KJ4860 wrote:
fantastic!

i wish i lived closer – recently padhacked a VB controller to a USB decoder, enabling the use of a PS3 fightstick. Works flawlessly.

Oh awesome! What USB decoder did you use? Did you have to program it? Have you posted the info about how you did this anywhere?

I love me some fightsticks. 😀

mawa wrote:
somebody intrested in virtual bowling ?
http://page3.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/c557106737

Definitely interested, but my bank account isn’t. 🙁

Looks like someone’s making new ones — I’m okay with that; those things always seem to be missing.

MineStorm wrote:

Does anyone still make fan translations or have they all stopped since they are showing up on ebay?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t make them anymore.

Does this also preclude novel homebrew games? Understandable if so; people should be in it for the hobby, not its resale value.

It might also be feasible to just 3D print the back of a controller with a hole for an adapter. Might take some soldering, but one could take an existing controller and power supply and make an integrated unit…

…but I don’t think I like that it would destroy some parts.

I’ve got it on DS somewhere, I think… I remember liking it, though I haven’t hardly played it, to be honest. I’m glad he got his tribute, at least.

HP Lovethrash wrote:
I’m working on an updated and better version of the cable. This time I’m taking apart male USB plugs for the connector. Each USB has 4 pins, facing two of them together works pretty well since the pin spacing is almost exactly right for the EXT port :). The two center USB pins aren’t spaced equally compared to the outer ones, but it doesn’t seem to affect this project.

After peeling the black plastic casing off each plug, the silver shielding underneath should be removed as well. This leaves the actual cable attached to the little white plastic thing where the 4 pins terminate. After Dremeling away some of the excess plastic, I managed to get each side spaced perfectly to fit snugly into the EXT port.

This time I’m soldering 8 wires from the plug to a standard ethernet jack. The pictures show my first one, I just need to put heat shrink tubing over the electrical tape and add something to make the USB pieces wide enough to fill the EXT port. I figure using ethernet cable will allow for more flexibility since you can get a longer or shorter one as needed. Then, making a special ethernet to USB attachment means this same link adapter could be used for online play. I’ll upload more pics as it develops…

oooh, nice thinking. I’ll be very curious to hear if this works — I’ve got lots of everything required laying around. 🙂

InactiveX wrote:
Elite.

My favourite game ever, the NES version would work great with the VB controller.

http://www.bbcmicrogames.com/screenshots/elite1.gif

There was an NES version of Elite?!? I… should really track that down!… he says before reading the rest of the thread where there are links.

Hedgetrimmer wrote:
Oh yeah Starfox would be a good one.
Metroid would be high up the list for me, NES or SNES versions, with some nice deep backgrounds and a few flashing into the screen explosions etc.

I’d love to see a 2D Metroid. Just a few layers could make for a lot of fun exploration gameplay. I’d *really* love to see a new Metroid game for it, or something similar, like a Castlevania. It could be a lot of fun to play with mood and the redness of it all.

InactiveX wrote:
Elite.

My favourite game ever, the NES version would work great with the VB controller.

There was an NES version of Elite?!? I… should really track that down!

Hedgetrimmer wrote:
Oh yeah Starfox would be a good one.
Metroid would be high up the list for me, NES or SNES versions, with some nice deep backgrounds and a few flashing into the screen explosions etc.

I’d love to see a 2D Metroid. Just a few layers could make for a lot of fun exploration gameplay. I’d *really* love to see a new Metroid game for it, or something similar, like a Castlevania. It could be a lot of fun to play with mood and the redness of it all.

That was super fun. Well done!

Nosna wrote:
Finally found me a loose copy for a decent price. Complete US library loose finally finished!

Awesome! Congratulations!! 😀 Post pictures!!!

Personal opinion: You guys hoping to get Jack Bros. CIB for less than $400 are dreaming.

Mine was $450 a bit ago with a very nice box, although a slightly damaged label… but I don’t mind in the end.

