vuefinder83 wrote:

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
I recently acquired an original Japanese Virtual Boy flyer of the unreleased “Polygo Block” from Yahoo Auctions Japan.

That’s cool!

What are the dimensions of this flyer?

It’s 8.25 inches by 11.75 inches. Just about all the Japanese Virtual Boy flyers in my collection are this size as well.

The text on the page reads as follows:

A giant robot fighting action game for the VB.
Invincible iron and steel!
Gagaga-in

Proposal: 7/1/1995

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

V.B用巨大ロボット対戦アクションゲーム
鉄鋼無敵!
ガガガイン

企画案 1995071

That is a very interesting find! Looks like we can finally attach a title to the game that was briefly discussed here:

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=35180#forumpost35180

I recently acquired an original Japanese Virtual Boy flyer of the unreleased “Polygo Block” from Yahoo Auctions Japan.

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Virtual_Link wrote:
Does anyone know how many of these signs are known to exists?
Also thank you for the various compliments.

I couldn’t come up with a figure, but I’m pretty sure that no more than 1 or 2 show up online for sale or auction per year, so it shows up about as rarely or even more rarely than Virtual Bowling.

It’d be hard to put a price on them, too, given their rarity as well as the demand for them among collectors.

speedyink wrote:

norty wrote:
just for my information 🙂

is there a public digital release of the finnished game, or has it just been released on physical cart ?

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3718&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&type=&mode=0&start=380

That does seem to be the latest version of the ROM released, but I don’t believe it’s the final version.

speedyink wrote:
$1300???? Wow, some people.. Dude’s trying to pull a Hyper Fighting or something. Unfortunately for him Insecticide doesn’t quite have the brand recognition of Street Fighter 2.

I actually don’t think that this seller plans to sell any of the Virtual Boy items that he has listed on ebay. I think he just likes to use ebay to display his Virtual Boy collection. I’m pretty sure that some of the Virtual Boy items he currently has listed were first listed back when I first got interested in the Virtual Boy in 2011, and over time, their prices have actually gone up with relistings rather than down, just in case someone might actually be tempted to buy them.

Below isn’t the actual Mini Arcade Room that I envision, but it gives an idea of what it might look like. I would hope to design my own carpeting and wallpaper for the mini room, and of course I still need to get little figures to be playing the video games as well as pool, and whatever else I can add to it in the future.

Interestingly enough, the back of the box for the Mini Action Pool Table indicates that it was originally marketed by Wal-Mart, just like the recently released arcade cabinets. I can’t find a copyright date on the box, but the seller indicated that it was originally sold back in the 1980’s, so it is nice that Wal-Mart, all these years later, has also had mini arcade cabinets made, which really go along nicely with the mini pool table.

I’ve also decided to post a pic of my Basic Fun Blister Pack collection. Although these don’t look right in my mini arcade room, boy are they a lot of fun to play.

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chicgamer wrote:

Are you saying that Snake Eyes and Scarlett wouldn’t enjoy some arcade gaming? 😉

I don’t have any of these newer machines, but my brothers had a lot of the old electronic games (baseball, bowling, football, Frogger, etc.). I actually bought one for myself within the past year (Alien Attack) because I remembered enjoying playing the one my brother had.

Technically, if I had to include action figures or super heroes in the setup, I could just say that they are cosplayers, which one would expect to find in an arcade. 🙂

The thing I do like about these newer machines made for Wal-Mart are that they both look nice on display and are also playable. My friend got me the Tiny Arcade version of Pac-Man, and it is very frustrating to play, as the controls are so tiny that my thumb cannot reliably stay on the stick to move Pac-Man where he needs to go all the time. Thus, I probably won’t even collect the rest of the Tiny Arcade series.

ChrisR wrote:
Now what’s all this, then? A JP information sheet or something?

That is a Japanese flyer about the Virtual Boy system:
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/hardware/?type=vb&sec=images&show=flyer&fid=19&page=2

And is it really worth that much?

Heck no.

Yeah, it looks about as good as they can come. Very tempting…

retronintendonerd wrote:
I would give both my ovaries for that damn game…

Well, while I’ve read that the owner has been offered large sums of money, I don’t believe he’s ever been offered that. Might be worth a shot. 😉

So now that I’ve gotten to play Super Mario Land – Pauline, I’m left confused. I take it that the guy Pauline is meeting at the end of each level is supposed to be a fake form of Tatanga, the last boss, and then Pauline runs off with Tatanga at the end of the game after defeating him, is that right?

vuefinder83 wrote:
That’s a badass idea, man!

So, did you decide to un-box all the mini arcades or?… Would be cool to throw some GI*JOES up in that game room, just have them lounging around the whole scene just chillin’!

When you’ve decided that you’re happy with the entire set-up, please share a picture or two. I’d love to see it!

