You mean using a MX29L1611 (or similar 16Mbit flash chip) doesn’t work? Looks like the VB mask ROM pinout matches that of the flash chip. Only major differences I can see are the flash chip runs on 3.3v (I assume VB uses 5v) and I think VB mask ROMs are a bit wider.
Bound High does look like fun, but nobody made any loose copies, only CIB. I think I’ll just buy a Mario’s Tennis and make it into a Bound High, I’ve had to deal with surface mount chips before.
VB Wario Land is indeed a great game, so far it’s my favorite VB game. I love every other Wario Land game, especially the first one, because it was more about being greedy than using power-ups to solve puzzles, which started with Wario Land 2. I only found out about VB Wario Land in recent years, I was so happy to hear it didn’t have puzzles, just good old coin and treasure hunting.
If only for VB Wario Land, I’m not selling my Virtual Boy anytime soon, it’s too much fun. 🙂
Maybe one of those flash cart developers will be nice enough to use a FPGA for their flash-y objectives, which could also act like a grunt CPU. 😉
Out of pure fantasy though, how hard would it be to implement a POV mode in VB F-Zero? I mean, if a grunt CPU could do status bars/etc with ease, surely covering the entire screen with the cockpit of a F-Zero machine wouldn’t be much more effort. 😛
Amazing effort either way on this project, it looks great, a shame the VB is incapable of the entire game. I wonder what your next project will be…
Oh well, that’s a really sad conclusion, the preview screens look amazing. 🙁
I know cost would be a huge issue, but would a grunt CPU on the cartridge board that could pre-render graphics help with keeping slowdown to a minimum? Or is the Virtual Boy not capable of that?
There’s nothing too special going on with that Retrode mod. As stated in the article, the guy just connected the appropriate VB mask ROM signals to the Genesis cartridge. Most Genesis games are just a ROM chip on a circuit board, VB carts seem to be the same way. The only difficult part of that mod is actually hooking all those connections up.
The meaning behind this is a super easy way to dump VB cartridges… Not that you’d need to at this point, almost every game is dumped. There isn’t much else you can do with a cartridge dumper that you can’t do just by cruising your favorte ROM site. Personally, I like having cartridge dumpers for verifying repro carts to make sure the data is the same as the source file.
It would be a real shame for this project to get outright canned. Surely some compromises could be made? How about only the track is rendered, while everything else is black? Simpler textures? Is the affine window the only easy way to get the timer/boost indicator/minimap/etc to work? Does the game take on even more slowdown the more you add stuff to the affine window?
That said, I wouldn’t complain too much about a 25fps F-Zero.
There could be worse things to do than asking 50 people if they’ve seen your package. Might as well get it over with, will probably take less than an hour.
That sucks that the package hasn’t been recovered yet. I hope you can find it. The Virtual Boys must be found!
The Virtual Boy is one of the more well known failures, doesn’t surprise me AVGN would place it ahead of other worse systems. I think he also picked it because it’s one of Nintendo’s only actual failures. He can’t pick any other Nintendo system, no matter how many crummy games they have. It’s hard to seriously rag on other systems not made by Nintendo when 99% of your show is based around Nintendo. Thus, the VB is the perfect whipping boy.
Me personally, the Virtual Boy has only two significant flaws. 1) The poorly designed display cables. 2) The severe lack of games. Everything else about the VB is fine. Yes, even the red and black displays.
Still, I consider the Jaguar CD, Game.com, R-Zone and CD-i all worse than the VB.
Who said the 5200 was a bad system? The only bad part is the controller, the games are great, which is what matters.
Thanks for all the helpful replies everyone! It’s very comforting to know that the blurring around the edges is normal. Thanks for the IPD instructions DogP.
I tried looking into the Virtual Boy without the red covers in place, was pretty hard with the air from the mirrors hitting my eyes, haha. It wasn’t quite as red either.
Now if I could just get some replacement ribbon cables. I’d love to practice the delicate soldering more using my broken VB. I’ve got some really tiny soldering tips coming in the mail. 🙂 Individual wires is an extremely tedious and painful process. 🙁
Virtual ROB is cool and all, but what really caught my attention was evil Peach from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. Absolutely fantastic game that was. That’s an awesome costume, way better than Daisy.
Ohhhhh ok, that makes a whole lot more sense now. I usually have to crank the IPD all the way to one side to get all 4 corners straight in in view.
Also, since this is somewhat related, is the very outer edge of the screen (all the way around) supposed to be blurry? With the focus set to make the center of the screen sharp, the outer areas can be a bit hard to see without moving my head. Is this normal? Are my screens “out of alignment” like the Nintendo page says?
That page doesn’t really explain what should result from a proper IPD setting. Is it supposed to make the screen easier on the eyes? Are there some graphics that can be referenced to ensure the IPD is setup right? I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s kind of like trying to verify the size of an object. Well, without something to reference against, like a ruler or a larger object with a known size, it’s impossible to know how big the target object is.
I fully support that idea! I’d be down for 4 ribbon cables, in case the previous two don’t survive surgery. I’ve never done any “PCB” fabrication ordering, I wouldn’t know where to start organizing such a thing, so I’d only be able to help pitch in for a group buy.
I don’t have a hot air gun, maybe just clipping the legs off then heating/lifting each side of the grounding pins will work. Are the pins for the ribbon cable socket the right thickness for the ribbon cable?
Where would you buy a fiberglass pen? How do you clean away the bits of fiberglass (if it works like an eraser)? Doesn’t sound particularly safe, ugh.
Also, how the heck do you get a ball of solder going without the ribbon cable traces getting moved and disturbed (or worse, the ball adhering instantly)? Do you need a specific kind of flux?
And, about the supposedly untouched ribbon cable on the right display of my VB. I must confess that (I’m pretty sure) it was pulled off at some point, forget why… I stuck it back on. It isn’t peeling but it barely works. Most of the time it’s just a black screen on the right display. I understand ribbon cables are delicate and break easily. Is there any chance this cable is still good? I think I’ll just get two ribbon cables off you just to be safe anyway.
When do you think you could print new ribbon cables? I’d rather get this VB fixed than sell it off for parts, that’s a bit wasteful to me.
Thanks for the replies guys. Yeah a new ribbon cable definitely looks the way to go, the only hard part would be getting the ribbon cable socket off the main board. Well, that and getting a ribbon cable I guess haha. I have no way of printing something like that, I’d have to wait for someone else to start making them. Let me know if you get that printer working again.
I did actually try to use the original ribbon cable for the left display, it’s just I didn’t have a fiberglass pen or anything so I tried to burn away the plastic, the cable got really mangled and was hard to work with. I tried to make the best of it but I gave up after that and switched to wires, which at the end of it all, weren’t actually better than the ribbon cable… I could try the soldering method again on the other cable, but I figure the same thing will happen again. Those ribbon cables are extremely, extremely fragile, they don’t take heat very well.
I need to find a thinner tip for my iron some time… That’s part of my problem here. It can easily touch two traces on those ribbon cable solder pads.
I couldn’t imagine playing Pokemon on Virtual Boy. Even Red and Blue take hundreds of hours to get any significant enjoyment out of them. There’s also the ability to save whenever and its pick-up and play factor, all things that don’t work on Virtual Boy. I mean, it’s a decent console, but Pokemon is not a good game for it…
