As you can tell from the title, I’m very relieved to know that my precious Virtual Boy works fine after all. It used to do this thing in which it would appear to draw an extra faded line for every line displayed that was even remotely bold (I drew a small sketch of what the edge of the Mario’s Tennis court looked like with this effect).

I’d gotten my Virtual Boy pre-soldered awhile back, so I figured that there must’ve been a defect in the ribbon cables. I even took apart the unit multiple times to attempt to find a secondary culprit, or a way around this issue. I’ve been wearing thick glasses ever since I was in middle school, and I’d recently gotten contact lenses (and what a world of difference they make), so I decided to see if the 3D effect of the Virtual Boy was any different with those on.

My stunned surprise nearly put me into a coma when I saw that the issue which I’d thought was a VB defect for years, was just caused by my most recent eyeglass prescription. When they’d gotten thicker, they must’ve interfered with the small, bright visuals of the Virtual Boy’s display. It then became clear to me why the ‘Extra Line Effect’ would go away after I closed one eye, and why it wouldn’t show up in any attempted photos. Now, I know that my VB always worked just as intended, and I can enjoy it for many years to come!

Also I can wear sunglasses now. It is truly a celebratory time in my life lol.

So has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you ever wrestled with a VB for a while for something that was so easily remedied? I’d love to hear about it! 🙂

Attachments:

1. 

   fullsizerender.jpg
   

my glasses cause my vb image to appear biconcave. it is higher on the corners than it is in the middle. this doesn’t really bother me now but when i first noticed it, it took me awhile to figure out what was causing it. i also have blurry edges on some games, but that is because of the red lenses.

The Virtual Boy never ceases to amaze! What a strange but cool piece of hardware. Really one of my most beloved and annoying piece of hardware there is.

Lester Knight wrote:
my glasses cause my vb image to appear biconcave. it is higher on the corners than it is in the middle. this doesn’t really bother me now but when i first noticed it, it took me awhile to figure out what was causing it. i also have blurry edges on some games, but that is because of the red lenses.

My glasses did that too, they also stuck out a bit so I could rarely see the corners. Awhile back someone mentioned trying to make red glass lenses for the VB to avoid the blurry corners, fuzzy visuals, and overall durability that we can get with the standard plastic ones. I hope one day we’ll see them produced.

TheForce81 wrote:
Really one of my most beloved and annoying piece of hardware there is.

I couldn’t’ve said it better myself lol.

I’ve been posting about making red Glass Lens replacements for a while. It’s a project I’d really like to try to do. I’d Like to try different products to see what would works best. I just never seem to have the time to get started researching.