Robert Molander wrote:
Aded some new stuff to my collection 🙂

Wow… I have never seen sealed 3-D specs available for sale before. Very nice find!

segagamer99 wrote:

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
The VB inner circle is very tight, the people who are in it already know who leaked these and why. Now anything that is held even by 1 person will be held even tighter.”

Anybody on it from this site?

It’s very interesting to read what all has been divulged on this site’s forum threads over the years. If there is one person on this site who can be considered a part of the “inner circle” that has access to still unreleased ROMs such as games, demos, etc. for the Virtual Boy, I would say that user: DogP is a good contender for that. I guess he can still be considered a user on this site, though he hasn’t logged in for quite a while.

If you read through his post history under his profile, you will find by reading his own posts that over the years, he had dumped ROMs of very rare games for people and made promises to them that he would never share any of the dumps with anyone. Evidently, DogP was the only person or one of the very few people who had access to a working Virtual Boy dumper for a long time, or at least he was the only person who made himself publicly known online as having a working VB dumper, namely via his own website and this one. One of the reasons he gave for not sharing the ROM dumps with anyone is because he wanted people to know that they could trust him, so that more offers for allowing more rare Virtual Boy ROMs to be dumped would come to him in the future.

Based on this info that DogP has made known in the forums, there is the strong possibility that some uber-collectors contacted him over the years to have the ROMs on their prototype cartridges be dumped for “preservation purposes,” and promises would have been made between DogP and the uber-collectors not to ever share those dumps with anyone else, lest the value of the ROMs should decrease over time – another reason DogP gave for not sharing the ROM dumps with anyone. Assuming DogP did make such dumps, it probably isn’t likely that he would have deleted the copies of the ROMs from his own computer and simply let the uber-collectors who came to him have the only copies of the dumped ROMs in their possession, but that’s just speculation… but good speculation nevertheless. Thus, one can only guess what unreleased VB ROMs could be in DogP’s possession.

Nevertheless, if DogP does have such, I certainly can’t blame him for making the promises. I would be much more disappointed in the people who came to him and forced him into such promises, whenever there is a whole community that would be willing to help pay them back or even pay them more than whatever they paid to get their prototype cartridges in the first place.

segagamer99 wrote:

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
If you’ll recall, this was back when the three rarest games were on the verge of having their ROMs released.

I assume the third game is Space Pinball?

I believe StrayFelisCatus meant to write the “four” rarest games, and he was referring to the “Big 4” commercially released games, which fetch the most money when they can be found complete in box. As far as how hard they are to find, with 1 being the hardest and 4 being the easiest, I would rank them in this order:

1. Virtual Lab
2. Virtual Bowling
3. SD Gundam Dimension War
4. Space Invaders: Virtual Collection.

Bound High!, Space Pinball, and Faceball were never commercially released, so they fall into a completely different category altogether. It’s possible that Faceball was being referred to in this original comment that upset StrayFelisCatus: “There is a world of unreleased ‘items’ for the Virtual Boy. They exist and you will now almost certainly not come to know their name let alone ever play them. Ever.”

If Faceball was indeed being referred to, then a smile comes to my face once again that this was proven to be wrong.

StrayFelisCatus wrote:
This post in particular was what pushed me to leave:

“There is a world of unreleased “items” for the Virtual Boy. They exist and you will now almost certainly not come to know their name let alone ever play them. Ever.

The VB inner circle is very tight, the people who are in it already know who leaked these and why. Now anything that is held even by 1 person will be held even tighter.”

Believe me… it gives me GREAT joy to know that the Faceball inner circle, which had been in existence for the last 10+ years, has finally been brought down by Eric’s release of the ROM. Seriously… I laugh sinisterly to myself about it at times…

Dude, GEZ… I hope you’ll be updating your collection space under your profile with pics and descriptions of all the Virtual Boy goodness that you got.

ectoglow wrote:
So I totally want one, How do I get on the list? do I need to send in a dummy cart?

Additionally, Bound High/Dragon Hopper, Any chance I can get one of those still? I have been out of the community so long, and Now, To find out I can score these terrific games, just WOW! any help towards getting these would be appreciated.

