy, despite the tiny size of everything. Pretty damn happy with how it went, really 😛
Got out the multimeter and tested all the ends to make sure they were ok, then threw it in my unit to give it a proper test. Yay, right display’s all clear! Wait a minute, the left side has a second mirrored image of everything now. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF~
I hope the next one doesn’t take as long. I think I’ll leave it for later today though, since it’s now nearly 10am and I should sleep. Goodnight, gents.
Haha, go me. Yeah, don’t need to worry about other languages when apparently I can’t even handle English 😛 There should have been an “I wish” in there, makes more sense with it.
But yes, that is what I meant. And I completely didn’t even think to check for translations, which is strange considering I’m pretty sure I went and found some kind of English guide for Virtual Fishing when that showed up. Must’ve been caught up in the excitement >.>
@HorvatM: Will definitely have to check those out at some point. And yeah, really sucks that with such a small library, a large proportion of the games are inaccessibly expensive. I’m quite intrigued by the Gundam game, since I recall reading that it’s a strategy game? I never really considered myself in any way a strategist or at all good at those games, but I had an absolute blast with Shadow Wars on 3DS so it’s now got me looking longingly at those overpriced listings.
At least they don’t seem to have gone the path some do with these kinds of things – I vaguely recall one list of the “top 100 Nintendo games” which ended up with Tetris at the #1 spot. Not because it was the best game of them all, but because it was the most important apparently. That’s not how it works!
I saw this pop up the other day, was pretty surprised. Pretty douchey of him to go all profiteering like that.
Hope it got pulled, or at least that he made very little off it in the end.