For all intents and purposes, this could become a “visual novel toolkit” for the Virtual Boy, and that’s fantastic. 🙂 I look forward to both Snatcher and seeing other people tell stories through art with these tools. Thanks, Thunderstruck!

There’s also a mention on the Retronauts post at USGamer.net, without any links, though. The podcast itself is pretty good — Jeremy Parish describes the mirrors in VBs as spinning, whereas I would call them vibrating… but that’s nitpicky, and off-topic.

Thunderstruck, this is amazing, and I applaud you heartily for the effort. This is just wonderful; really tugs at the heartstrings, too.

I *love* the idea of this coming out episodically. Insofar as continuing from episode to episode, Kr155e mentions:

Since the FlashBoy Plus’ SRAM is not touched by the flasher, each part can simply pick up the savegame of the previous part and continue from there.

Which seems great. However, I’m one of those with an original FlashBoy, rather than Plus, so I assume that’s not something that would work for me. Could some sort of password system work? I don’t know how much play-data Snatcher has at any one time as I have never played it (inventory items? player choices?) but if the story is more of a visual novel, then maybe there’s very little data to actually transfer from episode to episode — maybe players can only progress to certain points if they have certain items or something like that — so a password-style system would only need to contain the data that isn’t “required” by the end of each episode. Does that make sense at all, or am I way, way overthinking it? Certainly I wouldn’t want to inconvenience everyone else by pushing for some sort of FB- compatibility when everyone else has FB+’s — I’d be happy to upgrade at some point.

Lastly (geeze, wall of text post!), just from crossing my eyes as on your test image showing how the conversions work, I’d *love* to see your 2D-to-3D tool become more generic. I think something like that could greatly speed up homebrew development for certain types of games.

This is all just phenomenal. Great work, and thank you. It’s a true tribute to Red Metal and the community as a whole. This post aside, I’m really at a loss for words.

Oh now that is fantastic! I will definitely be checking this out!

Neat! I don’t know if I can repair anything, but I’ll open it up and see what happens. 🙂

Awesome! Thanks for sharing these. 😀

One of my VB’s has bad alignment from me mucking about inside. I can tell you that it is almost *painful* to look in, as your eyes try to make the image right.

But yeah, if everything plays fine and it doesn’t bug you, keep playing! 😀

Really interesting read about the genesis of this great piece of homebrew.

I’m really happy that Ben was able to fund his dream project and get a copy to play. I find myself frustrated with the whole thing a little bit, though. As we are all a community of VB enthusiasts and are all foaming at the mouth for new releases, I wonder: Why wasn’t this open for purchase for *all* community members if it was going to be sold to anyone except Ben?

It’s one thing to say “oh well we don’t want to violate copyright”, but then why were *any* other copies sold to people at all?

I’m not angry about the situation, and really I haven’t even contributed all that much to the community (if anything at all) except for a shared love of the VB. Honestly I’m just really quite jealous that there’s a game — a NEW game — that I never had a chance to buy but other people did. That’s certainly the programmers prerogative, but I wish everyone had kept it secret, then. I don’t mean to sound entitled, as I really am not and I know that. Knowing that some people got it but that not everyone had a chance feels kinda bad.

I certainly don’t know the money involved but I would *love* to help fund the creation of a new VB project. Something like Patreon might be better than Kickstarter, though: A talented programmer could accept a regular monthly donation to help fund their work. If 10 of us chipped in $50/mo — much less than a mobile phone bill most of the time — that’d be a spare $500/mo for a dev to make something like this AND share with the donors.

All of that being said, I’m really glad that it got made. I’m bummed I didn’t have a chance to buy one, but it’s really not my business, I guess. I just hope I can meet one of you guys that have it in real life so that I can play it some time. Anyone up for PlanetVB Convention? 🙂

Does anyone know if it would be possible to socket a cartridge for easier future battery replacements?

I did one for a Super Nintendo game some time ago with this video as a guide: link!. Probably not worthwhile since it’ll be 10+ years before it has to be changed again, but hey, why not! 🙂