I hope to finish this game eventually. It is one game I would have loved to see in 3D.
I was planning to release various demos along the way to get feedback about its progress.
I was going to release one of the basic overworld map & pause menu (pretty much what you see above) to get feedback of timing & display parallax, but I still need to fix it up a bit, and last I heard the timing made it fail on a real VB, so I have to wait until my cart is finished so I can continue the work.
Consoles
(2) US Virtual Boys (1 New Box, Man, 1 Used, my very first VB :))
Accessories
(1) Performance Carry Case
(2) US AC Adaptor Taps (1 Box, 1 Used)
(2) Virtual Boy Stands
(2) Virtual Boy Controllers
(2) Virtual Boy Battery Paks
I’m still working on it. After I finish designing it I’ll make one and test it.
Due to the size of the VB cart, it may not be possible to make a 2MB cart. If this happens, would any of you still be interested in a 1MB cart? It’d mean you couldn’t use 2MB games like Wario Land or Waterworld.
EDIT: Golf, Nesters Bowling, Wario Land & Waterworld.
There were units made called Video Boys. They were used by Nintendo/third parties to display the image (as PAL) on a TV screen.
They are very rare, and even if we can find someone with one, I doubt they’ll be willing to crack it open so we can see how it ticks. 🙁
Only way seems to be either to get hold of a DSO, or make one yourself and see what line is what.
I too have thought of the idea of outputting a VBs display to a monitor, but like most of my stuff I haven’t gotten around to actually doing anything about it.
I was also considering using red/blue (or similar), or maybe even LCD shutter glasses.
The problem would be determining the VB LCD protocol. For that I would need some kind of DSO or data logger.
Your best bet would be to somehow store the image, then retransmit it at the correct display rate. VB is 50.2Hz, which makes it pretty much useful for PAL. NTSC would be too fast for it and you would get display flickering I imagine.
I’ve also just thought that RGBS SCART would be perfect for it. It needs no newline/screen commands used in the NTSC/PAL standards, just R, G, B and sync signals.
Anyway, enough rambling. Hope some of that helps. 🙂
Some of us are slowly working on games. KR155E has pretty much finished Blox except for the sound, his game is available on his site.
The main reason no homebrew games have made it to carts is because we’re still researching easier ways to produce them. Right now the most common method is salvaging the SRAM/etc from real carts and implanting them into new ones, or just replacing the cart ROM with our own. Both of these methods are time and effort consuming. Not really good for mass (or even minor) production.
All the methods so far include using the cart connector and casing from a real cart, as we are unable to manufacture our own.
I don’t really know the legality of this. If we were to make pirate copies of these, sure they’d be illegal. But I’m not so sure about taking a bunch of Baseballs and using their carts…
Firstly, like the Game Boy / Advance, there is no region ‘lock’ between versions. The US version will quite happily play Japanese games, and vice versa.
Secondly, You can’t use an AU/UK AC adapters because A; the voltage/current difference (VB needs 10V ~850mA). I use a (plug modded) Sega one, and it seems to work fine. And B; the plugs are totally different. The US SNES/VB plug is huge compared to the AU/EU ones. If you’re going to use an AC adapter tap (as opposed to wiring it directly to the VB/controller) you’ll need salvage a US plug in order to plug a local AC adapter into it.
