Thank you! Well the RetroBit controller comes with its own little receiver. I can just leave that as-is, but I think it would fit in a VB game cart…that would look cool plugged into an SNES. This is for a custom SNES mini for a friend, so the receivers may end up hardwired into the system.

MegaSilverX1 wrote:
-Wiz n Liz
-Mega Man IV and V Game Boy

I love how unique MMV is on the Game Boy! Gonna have to look into overclocking it though haha, I played for the first time in a while recently and forgot how bad the slowdown is. Also not a fan of Dr. Light being so passive-aggressive by expecting Mega Man to fight off Wily’s robots but still making him save up to buy his own weapon/suit upgrades :p

Is Wiz n Liz a kiddy game? I almost bought it since some of their characters make a cameo in the mighty Puggsy game, but thought it looked questionable in terms of enjoyability…

Puggsy- Genesis/Sega CD (first game that made me glad to have a Genesis!)

Galaxy 5000- NES

Mega Man X7- PS2

Resident Evil 5- Xbox 360

Space Squash…

PaTaank- 3DO

Bulk Slash- Saturn (worst name ever though, yeesh…)

Ultra Golf- Game Boy

Sub-Terrania- Genesis

I’m surprised this wasn’t flagged by ebay immediately haha…you don’t have to bowl three strikes to see ‘XXX’ 🙂

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Maybe not a port, “spiritual successor” perhaps? They seem to be from different companies even though the gameplay is somewhat similar from what I know. It just seems weird that the Japanese version has artwork with a red and black theme but the US version looks so different. This game came out a year before Insmouse too I think.

That’s very cool! It does look professional :). I’m waiting for the N64 one to download now…

Haha I had no idea, I never knew what he looked like. Where’s the power of love now Huey??

Let’s see…

Flink- Sega CD; overhyped garbage. Looks amazing but has irritating music, like nails on a blackboard except the blackboard is your eardrum itself. The character moves so slowly too, I hate when you need a few steps to build momentum. Boring!

New World Order- PC; bargain bin chore of a game.

Resident Evil 6- Xbox 360; I played the 5th game and loved it, fanboys be damned! Me and my best friend have never had more fun with a co-op campaign. But the 6th one with its four mini-game type things, incessant “think fast” button prompts during cinematics, and those incessant cinematics too! Why?! Just let me play the game already, or watch the crummy cutscenes without having to mash buttons randomly.

Gex- 3DO; this game was just awful. I hated it. Now I can’t even remember why exactly, but the way the camera kept moving every time I’d turn around was one reason…

Sonic games; Remember that guy who shoots down Marty McFly’s band in Back to the Future? “I’m afraid you fellas are just too darn loud”…I feel that way about Sonic, only that he’s too darn fast.

Mega Man 1, 7, 8 and Mega Man X5, X6, X8; I absolutely hated the change in direction each series took- the annoying cartoony art style, goofy voice acting, some RPG elements, those ridiculous boss names. And the very first MM game just drives me nuts, I only played it to try and complete the PS2 compilation.

Kasumi Ninja- Jaguar; occasionally fun to play while making fun of it, and I definitely rock the headband it came with at band practice sometimes. Let’s face it though, it’s almost unplayable.

Plok- SNES; weird and just not fun, that’s what I get for buying a game sight unseen.

Vortex- SNES; Swing and a miss!

Great, now I’ve written too much and gotten all worked up. Thanks a lot haha…

Lester Knight wrote:
It never occurred to me back then that some day I might be discussing their shelving system all these years later. I wish I had taken some photos of the isles and the displays. I remember they had this glass case that was about half the length of an isle that had all of the consoles and handhelds inside of it. The back side had Sega games across from Nintendo. The far end of the isle had the Turbo Express. It was here that I first tried a VB. I like to think it was Mario Tennis that they had running, but to be honest I can’t recall. I remember thinking it was cool but I didn’t feel it was worth the $150ish asking price. Then when they dumped the system a few months later they had bins full of games for next to nothing, same with Block Buster. I wish I had grabbed them by the dozen. LOL. Hindsight — right?

My hindsight is no longer 20/20, too many hours on the Virtual Boy have zapped my eyes 😉

Me and my dad used to collect various things- video games, Hot Wheels, Simpsons merch, etc. We always went to stores or restaurants doing promos to ask for the display items that may be thrown out. I specifically remember the smarmy cashiers at my local game stores refusing to give out gaming display items for some reason. Usually I’d wait til the game was old news and ask if I could have the oversized display box or something, but most of them said no. Seems like I was doing them a favor since they wouldn’t have to break it down themselves O_o

Somebody on the forum posted their custom artwork using high quality box scans a while back. You’d have to print yourself probably, but I think they were meant to fit in 3DS cases…

The one thing Atari got right with the Jaguar is the combination of Pause/Option buttons on the controller. As much as I hate that controller, those two things at least make more sense than Start/Select. When you think about it, ‘Select’ kind of implies that you’re actually ‘selecting’ something whereas that button usually just highlights the next option.

Out of curiosity, how did YOU find that listing?? Haha, thanks a lot for it- the seller lives within an hour of me so I’m hoping to get it fairly quickly. Any leads on some copies of Dragon Hopper in my area as well?

