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Mar 03, 2017 • 01:17 Profile Photo VirtualChris

So I was looking at my Game Boy Everdrive and I got to thinking about the Virtual Boy. Reading about how we’re eventually going to run out of cartridges. Putting 2+2 together, I figured, well, why doesn’t someone start making chips for the cartridges like they did for the consoles the Everdrives are on? We’d never run out of the shells thanks to 3-D printing, but since someone figured out how to make working chips for the Game Boy, that doing so for the Virtual Boy would be possible as well? Of course, I know nothing about the technical side of making chips for game consoles, so I would like someone to tell me why this isn’t possible if not, and if so, why hasn’t someone done so already?

9 Replies
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Mar 03, 2017 • 01:53 Profile Photo VirtuousRage

Hmm… I’ve always been under the assumption that it’s the pin connector on the cartridge that is needed from a harvested cart.
But, I also don’t have much of a real clue. 😛

Personally, I think 3-D printed carts don’t look as appealing as the original plastic injection molded carts. I’d be curious to know how much it would cost to get new ones made if we had a mold!

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Mar 03, 2017 • 02:32 Profile Photo speedyink

VirtuousRage wrote:
Hmm… I’ve always been under the assumption that it’s the pin connector on the cartridge that is needed from a harvested cart.

This is the reality of the situation, unfortunately. It’s a hard part to reproduce and there’s no other replacement out there.

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Mar 03, 2017 • 19:56 Profile Photo MineStorm

A solution would be for every VB user to have an adaptor. It converts the VB connector into a standard edge connector.

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Mar 04, 2017 • 20:13 Profile Photo Protons

What is the chance that VB will really run out of cartridges?

On wikipedia it says that Nintendo produced 1.26 million virtual boys.

That means there are at least that many Mario Tennis’s out there. And if you say there were 5 games made for every virtual boy produced (I’m completely guessing here), then there are 6 million games.

Some of them have probably been trashed. That still leaves some million out there.

Let’s say there are 3000 homebrew carts plus flashboys out there. Still many more hundreds of thousands of Mario Tennis’s and other games are out there for homebrews.

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Mar 16, 2017 • 20:36 Profile Photo STEREO BOY

MineStorm wrote:
A solution would be for every VB user to have an adaptor. It converts the VB connector into a standard edge connector.

That’s an interesting idea. I think, it’s actually close to the Flashboy with the difference, that you wouldn’t always have to flash over again to change a game and the collectors also would have a nice game cart to collect. I would definetly support that …

Another idea: CIB-releasing homebrew games on “Special Edition” FlashBoys. So it actually would be a Flshboy+ that you could re-use for other games, but you’ll get it with a game pre installed – “FlashBoy+ Zelda Edition” for example. It would come with a nice Zelda box, manual and special cart sticker on the Flashboy. It could also be 3d printed in a certain edition color and with the game title engraved …

Of cause, you’d still need to harvest game cart connectors for both – Flashboy and edge adapter – but I think it’s a step more “sustainable” to produce adapters or more FlashBoys (that are both flexible) instead of locking the connectors to fixed game carts.

So maybe FlashBoy Special Editions could be a compromise too between CIB collecting and saving game connectors …?
… collectors vs. connectors … 😉

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Mar 16, 2017 • 20:40 Profile Photo STEREO BOY

And how about 32 MBit FlashBoys for the “NEXT GEN” Virtual Boy games? 😀

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Mar 16, 2017 • 22:46 Profile Photo Quaze

StereoBoy wrote:

MineStorm wrote:
A solution would be for every VB user to have an adaptor. It converts the VB connector into a standard edge connector.

Another idea: CIB-releasing homebrew games on “Special Edition” FlashBoys. So it actually would be a Flshboy+ that you could re-use for other games, but you’ll get it with a game pre installed – “FlashBoy+ Zelda Edition” for example. It would come with a nice Zelda box, manual and special cart sticker on the Flashboy. It could also be 3d printed in a certain edition color and with the game title engraved …

wink:

That is a great-sounding idea. I’d love to have a 3D-printed original title, even if it weren’t rewritable, just for the aesthetic! I recall seeing someone with a 3D-printed blue copy of Faceball, and it looked slick! Love to see some future releases play around with the colour of the cart and board.

As for running out of connectors, if the community supply of donor carts ever “dries up”, I’m sure there’d be no problem with stipulating buyers having to provide a donor cart for future releases.

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Mar 16, 2017 • 22:52 Profile Photo speedyink

I like the adapter idea, I’m kind of picturing something like the Honeybee NES/Famicom adapter.

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Mar 16, 2017 • 23:52 Profile Photo STEREO BOY

And of cause the edge connector game cards as well as the adapter itself could also be nicely designed 3d printed collectibles, to gather support for this solution …

 

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