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.

I’m working on the manual! It’s slow-going, but I’m a few pages in. It’s going to be a bit on the longer side owing to story, characters, dragon forms, spells, bosses, stages, bonus stages, etc. I have about 300 screenshots from my NSO playthrough to sort through and just a ton of image editing to do—hard to do right now when my oldest kid is always home until school starts again in a month.

I don’t think Uncle Tusk is going to be doing anything for this release, based on conversations with him earlier this year.

Is Tusk still around? I remember him from the NintendoAge days.

[Cosmoliner]

@Nusilver Thank you for your work, I can understand what a huge task that is.
I didn’t even know that someone was working on a manual fo Dragon Hopper ,I was lucky back then, and I received a box from Uncle Tusk.

• This reply was modified 4 weeks ago by Cosmoliner.
• This reply was modified 4 weeks ago by Cosmoliner.

Okay, I ordered from VR32.uk
Very fast shipping, cartridges look very good, play and safe fine.

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[nusilver]

Tusk’s still around, he has an Etsy shop! He sent me some old stock VB boxes and manuals earlier this year when I asked about pairing boxes with the four games in my retail collection that are repros (the four most expensive JP exclusives) but he had very little stock left and when I mentioned that I hoped someone was going to work on physical product, he basically said “yeah, that would be nice.” Didn’t realize it was going to end up being me making the manual, lol–since I became a parent I end up with about one creative project in me every few years.

He did send me one of the old Dragon Hopper boxes as a surprise, so that was very nice to see when it showed up.

If anyone’s curious, I posted WIP versions of the the first five pages of the manual on the #general channel on Discord. I’m making progress, but slowly (as I guess I keep saying)! I’m using Wario Land’s manual as a template. I have about 300 screenshots from NSO with textual details, spell icons, etc., so I’ll be poring through those as I do about a page a night (or a page every two nights) over the next couple of months. I do want to have a few illustrations in the manual but there’s literally ZERO art out there aside from Mike Tagaki’s cover art and unofficial art, so once I get to the “content complete” phase I may commission my wife or someone else to do the illustrations (or I’ll do them myself.) They’ll be based on the in-game character portraits, which this game is great for.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 6 days ago by nusilver.
• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 6 days ago by nusilver.
• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 6 days ago by nusilver.

missed the carts run at VR32 but ‘found’ some ROM’s, looking forward to loading onto flashcart & also the 3DS.
Didn’t think the release would actually come from Nintendo, what a bonus its been, putting VB games on switch.

You didn’t miss anything, he just only lists one of each color at a time. They’re definitely still available.

I have reconstructed the logos as they appear in the game menu!

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Wow, those label look really well made!

[nusilver]

Thanks, JackieX. I know some people don’t like what you did with Zero Racers in particular because it’s AI and I definitely have major issues with AI, coming from a creative background, but I think it looks pretty nice. I printed it up and slapped it on a box for my collection.

• This reply was modified 2 weeks ago by nusilver.

I went with Vinny for my repros. Nice labels, works great, and I also got Waterworld and Virtual Fishing alongside. Pricey, but I’ve always been happy with the quality, shipping, etc.

Zero Racers is… OK? I didn’t like it at first, but it’s growing on me. Once I got used to breaking around corners.

Dragon Hopper is great. Gives me mild Zelda vibes.

BIG QUESTION:
In Dragon Hopper, are there enough tokens to buy all the magic by the end game? I know there’s a cheat to unlock all magic and access any level, but I want to know if you can do it naturally? Or do you HAVE to gamble to get enough?

I’m up to level 4-1 now, and have… 5 spells unlocked? And the levels only go up to 6-8. So it looks like you can’t is my guess. I might replay it with all unlocked.

I also hate how what you buy is random. Very annoying. Very bad design all round.

I think I like Bound High a little more, since it’s more bite size, but DH is still top 5 games for me. Top 3 even?

I don’t think anything would have saved the VB back in the day. I think it was released to fulfil contracts and offload inventory, with the full knowledge it wasn’t going to success. Basically better to put it out there, make some sales, rather than just destroy all the inventory.

It is a fundamentally flawed and badly designed system. I have constant back ache and headache, no matter the position, because the controller cable is too short to let it sit in my hands. I’m like 190cm tall. WHY is the cable so short? Why is the power unit on the controller and not the headset? I keep getting the wires caught up. And the weight makes it painful to hold for long periods. But I can’t rest my hands in my lap, because sitting upright the controller doesn’t have enough length – unless I lower the headset, in which case my arms are fine now, but my whole back is crooked try to crane my head.

This thing feels like it was designed for short people. Literally. Or maybe just children. It is not comfortable for a full size adult man.

And I refuse to believe anyone plays this resting on their head while lying down – it’s several kilos of weight pushing directly on your nose then! Nobody does that for long periods! The photos you see are staged! I tried it once and it felt like my face was being crushed beneath a small CRT.

I love it, but I also accept that nothing could have saved this thing.