I just remembered another possible factor in the VB getting sidelined-the Nintendo 64. That console was released in the same year that the VB was dropped, and the Big N probably saw that 3D games would work better on the N64, stereoscopy be damned.

(I’m starting to think about something, though…what if the VB had modern HMD tech, with full color and no flickery, headache-inducing visuals, yet it still remained at its original 180 US$ MSRP? Would it have failed if that were the case?)

What’s with all the spare VBs? Plenty of backups should some of them fail?

I could use one of those VBs myself, seeing that I STILL don’t have one yet…however, it’ll have to be compelling enough somehow for me to avoid taking the eBay route.

I’m pretty sure that if any one thing killed the Virtual Boy, it was the general notion that the thing would give you headaches or seizures. (Bad advertising didn’t help, either.)

I don’t recall getting any headaches from playing Teleroboxer back in the day, though, so I’m willing to actually give it more of a chance. (Perhaps the headaches only set in if you play it for too long.)

Also, I don’t think that the VB had a particular killer app that would have compelled people to buy it. If games like Dragon Hopper, Bound High!, and ESPECIALLY some sort of Wolfenstein 3D or Doom port were released, most gamers actually might have regarded the VB as actually having a good game or two.

First off, I don’t have Photoshop.

Second, I’d want to have 3D done the proper way, which would require a proper stereoscopic render mode rather than a hack-job from a 2D screenshot. Hopefully, a source port of some sort already has a stereoscopic rendering mode…

Bah, cross-eyed 3D…I just can’t do it most of the time! (I can view other things like autostereograms with relative ease, though.)

Anyway, I think the one thing that the VB really needed was a FPS of some sort. It’s too bad that the device didn’t last long enough to have a Doom port released on it(or a certain other game that was slated to release in August of 1996, for that matter).

blcklblskt wrote:

NamelessPlayer wrote:
Welcome aboard, then. It’s pretty nice here, even for people that don’t quite have VBs yet(me).

How are you supposed to play Dragon Hopper if you don’t have a VB!

Red Dragon, perhaps? (That, or I’ll get Nintendo to remake the game for the Wii or DS, unlikely as that is.)

Then again, it seems that VB emulators aren’t exactly on par with emulators for other, more popular platforms when it comes to accuracy(some games have glitched graphics, for instance).

I still have plenty of opportunities to get a VB(which I can’t exactly say about DH, unfortunately), so don’t worry. It’s all a matter of when I have the money.

Dj AXS wrote:
I’m registered to ASSEMbler Forums, I could post a topic for ya if you want 😉

Anyway, I’m pretty much interested in Dragon Hopper informations too, so…

I can’t seem to get my account activated by posting in the thread for rectifying this sort of problem, as my post apparently never appears. I guess you’ll have to post in my stead.

Dave_ wrote:
Of the prototypes known to exist, Dragon Hopper is actually the one that excites me the least. I’d still grin like an idiot if a special internet edition turned up though. 🙂

That’s perfectly fine by me; I understand that not everyone has the same taste in games(and, besides, the world wouldn’t be all that interesting if everyone liked and disliked the same things).

Anyway, let’s revisit an old Lost Levels thread. Judging from one comment, the game has been dumped, but said dump is only in the hands of an exclusive few. If only I could find out who those people are so that I(and anyone else)could make a deal to get the dump…(Having the original prototype cart would be very nice, but my main concern is just getting to play the game. Besides, if I did get the actual prototype, I’d probably have it dumped, keeping a dump for myself while I resell the proto cart.)

I tried to register for the ASSEMbler Forums and inquire about this game there several days ago, but I got no activation e-mail. I’m still stuck with an unactivated account incapable of making threads or anything. Perhaps one of you has an account there and can post on my behalf.

During that time, I could’ve registered for the Lost Levels forums, but didn’t because I’m not sure that having my e-mail address and such in the hands of so many forums was a good idea. I’m going to break the ice now, register yet another forum account, and ask there.

One question that could make this investigation much easier would be contact information for absolutely anyone related to this game, be it scriptwriters(even those whose scripts were rejected!), coders, artists, composers, or whomever else may have played a role in this game’s development. (Contacting a specific person may actually net me a reply this time, as IntSys STILL hasn’t replied. I don’t think they’ll even bother sending a reply at this point.) Could one of you get in touch with that NoA scriptwriter who posted back in 2005?

(Finally, I get the feeling that I should make Dorin my avatar on this forum, and perhaps others…)

Well, this is freaky, as my actual first name is also Chris. (Hopefully, this one also gets his hands on some obscure VB prototypes, the main one of which you all probably know already.)

Welcome aboard, then. It’s pretty nice here, even for people that don’t quite have VBs yet(me).

Speaking of battery packs, I wonder if someone can create a lithium-ion battery pack with substantially increased battery life over the 6xAA version and also has a jack for the AC adapter for charging. Best of both worlds!

(Of course, it’ll probably never happen, given how everyone outside of this forum seems to hate it with a passion.)

(I know, double-posting is frowned upon on the Internet, but I figured that I’d give an update regardless.)

Four days have passed, and I don’t have a reply from Intelligent Systems yet. Perhaps I should have tried to contact a developer directly, though I don’t know who was responsible for creating this game other than a bunch of people working at Intelligent Systems back in 1996. (KR155E said in Lost Levels that he contacted IntSys more than once, though I don’t know if he got any replies either.)

