Also I got the Block-buster case complete (but without manual), boxed Vertical Force, Boxed Mario Clash, and Boxed Galactic Pinball for $225. This was probably 2017. I think the Block Buster case alone could go for that today.
I’m not trying to brag, but would like to hear others stories about how they got theirs.

It plays great. I love the background effects.
What tools did you use to write it?
When someone on here came out with “Red Square / Yume Nikki Fan Game” written all in assembly, my mind was blown. Like how much experience as a game dev does someone have to have to understand the hardware and write that in 6 weeks?

That is good info – If I ever get my hands on another VB head unit I will try it. I didn’t clean the flux, so that is most likely why the screen was glitching out – Also didn’t have a multi-meter to check for shorts at the time. I’ve graduated to some harder mods like the NESRGB and most recently the Dreamcast DC Digital. I’m always looking for the next expert level mod to do – So if you know of any, please tell me.

I doubt I’ll come across another head unit in need of repair anytime soon. Is it just me or has everything skyrocketed in price? About 3 years ago I managed to get on ebay a complete unit w/ Blockbuster case and 3 CIB games: (Red-Alert, Mario Clash, Vertical Force) for $225. I remember when there were bundles of games being sold from mexico – like $20 for six games, Wario-Land included. Right now there are 85 watchers on a $425 empty BB case and 5 loose games. $300 for a VB Box only. I got a VB with box for about $300 only a few years ago.

I remember passing up two head-units for $80. I doubt we’ll ever see a deal go down like that again.

[mips5000]

I had practically no solder experience – The main problem was that I used plumbing flux (conductive) so even after my first attempt looked good, I kept getting garbled picture, so I re-went over it a few times until I lost a few terminating pads on the ribbon cable. Then it got all curled up and melted – It was bad. I ended up having to replace the whole ribbon cable with individual 30 AWG wires – which took many hours of soldering, but I actually enjoyed working on it. So if you follow along with a video and use the right flux, the chances of this happening to you are slim. Retro-modding and soldering are big hobbies of mine now. If you’re at all a DIY type, I’d recommend trying it out. Otherwise there is a list of good people on this site who will do it for you for about $10 or $20 I believe plus shipping.
I’ll be moving back to PA soon, so I know the weather you speak of!

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by mips5000.

The soldering isn’t too bad IMO – I say that after I royally F’d up my first attempt years ago when having 0 soldering experience. I’ve done four sets of them now. The hardest part for me is peeling back the plastic layer of the ribbon cable to expose the flat wires. Some of them detach from the board and stick to the ribbon cable, so then you have to carefully peel them away from the tape so you can solder them back to the board. Some people may just touch the soldering iron to the ribbon cable without peeling it back – maybe that is the better way to do it, but I assume melted plastic would result.

Before I did it myself or knew of this site, I sent mine to a service through Ebay. The seller had a trade secret- but within months of getting it back it started glitching out again. So soldering is def the way to go for a permanent fix.

In the rare case we live around each other (I’m in San Jose currently), I’d do it for you no charge. Otherwise there are reputable people on this site who will do it for a fee.

Thanks Jorgeche, I’m interested in the tools you’ve made, and thanks for making them. And for offering the help. I’ve met a few very helpful members over at NESDEV. Once I get a little further on my NES game I plan on either re-creating it, or creating a new game on the VB. Hopefully some of what I’ve learned about the NES architecture will translate over. The last month or more I’ve been facing the programmers worst enemy, which is getting too busy at work and coming home too mentally exhausted to do anything. Hopefully I’ll see you over on the discord soon.

KR155E and Jorgeche, If you were willing, I’d benefit from a “nerdy nights” style programming tutorial. I started out trying to use the VBDE, but only got to the point of changing some graphics in the platform demo, and creating my own slide reels per Stereoboy’s instructions. I don’t know C. I remember seeing the word “this” many times and reading that it is a pointer. I understand pointers in PLC programming, and now assembly. I started learning C through a book, but then really wanted to just jump into programming something – Nerdy Nights for NES is perfect IMO for that system. Because of many hours spent with that and on my own, I have a title screen that plays music and stars twinkle. When you press start it takes you to another screen. But that screen is a wall and there is no “game” working yet. But in just doing this I have experience with the music engine, and have learned about what goes on under the hood on the NES.

A fear I have is that using a higher level language with the VBDE is that things might be going on behind the scenes that could prevent me from learning things I should know about the hardware. For example in Assembly for NES, I have to be aware of certain interrupts, when I can update the PPU, how much data to send and to what places to command certain actions. In a higher level language, you might not need to understand some of these things, but then when you hit a wall, you wouldn’t know about them. Just my inexperienced thoughts. I am grateful with anything you update/come out with. It’s really nice of you to provide what you already have. I’m only programming NES because with Nerdy Nights it was easier to start with (for me). My main goal is to come out with a game for the VB.

