I didn’t notice anything like that when testing, odd. Did the shipping box look abused or something?

I wonder if a piece of lint or dust on the lens between LED and mirror might cause a crooked line like that.

Either way, I have an extra set of the red lenses somewhere if it turns out to be a crack. Keep us updated…

Finally got around to finishing this, in case anyone cares heh…added one more LED in the middle up front, hardwired the wireless receiver and memory cards inside, then walled off the holes where the former controller/memory ports were.

The panels blocking the front port spaces are from the bottom of a spare 32X case. I cut out the areas with those shielding squares since the metal had a cool dilapidated look. The piece on the player 1 side happens to have a notch that allows me to see the “connection” LED on the receiver inside.

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Interesting story about Adventure Island- I absolutely would have given up within an hour! I don’t have the fortitude to persevere with games like that. A lot of NES games seemed way too hard, like they were overcompensating for the general simplicity to make the experience take longer.

I’d have to look through my collection to see what I’ve done, but I know I’ve beaten all the Mega Man X games up to X7 the honest way. Some of the later ones were pretty brutal IMO. With the X4-X6 range, the change in style was really distracting for me. The games themselves were hard enough, but something about the voices, Japanese weapon names, etc. made those games feel more like chores to complete.

This is kind of sad, but a lot of Mortal Kombat games seem overly challenging too. UMK3 is the only Saturn game I don’t have packed away and I’ve been playing it to test my homemade wireless controller. I should be excited to have it finished, but the game just gets so cheap and unfair after the first opponent in 1P mode…most times I get pissed off and say “screw it”. Admittedly I rarely play for extended periods, but I know enough moves that ‘Very Easy’ mode shouldn’t be kicking my ass almost immediately.

Does anyone else have that trouble? I swear the opponent can sweep/throw me when they’re CLEARLY a foot or more out of range. Plus when we’re both standing at the ready, I can repeatedly tap the left/right button and see the opponent match every step the moment I move. It seems like their AI algorithm is stuck in quarter-eating arcade mode.

The first video game I ever owned was Kirby’s Dreamland on the GameBoy, which I must have beaten 12 times on the first day 🙂

Wow, great find on some more rare information! I like how they suggest the Super Game Boy as a stocking stuffer haha, wasn’t its box like four times the size of normal SNES games?

I can’t help but think that a lot of those VB pens are just sitting in storage, never used, waiting to be found. Has anyone here found one in the wild?

Thanks for the kind words everyone :). I’m glad to help resurrect all these Virtual Boys, since I myself had to shelve the system for quite a while before I got into the repair business.

My apologies to anyone I’ve taken a while to respond to recently about repairs- things have been a little hectic around here, and I’ve spent a lot of time traveling in areas where modern internet connectivity doesn’t exist. BUT I should be back in the game now!

3DBoy, you’re probably right- the capture cart would be a weird choice. I was going to mount the SD card slot in a way so I could stick that in the hole where the RCA jacks sit. I guess it seemed better than one of those official red shells you can buy, neutral colors just appeal to me more (except for that one Nintendo system, what was it called, hmm…).

One other thought was to put a piece of clear hard plastic in the RCA jack area and have some backlit logo etched onto it. Not sure if that would do much good on the back of the cart, but maybe it would project a “64DD” logo onto the wall :p

Those Mario studio games look awesome. Just tonight I won Doshin on ebay, so that’ll be my first true game. Do you have the mouse for the system? They are impossible to find, and I haven’t had any luck researching a self-made one. I wonder if an SNES to N64 controller adapter would let you use the SNES mouse?

Glad to hear you’re not immediately regretting the purchase :). Since I got a deal on mine, I can’t imagine selling it unless it actively pisses me off somehow. Even if there’s only a couple of fun games, it’ll be worth it.

Side note, why on Earth did somebody leave that N64 in a dumpster??

Welcome to the site! Generally the “solder fix” is recommended as a permanent repair to this common issue. Where are you located? I do most of the USA/Canada repairs, and TheForce81 handles most of Europe and surrounding areas.

Send us a message if you’re interested!

Remember the X-Files and its “The Truth Is Out There” saying? We should think “The Prototype Is Out There” 🙂

Dragon Hopper reminds me of BioForce Ape for the NES, since it was thought to be shelf-ready but ultimately canceled. But that one wasn’t even totally confirmed to be real until the proto was found and dumped almost 20 years after.

Though I do also agree that an active homebrew scene would keep the system more relevant than hope for unearthing lost classics.

I still find it hard to believe that a programmer wouldn’t have saved a copy of their work. Even if a game was only half-finished, I know I would save a cart if for no other reason than to preserve something I’d put creativity into. It amazes me how many obscure VHS recordings of 80s concerts have ended up on YouTube, and most of those probably have a lot fewer people looking for them than Dragon Hopper does.

The best hope may be unearthing more dev kits and finding a surprise left inside.

Haha, I thought that was a goofy picture but now that I’m being forced to really look at it, yikes! Maybe his career-long streak of nagging injuries started with those inevitable Virtual Boy neck and back strains.

@KR155E- I’m going to keep surfing around this site until I see the new catchphrase :). Originally I was going to suggest a one-liner submission thread as a competition for last year’s anniversary celebration but forgot.