And speaking of Lost Levels, someone there was worried that this game would be lost forever. I refuse to believe that, as Nintendo probably keeps the game data locked up in some vault over in Japan. Even if the Virtual Boy game were to be totally lost even to Nintendo themselves, I’d see to it that they remake it for a modern platform. (I don’t necessarily have to play it on the Virtual Boy, I just have to play it in some form developed by Nintendo themselves.)

I guess I’m going to take this investigation to other forums like ASSEMbler, Lost Levels, and who knows where else, as keeping it confined here won’t help much.

Well, that other auction’s gone…but this one looks promising.

(If only I wasn’t short on money right now…I already promised to buy a hx4700 from someone else to replace/fix my somewhat-iffy one.)

[NamelessFPG]

That Planet Gamecube article taught me some interesting things about the NoA HQ, though I had to look it up on web.archive.org-and, even after that, I still had trouble bringing up some of the pages.

Also, as far as Dorin’s obscurity is concerned, I don’t think too many people today would have been aware of, say, the Ice Climbers if they weren’t in SSBM already. If I could just get this game released somehow, perhaps Dorin could garner just enough fame to be featured in the next game-if there even is a next SSB. (I don’t know how they could radically improve Brawl, anyway-at least not to the level of going from SSB64 to SSBM and then to SSBB.)

Anyway, I think I’m going to e-mail Intelligent Systems about the game, seeing as they were its developers. Are there any questions you want me to ask? (Or, would it be a better idea for us all to e-mail seperately so as to make it appear that more than one person in the world wants this game?)

EDIT: Just fired off an e-mail to IS. I hope they won’t mind me talking about an old, unreleased game for a generally-loathed platform in English when they could be developing games…Perhaps the rest of you ought to send e-mails about this game as well to let them know that there is a potential market for this game were it to be released(presumably on the Wii or DS).

• This reply was modified 16 years, 8 months ago by NamelessFPG.

Back to that Planet GC guy-what records do you have of his trip that may exist on the Internet somewhere? I doubt it’ll have any info pertinent to my investigation due to the lack of prototypes, but I could read just about anything at this point.

(As for discussion, I keep imagining what it would be like if I could make Dorin a playable character in a Super Smash Bros. game. Other characters like Chalvo could appear as Assist Trophies.)

I just remembered about something else long ago on these forums: someone was going to create all sorts of Bound High! and Dragon Hopper-related things, like comics and dolls/plushies/whatever. One of those things was going to be a Dorin doll/plush/whatever.

Did it ever arrive on the doorstep of whoever runs this site?

I suppose I could try investigating other unreleased games like Mother 3 N64, but DH gets the bulk of my attention simply because it hasn’t been remade and released on another platform already(not to mention it’s fairly unique).

I’ve got my eye on this auction, mostly because of that carrying case.

My only worry is that the AC adapter has no cord, making it pointless to use.

There’s also several other VB auctions with the box and everything, as well as more games, but no carrying case. I might go for one of those, but I’m not really sure if I should even go for any of them at this point because of my lack of funds right now.

However, some of you are mentioning much cheaper ways to get a VB. I take it you were looking through flea markets or something?

It kind of loses the point on a normal display, though-unless the TV displayed it in some form of stereoscopic manner, like two-color anaglyph or KMQ(over/under image layout used with prism glasses).

There are other methods listed here. Take your pick.

On the other hand, seeing SOMETHING is better than nothing, and most people will still get the point of these games if they saw them being played on TV displays back in E3 1996, just as people can get the point of 2D screenshots on this site. (I could even imagine some VB games like Bound High! still playing fine on a normal 2D display without a stereoscopic display mode as long as there’s enough visual cues to give the player an idea of exactly where everything is, though everyone here will insist that the only way to play such games is on the VB itself.)

(I also realized some time between making my last post and coming back here to read the reply that if a time machine DID exist, we could just head to E3 1996 and hang around in the VB section, thus explaining how we could play such games-and possibly get a copy if someone can filch one.)

Anyway, back to the point-is there a way to make one of these TV adapters without keeping the VB’s internals exposed to who knows what? If it were installed in a closed-up VB neatly, outputted in a variety of output standards(DVI, VGA, component, S-Video, and composite, though I’ll just settle for S-Video if necessary to keep complexity down), and had stereoscopic output to whatever display was connected, I’d consider ordering a pre-modded VB from this person and familiarize myself with it more.

(One of my main uses for it would be connecting the VB to a video capture card on a PC and recording gameplay footage that can be viewed stereoscopically with red/blue anaglyph glasses or whatever. It would also be much easier to play the VB when a camera isn’t jammed into the viewing area, leaving it free for my own two eyes. After all, if I got my hands on one of those elusive prototypes, you’d want fairly high-quality gameplay footage, right?)

And how, exactly, would going back in time with the VBTV net you those games? Would it be by somehow making the VB appealing enough that its support lasts long enough for what would be unreleased games to actually hit the market?

(I guess it doesn’t really matter if it means I get to play Dragon Hopper and the other unreleased titles in the end, though.)

Someone on these forums actually has the game?

While asking for a public dump is ludicrous(not without coughing up a few thousand US$ or other currency to compensate for prototype devaluation), could we at least get a video playthrough that has sound and isn’t a blurry, almost-unviewable mess? (That E3 1996 video here certainly isn’t cutting it.) At least watching the game get played to completion would whet my appetite for a bit(and also answer questions like “Does Dorin resume life with his re-united family in an evolved form, or his original form?”).