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Yeah I did a fair amount of sweep kicking as Guile. It’s kind of good though because I don’t have the patience for fighting games like I did as a kid in the 90s. I don’t know what the appeal was back then but I’m completely 180 on them now. The old ones don’t hold up for me. The newest one I’ve played was MK 10, and it really put me off how there were no unlockables or any real “reason” to progress, as I’d expect in a newer game.

Good call. Out of my 4 VB units, the first I had problems soldering. I must have got flux or something on one of the display pieces. Now on this VB there is a slight blur toward the bottom of the screen. It’s hardly noticeable, but it is at times and I keep it put aside.. It’ll be the last one I use when I’m an 80 year old man and all my other VBs have died.

Thank you. I will try ProMotion NG when I get back into making pixel art for my game.

So far my progress is this: I’ve programmed TheLastStory2 for Atari using 6502 assembly. I learned it by taking this awesome course:
https://www.udemy.com/programming-games-for-the-atari-2600/

I’m on day 8 of teach yourself C in 21 days. My hope is after the 6502 to learn about hardware, and the C knowledge, I may be able to make more sense of whats going on in the VBDE…

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You can add me to the list as well. I’ll def buy some if you end up having them made.

Just happened to come on and see this – I did the same around when I joined PlanetVB… took me weeks and many retries, but this one in the picture below works like a soldered VB now. I probably had it right the first time I did it, but I made the mistake of using plumbing flux.. it may have kept giving me shorts.

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So if I understand right, the original owner couldn’t justify the price/time of going to the boarder to pick it up, so just took it as a loss? It really sucks that given the circumstances, he couldn’t hire a person, or pay some fee to have it shipped out of there. I mean the thing was over $1000. The bureaucracy is unreal.. I’ve lost some tools getting on airplanes and read they get donated or auctioned.. yeah right, are they really going to go through the trouble of auctioning a $20 wrench? The employees or managers take that stuff home. I’ve lost items in my checked baggage, a laptop, cologne bottle, but that’s another story.

There must be some real honor amongst serious game collectors. What bugs me, is what actually happened to that first Koisk? They wouldn’t let you go and pick it up? Or arrange to have it shipped out of there? Did they consider it the drivers property? Maybe when he gets out of jail it’ll be waiting for him.

I have virtual league new in the box (one of the $20 ebay listings that seems to never run out). Maybe so many never sold because word got around that it sucked.

I had a similar problem where I had to cut the nose section bigger – it wasn’t the right size. And the replacement I got did not have the smell of the original either.

I read that it is “Neoprene” but is that really the whole story? I’ll have to find another Neoprene item and compare the smell.

From what I understand, if the right and left image spacing is off, it causes VB sickness to the viewer…

I hit a small road-block – After creating my own reel with stereoboy’s instructions, I added the first 2D image. Looks good to me.

The next image is of my wife at a museum, but the bottom half is scrambled – and what’s weirder (to me) is that it is filled in partially with another image from the program…

I had a similar result when trying to replace some images (a bush, background, etc.) on the platformer demo – only a small part of the top of my image showed up, the rest was scrambled.

The PNG being used is a similar size.
I’m guessing this is due to the numbers mentioned that I pay attention to in the guide.. I’ll keep looking into it.

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Thanks for the response, and your time in making the tutorial. It helped a lot in understanding how the images are defined in the VDBE, although the meaning of the hexadecimal representation itself still eludes me…

I’ll hold ctrl and try option 3 in the padder – Thanks.

Would the 3D sprite you mentioned basically consist of several layers of PNG images over top of each other?

Thanks for the tutorial.

I got around to using it, and have some images to show up on my VB (emulator) from using it. I didn’t attempt to make them in 3D yet: I just took an image and used GIMP to:

– Change resolution to 384×224 px
– Made a 4 color palette and applied it to the image, added dithering (although it looks like only one or two options for degrees of dithering in GIMP).
– Exported the images as PNG files
– But used the same exact image for right and left

Can you tell me if this is correct:
We’re using 2D png images, hence the need for us to create different right and left images.

If we were using sprites in a game, does the VBDE automatically create a right and left image based on one of the “32 worlds” or layers of the screen?

Maybe next I’ll try to create some pixel art and use it in different places in the “platformer demo”.

Maybe you don’t know why, but for me, the platformer demo works on an emulator, yet not on my flashboy+. I can’t imagine it’s larger than some VB games.