Nintendo just confirmed both D-Hopper and Zero Racers will be releasing via Nintendo Switch Online on August 4. I know you are all as excited as I am! Here’s a link to the YouTube commercial they created to celebrate the occasion.

[jrronimo]

I’m so excited to give these a try! I can’t believe they’re finally out!

• This reply was modified 6 days, 16 hours ago by jrronimo.

PVB, it’s been a while! I never thought this day would come, let alone with Nintendo themselves releasing them. Nothing much more I can rn add other than pointing out how adorable Dorin’s idle animation is! A great day for sure.

To be a little cryptic about it for those still searching, they appear to have been *archived*

Just the one ROM for all regions I guess? Can’t wait to fire up the flash cart. And probably discover some ribbon connector issues or something on my unit lol. Been a while and a half!

[UHATEIT]

Heck yeah this is what I came hoping to find! Thank you! Hey for some reason they come skewed to the right on the label vs in the middle, any suggestion? I converted them as needed and added to the Flashdrive but they are skewed to the right of center with Zero Racers cutting off.

• This reply was modified 6 days, 4 hours ago by UHATEIT.

These are the labels I use, looking great and centered.
They are not from me, but I can´t say who is the creator because so much going on on Discord.
I hope the creator is not angry and understands this.

Attachments:

1. zero-racers-bw-eink.label
2. dragon-hopper-bw-eink.label

So I played Dragon Hopper. Not in NSO, but on my Mr Cart flash cart, on a real VB.

I have to say – I am genuinely liking the game. It’s a solid platformer with pretty solid mechanics. The game is designed to encourage you to constantly leap to find platforms above your head, and there’s good incentive and low risk to taking a leap of faith outside your viewing area. The worst you’ll do generally is fall to the bottom floor.

Combat is basic, but it’s also not the point of the game. Learning the angles of attack for the different enemies is key, but I’ll admit that it’s harder than it should be. This is primarily down to the difficulty in differentiating enemies from the well-drawn but visually complicated background. This is an area where gameplay is directly affected by the Virtual Boy’s extremely limited color palette. It’s not insurmountable, but it’s also highly appropriate that you’re playing as a dragon, because you’ll find that your vision becomes based on movement *cough* Jurassic Park reference *cough*.

Musically…well, the music is fine, compositionally speaking. Simplistic at times, but considering the technology, it does a lot with very little. However, some sound effects and music cues appear to have their relative volumes set to full – I’ve just beaten the first boss of the game, and I’ve encountered two situations where a musical sting suddenly blasted my ears much more loudly than literally everything around it. Unpleasant, but my suspicion is that the build is a near-final release candidate, and had this gone gold, it would have recieved a fix for this prior to master.

Objectively speaking, I would rate this as being one of the best VB games made. Not the absolute best – that goes to Wario Land, of course – but I feel that it ties for second or third with Jack Bros, depending on how you rate Bound High. On that note, it seems to fit quite neatly in between those two as far as presentation and actual gameplay are concerned.

My personal view is that Dragon Hopper would not have saved the VB…but it might have pushed its inevitable failure back a few months, long enough to get a few more games out the door, maybe.

30 years of wanting this have paid off beautifully.

[Cosmoliner]

Hi, Dragon Hopper and Zero Racers now available as cartridge at https://www.vr32.uk/shop/ 🙂

• This reply was modified 5 days, 11 hours ago by Cosmoliner.

Yeah, with stolen label from Super Bros…

🙁

… with the wrong product number on it. Should be VUE-VZRE-USA. 😛

But anyway, that’s a brave move – or naive, dumb, suicidal… you decide. Will be interesting to see what Nintendo’s lawyers think about this, if they come across the listing.

Your’e right, Nintendo’s lawyers are well-known for being ruthless and tough.

[Jack Ripper]

I don’t need it

I don’t need it

I definitely don’t need it

I don’t need it

I don’t need it

I don’t need it

Oh, and absolutely NO ONE better snitch this site out

• This reply was modified 4 days, 23 hours ago by Jack Ripper.
• This reply was modified 4 days, 23 hours ago by Jack Ripper.

So I played Dragon Hopper. Not in NSO, but on my Mr Cart flash cart, on a real VB.

God I hate this forum software next to the old one I have no idea if I’m doing this right having to type it all in manually or how to preview it or are you supposed to @Sporkmaster or something I don’t know? Bleh. *Anyway.*

Have you had any issues with graphical glitches at all? I’m playing the same way and every now and then when I go through a portal the left eye gets messed up and is shifted upwards by half a screen while the rest is covered in artefacts and nonsense. Goes away when I return back through the portal, or at least once I looked away to do something else and when I came back it was gone. But also I *did* have some issues with my eyepieces and had to frankenstein a working unit by harvesting a module from my other one so there could be something up hardware-wise.

I’m playing on a consolized VB through a Virtual Tap; I’m sorry, but I can’t answer your questions. I experienced no graphical glitches, but I happen to be pulling from the Right side video output. If your system is cobbled together, as you say it is, there may be too many potential variables to immediately point a finger at what might be going on.

Is uncketusk or anyone making boxes and manuals?

Nusilver wanted to create a manual (see a few posts above).

Btw, I made my own EPROM dev cartridge look-alike reprocard for Dragon Hopper.
Since I could not get the saving to work I have chosen the debug patch which allows me to play at least all stages.

Attachments:

1. 

   2026-08-08-dragon-hopper-debug-eprom-cartridge-01-scaled.jpg
   

2. 

   2026-08-08-dragon-hopper-debug-eprom-cartridge-02-scaled.jpg
   

This is incredible.

I was so disappointed when both games were canceled. Always hoped that maybe some day Dragon Hopper would turn up on a prototype cart…

BTW, playing it on my 3ds with red viper and so far it’s worked flawlessly. it has so much charm. Would have loved it to pieces if it had actually gotten an official release.

Alright! Now I’ve played about 90 minutes or so of Dragon Hopper on my Virtual Boy!
It’s quite good as I expected, I like how it’s like Bound High if it was an adventure game.

To you who are playing/have played it to completion, can you tell me how to find the “big key” in the infinity tower?
I’ve found a frozen switch which must mean I have to free a fire spirit to be able to melt it.
But now since I only have a Flashboy and not a Flashboy Plus, my game didn’t save and I have to play from the beginning again next time.
By the way, is it supposed to be that the dragon forms disappear after a level? In the tower there’s a block that’s clearly breakable, but pressing right on the D-pad to switch forms only works once per stage for me even though it seems like you would keep all the spirits the whole game through?

I can’t remember where I found the big key in the tower, but I can tell you that the dragon forms stay with you from the time you get them and you should be able to freely swap between them as necessary. Pressing right or left on the right dpad should bring up the dragon form menu repeatedly so you can swap around.

I think it may be time for you to upgrade your flash cart!

@abarth thanks for the feedback! Trying to consolidate here – fixed labels @ https://www.virtual-boy.com/forums/t/dragon-hopper-hyper-flash-cart-labels-and-icon/#post-1061125