Hi ectoglow,

Eric received too many threatening messages as a result of all of the attention around Faceball, so he won’t be selling carts. Instead, he’ll be accepting donations to help recover his five figure sum spent on the game and then will be releasing the ROM online, so hopefully you will decide to send him a fair donation as a way to say thank you for helping to recover this almost lost piece of genuine Virtual Boy history and also to show your appreciation that you will be able to play the game. If you want to play it on your Virtual Boy and don’t already have a FlashBoy Plus, be sure to check out the FlashBoy forum on this site to see how to order one from Richard.

As for Bound High, there are only very few CIB copies left, which will be offered for sale soon on this site: http://www.uncletusk.com
So if you want one, be sure to check this site each day for when you can order yours and try to order yours as soon as you can, or send Uncle Tusk a message and see if you can send him a payment now to ensure you get one of the last ones.

As for Dragon Hopper, it still holds legendary, Holy Grail status and isn’t available to anyone except perhaps an elite few who are good at remaining in hiding, so keep your hopes high that it will one day surface and that we can do something to make it available to everyone.

thunderstruck wrote:

Screw-Attack didn’t bother to do their research either. They basically said that Bigmak (well, they said Mr.G) wants to make money by selling the game over price. This left people with a wrong impression and eventually led to the card release being canceled.

Ahhh… so now I know why they call themselves “Screw-Attack,” because they desire to attack a person until that person is screwed.

Guy Perfect wrote:
My Zapper is orange with a grey secondary color and a black trigger. Yours is grey with a white secondary color and an orange (red) trigger.

Yeah… those are the two main variations that I’m aware of.

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I’m pretty sure I’ve seen all of those controllers before, especially since I’ve been watching a lot of the Angry Video Game Nerd episodes recently, except for that controller in the uppermost right corner of the poster. I’ve never seen that before and don’t currently know what system it belongs to.

I have been reading up on Dragon Hopper lately, trying to find out as much “reliable” information about the game as possible. I must admit that my longing to play this game is rather intense, so at least learning about the game as much as possible helps to satisfy that. Anyway, this site and virtual-boy.org provide us with 3 major, reliable sources of information about the game, which are:

1. Nintendo Power #86
2. A fact sheet from an American Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) press kit in 1996
3. Club Nintendo UNK1 (A Spanish Magazine, in which the author of the Dragon Hopper article states that the information was obtained as a result of a visit to Nintendo of America.)

Now, virtual-boy.org also provides us with a “questionable” source of information about the game. A long time ago, there appeared online box art for the front and back of the box of Dragon Hopper, and it still seems to be uncertain as to whether or not this art is genuine. On virtual-boy.org, it is written that “An established website called Rottentomatoes.com even goes as far as to report specific details (of text) that are on the back of the box.” I myself can’t find any picture of the back of the box online with legible text, so I can’t verify what it actually says. Just looking at the picture with the illegible text, I conclude that the information does not come from the back of that box art. Now, the writer from virtual-boy.org writes that he believes the information was taken from a promo flyer or something that Nintendo gave out to retailers, but it seems that such a genuine flyer or source of info has never actually been made known online. Here is the information that came from it, which also appears under the description of the game on half.com:

Prince Dorin has tumbled into a dank and dangerous world full of evil enemies and heinous beasts that are chomping at the bit for some royal blood. In DRAGON HOPPER, you must lead the Prince on a journey to recover the four Spirits of Faeron in order to return to his home in Celestia. If you can find the hidden keys, you’ll be able to travel through warp zones and find the stars that will transport you to another world. And if you’re able to find the four Spirits, you just might make your way home, if you can survive the creatures and obstacles that stand in your way.

Now, I have compared the information found in this description from the “unknown” source with the information contained in the known, reliable sources, and I found something rather interesting that I’d like to share, which I believe confirms that this unknown source is, indeed, a reliable source.

