Original Post

Last evening, my two best friends since junior high school, Luke and Jared, surprised me with one of the greatest birthday gifts ever. They don’t have too much interest in the Virtual Boy but usually let me ramble on about it when I feel like doing so, so I was very shocked when I saw that the gifts they had made for me were very special Virtual Boy items indeed. I see two official-looking game boxes for Chris’s homebrew title, VUE Snake, before my eyes, a game that I had just happened to start playing recently and enjoy so much. At first, I am literally speechless and wonder if there could actually be something in one of them that I could logically expect, a working game cartridge of Chris’s game. I think… no. There is no way that my two friends who hardly have any interest in the Virtual Boy at all could have done something like that, for surely they would have had to have contacted at least the 2 people I know that would be necessary for such a thing. But sure enough, I open one of the game boxes and see a very official-looking game cartridge of VUE Snake. My first question was “how the heck did you do this?” And then I found out that they had gotten in touch with both Chris and Richard and got this amazing gift made for me, all the while keeping it a secret so well that I had no clue it was coming all the way up to receiving the gift last evening. But it didn’t end there, for Luke told me to put the game in his Virtual Boy that he hardly ever plays and test it out, and then I see that it is truly a special gift indeed. There on the title screen, beneath “VUE SNAKE” I see a special message to me which reads “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEN! SPECIAL EDITION”, and I am just blown away! I then ask for more details and find out that Luke had contacted Chris and asked if he could help make something special for me for my birthday and Chris gladly did, making both the special version of the game as well as the artwork for the sticker on the game cartridge, which Luke also used to make the artwork on one of the boxes. Luke simply used Photoshop on an emulator’s image of the title screen and added his own colors for the artwork on the second box. I then learn that Richard was responsible for making the reproduction cartridge of the game for me.

I already thanked Luke and Jared for having this gift made for me, so I would now like to send out a special thank you to Chris and Richard for doing this for me. This gift means a lot to me and is truly special. It is so incredibly cool! πŸ™‚

Relevant pictures attached.

23 Replies

I am glad you’re enjoying your present as much as I enjoyed making my little contribution to it and talking about it to Jason. πŸ™‚ You have some really great friends there!

There’s a few more little differences in your version of the game; I bet you already found them. πŸ™‚

Well, I didn’t want to mention it, but I actually found a different glitch in this version. In this version, I can never get a number one score. At best, I can get third, because the number one score is 8 million something and the game doesn’t let me get more than 999,999. I don’t even know what the second highest score is, but when I get 999,999, it says I got third place. I also tried to kill myself before the game locked up at the full snake screen this time, to see if I could enter and save my score, because Luke told me that this cart should save my high scores. Unfortunately, the game locked up once again, but this time after I could see that the name entry screen already assumed that it was me, which I thought was pretty cool. It already had my name registered, but then the game locked up before I could even see the high score list screen and I had to shut it off.

It’s okay, though. The game is still fully playable and I love it just as it is. πŸ™‚

Thats a really nice gift they got you.

I really like them, very cool. I would be ultra excited for such a gift.

Ben, does the whole highscore list look garbled? It sounds as if Luke forgot to initialize the SRAM after receiving the cart. On first startup of the game, press the left and right triggers on the very first screen to clean and prepare the SRAM (A little symbol will show up in the bottom left corner to show it worked).

thats is a great gift they look very nice
also happy birthday

Oh damn.. I totally missed playing this game for the homebrew showcase =S I have to add it. I have to play it on my own VB now though since i returned the good one…

KR155E wrote:
On first startup of the game, press the left and right triggers on the very first screen to clean and prepare the SRAM (A little symbol will show up in the bottom left corner to show it worked).

Ah yes… That worked. Thanks for letting me know that. Now I see that the save function is, indeed, working correctly. That is most excellent.

Have I noticed all the changes made to this version? Apart from the special message on the title screen and the save function for high scores, it seems that the music tempo and overall flow of the music has been improved. I already mentioned the fact that the name entry screen assumes its me. Anything else? I do notice, however, that the stereoscopic effect on the playing field seems to have been removed. In the version that I downloaded from this site, the snake seems to be hovering over the blocks, but in this version, he seems to be resting on them. Was a change made there?

mawa wrote:
thats is a great gift they look very nice
also happy birthday

Thanks. I’m the big Three-O now.

Have I noticed all the changes made to this version? Apart from the special message on the title screen and the save function for high scores, it seems that the music tempo and overall flow of the music has been improved. I already mentioned the fact that the name entry screen assumes its me. Anything else? I do notice, however, that the stereoscopic effect on the playing field seems to have been removed. In the version that I downloaded from this site, the snake seems to be hovering over the blocks, but in this version, he seems to be resting on them. Was a change made there?

In-game graphics have been changed a bit, nothing dramatically or instantly noticeably. Also this version is english only so it’s like an “USA release”. I think that’s all that has been changed. I did not remove the depth in-game; if it was there in v1.1 and is not in your version, this happened by mistake. Weird.

:thumpup: :thumpup: :thumpup:

Very nice gift.

this is a prime example of how awesome this community, and the people involved with it, actually are. now please dump it so we can all enjoy your b-day present! =P

Well, I guess if you actually want the ROM that is the Happy Birthday Ben Special Edition, KR155E can post that on here since he already has the ROM on his computer. I certainly have no problem with that.

As for the boxes, I have the files with the birthday comment to me removed. Thus, you can pretty much put whatever text you want on the back of them and personalize them for yourself.

I would love to be able to play the version of snake that goes with this rad birthday story; can you post the rom here for us KR155E?
πŸ™‚

OMG, so jealous.

That’s super awesome Ben. An awesome gift for an awesome guy.

Yeah… I definitely have some of the coolest friends on the planet. πŸ™‚

This is such a great community! How awesome of a gift!

I missed this first time round. Great gift. Good looking boxes also. You must be well pleased with such a unique gift. Most I get out of my mates is a pint down the pub, and that’s if I’m lucky. Lol!

Yeah, my friends even went all out and got me all the official inserts for each box, so the white cart holder, precautions booklet, and Nintendo Power subscription pamphlet. The only thing it would need to be complete would be an instruction booklet.

The best thing that I like about this gift is its priceless nature to me alone. If I were to try to sell it on Ebay, I probably wouldn’t get any offers, unless someone happened to want to give it to some guy named “Ben” for his birthday. But at the same time, I would never want to sell this, and I value it at a higher amount than my complete copy of Virtual Bowling.

Truly special gift indeed.

Absolutely priceless. Some great mates indeed.

 

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