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Dec 20, 2004 • 04:56 Profile Photo Breedlove

So has anyone made a game independently that works in a Virtual Boy or are all the games for an emulator on a computer? I was just wondering because there seems to be a lot of cool stuff being developed but nothing for sale to play at home. Are there copyright issues or is it something technical. Feel free to email me as well because I love playing my Virtual Boy but the games are running out and all the other ones are too expensive on eBay.

9 Replies
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Dec 20, 2004 • 11:41 Profile Photo KR155E

All games besides Virtual Pong work perfectly on real hardware, but none is available on cartridge, only for download. So the only way to play anything homebrewn on a real VB is to build yourself a flash or eeprom cartridge.

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Dec 20, 2004 • 11:42 Profile Photo lameboyadvance

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…

Hope that helps 🙂

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Dec 20, 2004 • 20:45 Profile Photo Breedlove

I see. So you guys made blank cartridges and have downloaded your homebrewn games on to them and are able to play them on the VB? That’s rad. I’m sure you are asked this all the time but are you guys selling them to other VB gamers? Or like you said, is it too time consuming to do this? I would love to play some amatuer games on my VB. Thanks for your help. This is a great forum.

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Dec 20, 2004 • 20:59 Profile Photo Breedlove

I just read more of the forums. Did you guys ever make some of the Blox cartridges you talked about? I would love to buy one or help figure out how you guys could distribute them underground while still making some money. Let me know!

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Dec 22, 2004 • 14:58 Profile Photo lameboyadvance

No, we haven’t made any carts to sell as of yet.

A few of us, including myself, are still working on possible designs. If/when we get them to a stage that we can produce them, we will do so.

Feb 03, 2005 • 01:34 Brian S.

Hey guys,

I have an idea for an overhead-view role-playing game for the virtual boy, but as we speak I’m looking for a way to decode Blox to see how it looks, as well as learn the C programming language.

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Feb 03, 2005 • 03:26 Profile Photo RunnerPack

“Decode”? Do you mean run it?

There are quite a few emulators for the VB. I’m pretty sure they all run BLOX pretty well.

Here you go! (Note: it says a PII-300 will run games at full speed, but I have a PIII-450 and AGP video, and most things still crawl 😐 BLOX is pretty smooth, though.)

If you want to learn C, you probably shouldn’t try to learn the VB at the same time. Best to learn C first, by making simple console-mode PC programs, for example, then learn the VB stuff.

About the only VB game I really want to make is a Zelda-style game. (Which could easily become a FF, Chrono Trigger, etc.) I have a feeling the VB’s “H-Bias” mode would be perfect to give the ground a 3-D “slope” effect.

If only I had more time to work on it… I can’t wait to see your results, though! Keep us updated 🙂
Post Edited (02-03-05 04:28)

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Feb 04, 2005 • 02:14 Profile Photo StealthNinjaScyther

What kind of language does the Virtual Boy use anyway? I’m taking my first programming class right now, learning Java. If I can manage to get good enough at it I’d like to start making my own games. And for some reason I want to make one for the VB…

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Feb 04, 2005 • 03:28 Profile Photo RunnerPack

The Virtual Boy only “understands” v810 machine language. Right now, there’s no JVM for the VB, so you’ll have to learn C (which shares some syntax rules with Java) and/or v810 assembly language before you can write software for it.

 

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