Why did you cringe?? There’s probably no real point in hardwiring the Everdrive into the system, but I like the ultra low profile aspect. That’s one downfall of cartridges going on top of the system, so I try to save overhead clearance on my game shelf when I can. Plus I would love to have just a tiny SD card sticking out of the cart slot like that’s what Nintendo wanted 🙂

And yep, I got that Yamatoku unit. I don’t totally care about the box but would still prefer to have it. Plus this package comes with the modem and Randnet disk, two things I may not go for on their own. Sucks about that golf game being so rare, I feel like that would be my favorite on the system.

I got my capture cart last month actually, and promptly took it apart. I’m pretty sure there are some pictures on my camera at home, I’ll post them here when I get a chance. Maybe that will aid in a preliminary idea of how futile my inevitable cart hacking might be. From memory, the PCB and shielding seemed a little bigger than regular games I’ve taken apart.

enfilade wrote:
I thought it was so cool that Mark Nicholson replied in good time and made mention to share his message with the forum. He provided a great concise response, kudos to him.

I can’t help wondering how those VB displays ended up in a parts bin? Maybe it was true that Sanyo had a bunch laying around and donated them. Maybe it was a fan… or maybe someone gutted a VB for parts…

TheForce81, thunderstruck, HP Lovethrash are the real heroes of this thread. Nice work boys.

Well I’m just glad to get some credit after making no major discoveries on my own :). I suppose it’s possible that some new in box VBs were purchased wholesale/liquidation style as a cheap source of high tech parts. From now on I’ll be looking closely whenever I see something resembling a visor or black spraypainted VB shell in a late 90s movie.

Hey guys- I was killing time at work overnight and decided to follow the links Thunderstruck posted. I sent an email to Mark Nicholson to see if he would in fact remember anything about this. You can read his reply below, which is very helpful and came back in record time!

“Hello,

first off, thanks for letting me know about this!
second, please feel free to share my response with the forum thread.

well, you came to the right person, as I was in fact the one who built that prop.
huh…it DOES look like a virtual boy display chip!
and it might have been? I’m not even sure, and I built it. (pair actually, because in film, you always build a spare)
I can’t recall if I got the pair of chips out of a parts bin, or whether they were handed to me by someone else (likely the propsmaster) who would have gotten them out of a parts bin full of old chips and stuff.
they would have been chosen based on 3 criteria.

1. does it look like a chip?
2. is it the right size for the crystal thing around them, which was already a fixed and defined size that cannot change.
3. do we have 2?

I’m certain no virtual boys were harvested specifically for this prop.
It’s likely the shell of one was used for some other reason, without the hardware, which was saved for a parts bin.
that’s the best I can recall on something I made 9 years ago.

I also know there’s a better screenshot of Merek(?) holding it right up to the camera, which can be found on gateworld.net

Mark Nicholson”

If you follow the link to Gateworld.net, I think I saw the screenshots of the prop on page 15 for this particular film. (http://www.gateworld.net/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=250&page=15)

Alexander wrote:
it’s very crispy now lol

This has got to be thee most pathetic solder method attempt EVER! I keep it as a constant reminder to leave shit like this to the pros.

Good luck with everything.[/quote]

Wowzers! Hey if it makes you feel better, I’ve been going over my perpetually “in progress” Sega Genesis mod project and pulling out 2+ feet of extra wire I had in there. Some of it was disconnected on one end from past experiments, other pieces were so tangled I didn’t notice that they weren’t connected anywhere, other connections were composed of three or more short wires of varying gauges instead of like…one wire :/

guruguy wrote:
I have more problems than you describe.

My reproduction Eye Shade holders are completely covering up the nose hole area, see pic.

It’s hard to breath and fogs up the VB, the original ones don’t cover that area.

The last holes one the outside edges of the foam are in the wrong spot on the reproduction.

TOP PIC ORIGINAL WITH PROPER GAP
BOTTOM PIC REPRO FOAM

Interesting…I suppose you could run some black thread through it to fold the extra material over, but you shouldn’t really have to on a brand new item. Does it feel like the original otherwise?

CZroe wrote:

I used a flat metal spudger and some precision picks to get the spring out (typical cellphone repair tools).

Haha, I giggle whenever I see the word ‘spudger’. I got smacked by my ex when I said that one time. That confirms my suspicion about it sounding like a dirty word :p

Anyway I’ll have to order some of these replacement parts. If nothing else, I like that the box has the VB-themed label on it. Some day that might be an interesting conversation piece in my collection. Plus, there are a couple of lonely systems I have which mostly get used for parts or testing displays I’m repairing. Might be nice to buff them up with some brand new accessories.

These stands are a good choice for making alternative mounts too, instead of creating orphaned legs by taking apart OEM ones for their clamps.

I didn’t see an explanation of the VN9 on the other thread, is that an early version of the serial numbering? Or do we not yet know what’s going on with it?

enfilade wrote:

I also agree with HP Lovethrash Nintendo could make a lot of money if they dug up those unreleased VB files… man they would make a mint off of this forum alone.

All they need to do is release a few teeny, tiny game files and we can do the rest here 🙂

vuefinder83 wrote:
Heh

Haha awesome.

I don’t think I’ve ever played or owned a Pokémon anything. Something about it never appealed to me, which is true for any kind of RPG game really. If Nintendo dug up the Dragon Hopper files and released that, you KNOW it would make far more money than Pokémon Go…

Haha, did you guys see where it says “The first interface…around your face.”? That sounds like a one-liner we might see under the “PLANET VIRTUAL BOY” marquee at the top of this site 😉