Benjamin Stevens wrote:
…they are likely proud of the fact that they are one of the “chosen few” who ever get to play it, and they probably don’t want to ever give up the joy of that. Unfortunately, there is a strong “collector’s mentality” in existence, where one with the collector’s mentality wants to own something that almost nobody else owns, which can be connected to nothing other than pride the way I see it, and if that is ever taken away from him, then his joy and pride is taken away, and he is basically defeated, and he does not want to be defeated. It is as if he is sitting on his high throne of collector’s glory, far above all others who can never have access to that which gives him his pride and joy, and if others would get to access to his pride and joy, then he would be knocked down from his high place and be brought to the level of all others, and what would he have to boast to himself about then?… Nothing…

That “arrested development” mindset is possible; hopefully ending when a person received effective therapy for self-validation in other areas. Then again, the statement I just made could make someone madder and more closed; I certainly hope not.

One would think in time as VB fades more into the shadows (except with a few of us die-hards), the excitement of hoarding would be supplanted by the greater excitement of gloating.

In that respect — years ago I was a member of Ferry’s message board, which then moved over to VG-Chat. But there was a poster exhibiting BOTH prototypes, “Racers” and “Dragon”. The jpegs looked just like you’d expect — blank gray cases, with “Brother P-Touch” labels.

…no one believed they were legit…

If Dragon Hopper or Zero Racers is out there and in the hands of a person or persons with such mentalities, no public movement to acquire the game will ever work, in my opinion. It would most likely have to be done privately, almost like an infiltration initiative would have to be set up in some way.

Let’s play “armchair psychology” — NO one who has invested a long amount of time (part of his/her life!) coding such a game, will just delete all trace of it. Especially if it’s completed — it MUST exist in the archives of one or more of the programmers, regardless of directives from Nintendo management. The question would be how to contact them, and sweet-talk the code out of them whilst promising complete anonymity…

But then again… one of those games could also just be sitting in some ex-Nintendo employee’s closet somewhere, and he doesn’t even know about the interest in it or the demand for it because he doesn’t follow the Virtual Boy at all. If that’s the case, and such a person is ever found, then he may just be like “Oh… sorry… I didn’t know this was so important. Here, have it.”

How do we get an “inside line” on who could have been programming at the time?

I remember I wanted to know a part-number for a microwave oven (it had a company part number); called the company at lunchtime, bypassed the secretaries and talked to an engineer — he suggested I buy a new $150 timer board. I said, “Can’t afford it; besides, if I send in the old board you’ll just replace this 35¢ part and sell it for $150 to the next sucker.”

He said, “That’s true”. There was a long pause, and he said:
“…Try a ULN2003, but you didn’t hear it from me…”

…and I said, “Gosh, I’m really sorry you weren’t able to help me, but I’m VERY grateful for your time!”

Put me down for one. What will be the contact material? In that price range gold-plated wouldn’t be too much to ask (nor would a few microns of gold be very expensive)…

I do have two VB’s, bet I could easily find a second player; never had kids, but my nephew is addicted to games.

You could always use the “brute force” method, hook a video camera up in front of one of the screens. Don’t know how the scan rate of the VB will interfere with the camera chip, but it’s worth experimenting, spy cams are cheap; nothing will explode by trying!

jrronimo wrote:
I *mostly* used mine under the covers laying in bed at night while I was growing up. So I would be laying on a bed with the unit laying on my chest. This worked really well and I never had fatigue problems for many, many hours of Galactic Pinball and Mario Tennis.

Hah hah hah! 😀

No wonder you were always falling asleep in class!!!

That’s how I’ve always played it, just like the very artistic pic above. Sadly, I’ve broken two stands, had to repair* them; well, one now has its CLIP broken, but that’ll be easy to fix. I just balance the legs on my chest; gets a bit sore after awhile…

* Repair — removed the plastic hub (it was in pieces anyway), bent the leg rods more into a circle (to hold onto a screw), tapped the hole that the plastic hub used to use, then added screw & a lock nut. I used a shallow & wide headed screw, but a washer would work fine. Had to cut two slots in the stand’s hub-plate (one on each side), then bend up the resulting two tabs to provide STOPS for the legs. Works great.

(Bending the legs into more of a circle is hard.)

“Member since January 29, two thousand thirteen”.

Yikes. At least ebay will refund your money up to a point — but this will go beyond that point….

😯

jrronimo wrote:
Boxed copy of SD Gundam Dimension War up on eBay for the low low price of US$1,500

Yeah, I don’t forsee a complete Japanese collection in my lifetime…

I paid $800 for mine, in about 2005. The only “Japanese Only” I’m missing are Bowling and Lab…

Can’t remember what I paid for Space Invaders, couple hundred. Squash was $100, good game — well worth it.

I called Atlas in the 90’s and got two used “Jack Brothers” for under $20 each, with zeroxed manuals. (Sayyyy, didn’t I see a copy of that manual on this site???)

I made a very functional vb screwdriver from a pawn-shop philip’s driver. It was very damaged, stripped; they couldn’t believe I wanted to buy it, only charged me a quarter or something.

I ground the end flat, drilled an appropriate hole 1/8″ deep (same size as the screw heads), and then hit the edge with a chisel in six places. The “metal spikes” the chisel created grab the dents in the screw-heads just fine.