That’s the thing, I DO want to include mini people in the room as well, who are the right scale and size, but I also want them to look like people you might actually see in an arcade, so I will have to browse around to find “generic” figures that don’t look like action or super heroes.

I have, indeed, unboxed some of them already, and I plan to unbox them all eventually. I love the ones with the Wal-Mart boxes, as it is very easy to remove them and even put them back in the boxes, without damaging the boxes at all. I’ve also collected the six Basic Fun arcade games that come in the blister packs, but I don’t plan to put those ones in my mini arcade room, as they don’t look right for the room. Nevertheless, I’ve found that if I use something like an Xacto Knife to cut along the clear plastic right above where it meets the cardboard, I can keep the blister packs looking very nice, without affecting any of the art on them, and reuse them to store the little machines when I’m not playing them.

KoNeko wrote:

I am also firmly convinced that Dragon Hopper has indeed made its way into private hands, that it has been privately dumped, and that it is shared only by a very small group of individuals who have vowed never to make any mention of it at all or to show any proof of having it in their possession, and they will keep this secret for as long as whenever, even if somebody else does later manage to get their hands on a cart copy or the ROM dump somehow and leak it later.

Any chance you wouldn’t mind elaborating on what makes you so sure of this?

Basically, I tried really hard for a time to find out any possible leads to a Dragon Hopper source, and after many weeks and who knows how many hours of searching the internet and finding out everything that I possibly could, reading certain comments in certain forums not only here but on other websites, I became firmly convinced that at least two people, whose names I could mention but I won’t, are either secret owners of the game or else know a genuine owner of the game, and there is at least one genuine owner of the game who cannot be persuaded with any amount of money to let anybody else in on owning the game. As I said, I don’t want to mention the two names that I’ve determined, but I can only say that if people search as hard as I did, they will likely find out the two names themselves, as all searching I did was on public forums and sites, without the need for any digging via private messages.

Given that the source code was kept for Bound High!, I would assume that the source code for Dragon Hopper was kept by someone, who simply hasn’t thought about the game in years and who knows nothing about this community’s hopes for being able to play the game.

I also think that the carts used at E3 1996 are still lying around in a drawer somewhere, perhaps even with an ex-Nintendo employee.

I am also firmly convinced that Dragon Hopper has indeed made its way into private hands, that it has been privately dumped, and that it is shared only by a very small group of individuals who have vowed never to make any mention of it at all or to show any proof of having it in their possession, and they will keep this secret for as long as whenever, even if somebody else does later manage to get their hands on a cart copy or the ROM dump somehow and leak it later.

vuefinder83 wrote:

Also, I heard 06 Frogger contains a rom for Phoenix, wich most likely will get a release this spring as well.

That’s cool to hear! I’m excited to see how far this series will go.

I’m actually in the process of designing a little arcade room for all of my Basic Fun mini arcade cabinets, and I’m trying to find other mini arcade games that would fit nicely (be at the right scale and look and feel) in the room to go along with the arcade cabinets. I recently scored a classic mini pool table from the ’80s off of ebay, which should look nice in my mini arcade room and go along nicely with the cabinets. Since the cabinets are 5.25 inches tall, and real arcade cabinets are about 6 feet tall, I figured that a mini pool table about 8 inches long would be the proper scale to represent a 9-foot long pool table to go along with my represented 6-feet tall arcade cabinets. Sure enough, ebay had just the thing for me! Even the color looks like it’ll match the cabinets. I’m now trying to find other mini arcade games that would work, but so far no luck. I’m hoping to find mini pinball machines and skee ball machines that would be the right scale and appearance, but I can’t find any at the moment.

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retronintendonerd wrote:

I can send you my patched file if you wanna try that.

Yeah, that’d be great!

benjaminste[@]gmail[.]com

It seems that the maker made a recent update to the file, which has caused it to be faulty at the moment.

BTW, this makes post # 1995 for me, the year of the Virtual Boy!

TheForce81 wrote:
http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=24251.0

This one really is one of the best now with the DX treatment!!

If I download the IPS file from that link, apply it to a Super Mario Land 2 ROM, and then try to run it in BGB, I get the error:

loading rom succeeded with warnings
ROM checksum fails.
A real gameboy wouldn’t care.

And then it doesn’t let me play the game at all. What would be a work-around for this?

ziggaboogi wrote:
That one looks like they changed the recommended ages. The original print with the mom picture basically says to not let kids play the VB unsupervised. But that section is changed from “When letting a child play” to “Appropriate user ages.” The new version basically says to not let anyone between the ages of 0-6 play the VB, period.

That part is very interesting indeed. It seems from this that Yokoi did want the Virtual Boy to be for all ages, just like the Game Boy, and that it was only found out after the fact that Nintendo could have lawsuits on their hands if they allowed kids 6 and under to play it.