The fact sheet from an American Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) press kit in 1996 says that “‘Element of Discovery’ allows Dorin to wander through each level in search of a star to take him to the next level.” The sheet doesn’t make it clear as to what exactly “Element of Discovery” is. It almost sounds like it could be an official mode of the game or something, or it could just be a general term, meaning that the game provides the player an element of discovery by making the player have to search for stars in the levels of the regular mode of the game, which could very well be the only mode of the game, in order to get to the next level. Based on the rest of the information that I read, I believe it should be interpreted in a general sense, not as some mode or selectable option in the game, and here is why:

In the Club Nintendo UNK1 article, it says that Dorin will “obtain clues to the location of the keys to the next level…”

So there seems to be a discrepancy created by the two “reliable” sources. The one source says that the player has to find STARS in order to get Dorin to the next level, while the other source says that the player must find KEYS to get Dorin to the next level. Is one of the sources incorrect on this matter, or how should this be resolved? Well, surprisingly the “questionable” source seems to give us the answer to this mystery, for it reads:

“If you can find the hidden KEYS, you’ll be able to travel through warp zones and find the STARS that will transport you to another world.”

Now this is very specific information that could not have simply been taken from one of the aforementioned reliable sources, since none of those reliable sources make it clear as to how you progress to a new level in the game. And surprisingly, this source clears up the confusion created on this matter by 2 of the reliable sources. Because of this, I conclude that the “questionable” source is, in fact, a reliable one, meaning it came from a source who had access to the game, so the virtual-boy.org writer could very well be correct in his conjecture that the info came from some promo flyer or something else that came from Nintendo itself. Thus, I personally believe that this information accurately describes how you would progress from one level to another in the game and that this source is an independent source in relation to the other reliable sources.

If anyone happens to have more information about “reliable” sources for info about Dragon Hopper, I would love to read them. Who knows how many flyers or magazines, etc. are out there will nice goodies about the game, which have yet to be posted online.

You’re welcome. I like the wiki, by the way. That kind of info hidden in Virtual Boy games is very fascinating to me.

Vague Rant wrote:
Hi all. New user here, been reading a while but wanted to register to ask the experts whether they knew of any leftover development stuff in Virtual Boy games. I’m an editor over at The Cutting Room Floor, an open wiki which documents all the fun stuff like debug modes, unused graphics, etc.–basically anything the end user wasn’t really meant to see. We already cover a lot of the things that have been discovered here over the years, like the debug modes in Red Alarm and Vertical Force (you can see our complete list of Virtual Boy games if you’re interested to look at what else is on there).

I don’t own a Virtual Boy myself, so my experience is limited and sometimes it’s hard to say whether something is unused or just not something I’ve seen yet, e.g. these lines beginning at 0xDE472 in SD Gundam:

SELECT GAME MODE
SCENARIO MODE
SHORT SCNARIO MODE
             
SELECT SCNARIO
MISSION 01
MISSION 02
MISSION 03
MISSION 04
MISSION 05
MISSION 06
MISSION 07
MISSION 08

(“SCNARIO” typos in original.) This looks like it might have been a debug level select to me, but maybe it’s just a normal menu you can’t see until you’re further into the game than I’ve gotten, etc. So I figured you folk would be the most knowledgeable on the subject. Many thanks for anything you’d like to share.

I have beaten SD Gundam on the Virtual Boy several times, and I can say with confidence that this is definitely not a normal menu that appears anywhere in the game.

Yeah… it’s too bad that there isn’t a proper place to store video game cartridges in the case, but it makes sense that there wouldn’t be, since these were only intended to hold rental units that had to be returned to the store and weren’t intended to be sold.

I would store the games in one or both of the two red-circled areas in the attached pic.

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jrronimo wrote:

Thanks for the translation patch in retrospect! 🙂

You’re welcome. 🙂

To be honest, the Virtual Boy did give me minor headaches when I first played it ever, and I even had the focus and IPD Adjustment Dial set correctly for my eyes. Nevertheless, I thought that the system was so cool that I kept playing it anyway and taking breaks when my eyes and/or head started to hurt. After playing the system for about a total of 10 or more hours across a few separate occasions, my body became accustomed to it, and now I can sit down and play it for however long and never get the headaches or eye strain. I think its 3D effect is just something that strains some people and doesn’t strain others, but it definitely seems that one can accustom himself to it if he keeps at it.

