Pokemon is indeed repetitive and overrated, but it sold incredibly well and spiked Game Boy hardware sales. Sales figures posted on NeoGAF indicate the Game Boy had its best selling year in 1998, when Pokemon Red and Blue came out, that was 9 years after Game Boy was released.
It makes sense therefore that Pokemon Red would be a consistent request for a VB game. There’s also irony there, Pokemon Red on a red game system.
The two stamped digits refer to the manufacturing facility the cartridge was made at.
As far as revisions go, it is important to note the product code on the front of the game label. For Virtual Boy, a product code looks like this:
VUE-XX-USA
If USA (or JPN etc) is followed by a -1, then it’s probably revision 1.1. -2 is 1.2 and so on. There are some small exceptions to this rule. For example, the gold Ocarina of Time (N64) product code is NUS-CZGE-USA, where as the regular version is NUS-CZLE-USA. Technically therefore, they are completely separate games, according to Nintendo.
Well, for me at least, I can get eyestrain from a calibrated VB if I’m already tired with sore eyes… Kind of a no brainer there. I can only really play VB if I’m well rested.
Sometimes in pitch black, in a VB game with a lot of black, I get that distortion you normally get from trying to see in the dark, heh. Feels weird.
I didn’t outright say the red and black colors were bad, but back in 1995, color was a big deal. Nobody wanted to play something with only red for a color, that sounds more outdated than the Game Boy.
On a real VB with everything set up correctly, the red and black doesn’t hurt my eyes, it’s pretty easy to play for a long time. As someone else noted, I love the sharpness of the LED graphics, looks leagues ahead of the common LCDs of the time. LED was absolutely the way to go, but red really killed the Virtual Boy.
• Fun games, I’ve tried several and they’re all good. Wario Land and Bound High are very high quality and fun. Red Alarm makes some very good use of the VB hardware.
• The controller. It’s very comfy and has two D-pads, the only console I know of with a feature like that. I wish the N64 did that, or maybe use two analog sticks.
• The 3D! If the VB only did one thing right, it was the 3D. After seeing the 3D on a fully working VB, I am thoroughly impressed. It’s a 1995 console and its 3D is deeper and easier to see than even the 3DS. The 3D really and truly works. Maybe it should have been called 3D Boy. Although you could say stereoscopic 3D is best for polygons, I think it also worked great on sprite-based graphics. Wario Land is a really cool game to look at.
• The name, Virtual Boy. I know I said 3D Boy is more appropriate, but man do I ever love the Virtual Boy name. I love saying it, it sounds cool, it represents an unexplored aspect of Nintendo. People only remember Game Boy, Virtual Boy is seen as a failure. What if there were more “Boy” consoles from Nintendo? How about, err, Touch Boy? (DS) …. Or maybe not haha. Still, Virtual Boy is a kick ass name, it’s a great extension of Game Boy.
Cons:
• The shitty, fucking, AWFUL ribbon cables. Nintendo should be ashamed.
• The severe lack of games. It really needed more games.
• Red and black. For all intents and purposes, the red wasn’t really the best idea.
• The rarity of the system.
• The stand. If it weren’t for the medallion, it would get a good stand.
Virtual Boy is damned awesome, it has some genuinely fun games, the entire hardware package is delightfully weird and the 3D effect truly does work, better than even the 3DS I’d say.
Same here, table. I use it differently though. I lean the VB back on its stand, so I can sort of look down into it. This is way easier than trying to hunch over and look into the VB horizontally. Basically, you look at the faint illustration of the girl playing VB on the PVB page, you just rotate the VB forward so it is looking up.
The VB console is too difficult to take apart for home users. That would also void your warranty. Besides, even if the lenses were swappable, the LEDs were still red.
The single best option would have been a Virtual Boy Color system (like GBC) by 1998 or 1999. Maybe by then green and blue LEDs would be cheap enough for a game console. Wouldn’t it be neat if original VB games could run in green and black or blue and black on the VBC?
Maybe if the VB wasn’t so poorly received, we’d all be playing the Nintendo Vision VR system by now.
Yep, I’ve tried the VB without the lenses, it’s really hard to play. The mirrors move so fast, the air keeps hitting my eyes and dries them out, making it difficult to continue looking for any significant length of time. It’s not really worth it, the red lenses are pretty much required. Without them, the graphics are a lot dimmer looking, it’s hard to see anything. The red lenses basically finish off the optical illusion (oscillating mirrors projecting a solid image).
Probably the biggest hurdle you’ll face with Virtual Boy is trying to wrap your head around creating 3D graphics. The good VB games always make use of it, by giving some graphics more depth than others, or making then appear far away and close.
Well, it is a bit silly to expect so much from the Virtual Boy. This was 1995, with expensive LED displays and mechanical oscillating mirrors, not to mention the the manufacturing costs… There wasn’t much room to offer a Playstation here. It’s easiest to treat the Virtual Boy like a “16-bit” successor to the Game Boy, with a really big screen resolution.
You could still use your custom scripting language on Virtual Boy, but your games will lack efficiency and thus be sluggish. A JRPG would work quite well, a fast paced action game or shooter, no. Any game that would require a lot of calculations during gameplay would see a drop in speed with a high level language instead of C or ASM. You can hide calculations behind the JRPG’s normally slow nature.
What platform(s) are you porting from? Dreamcast? You’d get better speed from the Virtual Boy if you build the engine from the ground up, it’s not exactly a beast of a console.
Isn’t the source code for Wolfenstein 3D available? It’d be possible to make an unofficial port at least. I think licensing is the same as Doom if you want it to be a commercial project.
You should worry more about your ability to produce a Virtual Boy port than whether publishing is available. The tools and resources available for Virtual Boy pale in comparison to Dreamcast. If your game is good, publishing will find you.
You forgot 3D Tetris, both D-Pads are used differently to allow a Tetrimino to be moved and rotated in a 3D space.
If there was a VB Zelda game, it would have been cool to have Link obtain an item that could create a mirror image of himself, which would be controlled by the right D-Pad.
There needs to be a first person shooter, maybe Wolfenstein 3D. The two D-Pads would work great for moving and aiming. Somebody has to make one!
I remember somebody point that out quite some time ago, never got to try it for myself until recently. I only have one dust cover, the holder on the VB does work reasonably well.
What? Mario’s Tennis is really easy. As said before, all you do is just hit the ball into areas where the computer opponents can’t hit it. A good one is to hit the ball onto the right side of the net, without going into out of bounds. Most computer opponents will try to hit the ball but will end up walking backwards following it, without hitting it.
As for hitting the ball yourself, the game is really forgiving in that regard. There’s a wide area of margin that is acceptable with most characters.