🙂

I would commit to a cart. Well, not if it was $1000, but in the $75 range I could swing that…

😀

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

Yeah… in addition to the buggy Bound High! ROMs that were put on eprom carts and then sold on Ebay, there was at least one other person at the time who sold a FlashBoy on Ebay and made clear mention of the fact that Bound High! was on it, and I’m assuming he wasn’t the only one who tried to sell Bound High! like that before its online release.

It makes me wonder who may have possibly ordered FlashBoy Pluses from you, for the sole purpose of putting Dragon Hopper or Zero Racers or something else unreleased on them, in order then to secretly sell the cart with game to another. One just never knows what all goes on in the dark underground world of Virtual Boy collecting.

That’s something I didn’t think of — people hoarding the dragon or racers because they want big bucks.

Grrrrr….

Okay, there are times when I can be a little naive…

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

There was also an earlier Ebay fiasco associated with Bound High! before the most current one:

Before Bound High! was released online for everyone to play for free on May 3rd, 2010 (http://www.planetvb.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=301), there were people who secretly had buggy versions of the ROM, and they would put these buggy versions of Bound High! on FlashBoys and then try to auction them off on Ebay for very high prices, which worked for them as long as not very many people could play the game at all. The main reason why Bound High! took a while to get its online release is because PVB had expert programmers who were working on trying to fix the bugs, so that everybody could play the fully complete and fully functional game for free, but while they were working on this, there were the profit-seekers trying to make as much money off of the buggy version of the ROM that had somehow made its way into the hands of private collectors. Of course, once Bound High! was publicly released online, this then made a lot of the private collectors upset, because they could no longer sell their FlashBoys with buggy Bound High!, or sell just the buggy ROM via secret e-mails and payment exchanges, for large profits anymore, thus all the drama.

Thanx, really appreciate the info, and patience with the “new guy”.

🙂

[vb-fan]

I know for a fact that there are pinouts and diagrams for a VB link cable. I’m sure I’ve got ’em stashed at home, though I’m also positive they’re here on the site somewhere. I imagine the biggest “problem” is the custom connector, but that shouldn’t be too impossible to deal with.

For my “inline cart connector”, I got appropriate sized pins, put them in a cart, and ran epoxy over them; then coated the cart with a film of paraffin and molded epoxy putty into a “U” — very nice inline connector, perfectly shaped and keyed. Made the connector for my PCMCIA laptop modem similarly; the “vb link” custom connector can easily be done the same way.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 10 months ago by vb-fan.

What was the drama associated with the release? (Someone on this thread said the words “ebay fiasco”; people paying too much on ebay?)

I secretly daydreamed about going to the 1995 convention where all three prototypes were displayed, and having a VB console with a covert rom-copier hidden inside. Imagine plugging in the Dragon-Hopper or Zero Racers cart, and the whole game gets vacuumed into a static Ram…

😛

[vb-fan]

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

jrronimo wrote:
I realize this is a bit off topic, but has anyone ever made and/or tested a link cable? It probably wouldn’t be too difficult to make a simple Pong clone where you see your paddle from behind and you see the other player’s paddle off in the distance to test it…

Oh yes… DogP made some link cables a while ago and even released some VB homebrew games that support them.

Check out this page:
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/games/?hg

and his homebrew titles: 3D BattleSnake and Tic Tac Toe

Shouldn’t be too hard to do. I made my own joysticks back when the TI-99-4A was popular. Is there a technical section here with schematics and pinouts? (Haven’t figured out this site yet.) Ferry Grodjnik (I’m sure I’m mispelling his last name) had some detailed stuff; can’t find his site anymore. I used it in the “cart copier project” (didn’t actually get it to copy). But I have a neat extension cable, and an “inline cart connector” — plugs into the “extended cart with zif socket”…

PS — thank you very much for the recommends; hope to get a “flashboy”, and see about making it adaptable for flash-card swaps…

• This reply was modified 11 years, 10 months ago by vb-fan.

Benjamin Stevens wrote:

If someone who is willing to share the ROMs with everyone ever gets their hands on them, then Zero Racers and/or Dragon Hopper could be released someday, but right now, these are the lost “Holy Grails” of Virtual Boy games that people are still hoping and/or searching for.

Very cool. I don’t doubt that eventually they’ll surface, “if the world don’t end first”. Those who have them know what they are and how coveted.

“Faceball,” which was made by Bullet-Proof Software and released online recently (check out the top story on the front page) does not have a two-player option. However, DanB is currently working on a homebrew title similar to Faceball called “Ballface,” and he said that he hopes to add 2-player support to the game, so we will have to wait and see if that happens. You can download a working demo of this still unfinished game and find out more information about it here:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=21418#forumpost21418

I have two consoles I bought new (when they were dumping them), I could do that; I’ll look forward to it. Hope to be able to buy a “Flash-Boy” — I’d like to make memory cards for it, so that I can just swap games without having to actually download each time. Some of the “home-brews” sound good — anyone have favorites there?

BTW, what was the “Bound High” fiasco? I was a member of Ferry’s webpage for a long time, but got distracted for awhile; missed that story…

Just ordered one from “Uncle Tusk’s” website.

It’s been SO long since I’ve enjoyed plugging in a new game; think the last time was with Gundam, and that game sucks.

Will others be released, like Zero Racers or Dragonhopper?

Think I need to get a “flashboy”, and Faceball; I’m told it’s the only game to exploit the interconnect cable. Hope I can figure out where it is on this site (hint — helps appreciated!)

I once tried to make a copier; have a connector cable that extends the cart, and a ZIF socket — that’d be cool if I can download into ROMS and use that socket….

🙂