The article also mentioned the uncomfortable headphones. I actually have to agree with it. To this day, I can’t keep my official Virtual Boy headphones in my ears for more than an hour without my ears hurting. Nevertheless, I love the stereo sound being right in my ears for many games, so I usually just continue to play through the pain. It would make sense for me to buy more comfortable headphones, but then I’d be playing a Virtual Boy without official Virtual Boy headphones… and to me, that would just be so wrong.

I definitely don’t believe that Dragon Hopper was ever available for sale and then recalled. If this story has any truth to it, then I would say that Best Buy could have, perhaps, had a for display only box for Dragon Hopper on their shelves to advertise the game before the time when it should have been released, and that could have been the box that he was reading. Nevertheless, if that was true, surely there would be leftover boxes of these floating around and people offering them for sale somewhere, so I don’t believe that either. I definitely don’t believe that Best Buy would have ever received a working copy of the game. Thus, I wouldn’t attach any merit to this story at all, but I would love to be proven wrong.

jrronimo wrote:

Does it *need* to be a FlashBoy Plus for SD Gundam and Space Squash? Or is a regular FlashBoy okay for those games? Or is there a saving feature I would be missing…? I have a non-Plus, but wouldn’t be opposed to ordering a Plus if that’s what it takes. I love all things Gundam a bit too much at times…

You can play both games just fine on a FlashBoy, but the FlashBoy Plus does have a save feature, which you may need for SD Gundam since it does give you the option to save your game, whereas Space Squash has no save option. I can beat SD Gundam in 3 to 4 hours, though, so you can play it in one long evening without having to save and quit on your regular FlashBoy. The main reason why I mentioned the FlashBoy Plus is because that is the only kind of FlashBoy that Richard makes these days, so your original FlashBoy is quite the collector’s item. 🙂

Hmmm… my guess is that you are making illustrations of video game controllers, showing how they have evolved/changed over time, and the Virtual Boy controller happens to be number 22 in the chronological list of released controllers.

I’m pretty sure that none of the Japanese Virtual Boy games have an option to change the language in the game from Japanese to English. Thankfully, many Japanese games don’t have much Japanese text in them anyway and actually have mostly English text in them. Out of all the Japanese games, I’ve only played the Japan-only games (the games that have no English counterparts), except for Virtual Fishing, which I know has only Japanese text in the game. If you get V-Tetris for your Virtual Boy, you will see that all of the text in this Japan-only game is in English. This is also mostly true for Insmouse No Yakata. Only the title on the title screen and the credits are in Japanese. All of the rest of the text in the game is in English. Space Squash has a lot of Japanese text in the game, but you can still figure out how to make your way through the menus okay and play the game even not knowing Japanese, because most of the Japanese text is just story that isn’t necessary for the gameplay. Of course, if you ever decide to get a FlashBoy Plus, you can play the English version of Space Squash by applying the English translation patch that my brother and I made to the ROM. We also made an English translation patch for SD Gundam Dimension War, so you can play that game in English on a FlashBoy Plus, too. Both of these patches appear on this site under the Downloads tab for each of the games. It’s possible that my brother and I will make a translation patch for Virtual Fishing in the future, but it might not be for a while. I will at least try to translate the box and instruction booklet sometime this calendar year.

If Japanese Virtual Boy systems that are complete in box sell for less in auctions (or in general) than the U.S. systems, I think it is likely because most prospective buyers can speak English but cannot speak Japanese, and they want to be able to read all of the text on their box and in their instruction manual that comes with the system, so they are willing to pay more to get a CIB U.S. system than a Japanese one. In addition, I think a lot of newcomers to the Virtual Boy don’t do their research first and, thus, don’t realize that the U.S. system and the Japanese system are the exact same system, just in different packaging, so again, English-speaking people might be willing to pay more to ensure they get a U.S. system that will work with U.S. games, even though all games work equally on all Virtual Boy systems.

I was under the impression that if you live in the U.S., you can use the U.S. AC Adapter Set on either the U.S. system or the Japanese system and it has the exact same effect. If you don’t live in the U.S., however, then you should get the Japanese Adapter tap and then also get the appropriate AC Adapter that works in the wall outlets of your country.