So I disassembled the whole thing, looked all around and couldn’t really figure it out. The attempt was a little bit half-assed because I had better things to be working on. The DIN plug was crowded by some other components I think, I’ve kind of forgotten exactly what problem I had. I did see some chip pinouts with 3.3/5v but it didn’t seem worth the bother to backwards-engineer it :p

The data I did find came from the Audrey hacking Wiki site or some random forum post- somebody listed the partial pinouts for those interested in modding the LCD screen or making a battery setup. Only one link to a real pinout existed, and it was as dead as the Audrey.

A unit I’m working on for somebody here appears to have this problem, glad to see it’s not something new and unknown. Is there a description somewhere on how to fix this exactly? I think I may see where the parts in question are, but don’t want to poke around until I’m sure.

This unit appears to have trouble on both sides, as each will attempt to fire up the mirrors 3-4 times before giving up. At first I thought the mirrors were loose because they move their overall position once oscillating at a certain speed (that’s when they end up rattling against that metal piece).

Time for some free advertising 🙂

I’ve been doing solder repairs for some members here, feel free to PM me if you’re interested. I live in the USA. I believe TheForce81 up above also does repairs still, but is in Europe which will be the better option if you live there.

One more thought…I rarely use this word, but those of you who put VB work on real resumes or brought it up in real interviews- that’s the most “balla” thing I’ve heard in a long time 🙂

Sadly I can’t use VB knowledge at my job directly, but the attention to detail and systems thinking associated with fixing bad units helps keep my brain sharp.

On the other hand, 2.5 years ago I was starting to get back into my old systems for fun. When the Virtual Boys all had weird flickering displays, I looked to Google and found this site. First, that brought back memories of 2002 when I would frequent this site and that other one run by some guy named Ferry I think? I was amazed how much had been uncovered in a decade.

Then I read the solder fix tutorials and said “I’ve never soldered before, but screw it!”. Eventually I got the technique down and fixed all the systems I had. Later I was eyeing my top loader NES and said “I should do that composite video mod!”. Eventually I got back into my old hobby of taking electronics apart and seeing what I could upgrade without destroying anything.

Now I do this stuff all the time, mostly on a small scale for myself or local game stores with big supplies of busted consoles. But, it’s funny to think that I’d completely forgotten how much I loved to tinker with electronics as a kid…and really only got back into it because of the VB’s display issues. I’m glad too because when I’m in a groove I can fix enough displays or do general console work at a level that sustains my gaming habit 🙂

There’s some extra appeal in having an unofficial “per diem” job like this!

Great scans! What is that article shown within the page 42 scan? It looks like a generic tech writeup with VBs as the banner picture but can’t read what it says.

Is there any information such as magazine publisher, authors, editors, etc in the pages that we could scour Google for? If somebody from Jugemu went on to more productive magazines still around today, maybe they could be contacted. If it only ran for a year, it wouldn’t have been hard for someone involved to collect the whole series.

I feel like I have had units with this problem too, I think it’s related to the usual well-known display issues. The displays aren’t left/right specific, so you can try swapping sides to see if that changes anything.

Is it possible the displays may be loose and the vibrations of the oscillating mirrors cause some faint connection to fade in and out? That’s the only thing I can think of to explain why it happens as the system warms up…because from what I’ve heard, some display issues tend to improve once the system is powered on for a while.

My only other guess is that somebody already opened it but did a bad job with the fix.

That looks like a very mint system! I sold someone in the UK with a similar name to yours a system with games about a year ago, but it must be a coincidence :p

If you end up on a Yahoo auction site and use a proxy service, it is kind of a pain to sign up for- at least I thought so. When trying to buy a Dreamcast MIDI cable I could only find one at Amazon.jp. They don’t ship here for that type of item, so I used Tenso as the proxy. Once my account was set, it was easy and pretty affordable…you just have to prove your identity/location with 2 documents sent in a scan or photo before they ship to you. I used a utility bill and insurance card because neither had any super-secret information. If those didn’t work, I was going to say “screw it” because that cable wasn’t worth scanning my passport, driver’s license, etc. for…

Tauwasser wrote:

P.S.: Nice to see you sober up between the first and second paragraphs *Kincet :P*

Haha, that gave me a pretty good laugh for some reason :p

I also think mobile games are here to stay, but that may not be a bad thing. Personally I’ve never been into cell phone games since I had my old LG EnV flip and played hearts all the time at work. Whenever possible, I enter cheat codes and use Game Genies on console games but I still think mobile platforms are just too easy. They do tend to be simple time-wasters based on what I see people playing at my job, on the subway, etc…

However, even if software giants focus on these lucrative markets, I’m sure independent developers will step in to fill the void. I used to only watch bigger-budget movies because the sci-fi/horror I like often sucked when indy studios cut corners on special effects. Now there are a ton of great indy movies with awesome special effects while still retaining the more creative storylines separating them from a lot of Hollywood formulaic crap.

To answer the ORIGINAL question haha…I’m sure Nintendo will get in the game. My Xbox-loving friends accuse Nintendo of riding its own coattails by churning out the same old franchises repeatedly with each new system. Again, is that a bad thing? If VR becomes refined enough that games are totally immersive and FUN, I’m sure they wouldn’t be against at least experimenting with a few Mario, Zelda, Metroid games.

Then we’ll just need somebody here to port the VB library to the best VR system :). Maybe we could even work in a full color palette…