The quantities are probably well under 10,000 per game, that’s a generous estimate. Information like this is barely ever leaked out, for any platform.
I wonder how many of the common titles there are, like Mario’s Tennis (cart/manual), Virtual League Baseball, V-Tetris and Vertical Force (JP). Probably in the hundred thousands?
So it’s kind of like 3D Breakout then? I do like Air Hockey / Tennis (I end up playing lots of Mario’s Tennis). If I get a FlashBoy I’ll try out Space Squash. Thanks for the recommendation.
No… unfortunately the VB used the smaller 44 pin TSOP II (not the standard 44 pin SOP), which is a pretty uncommon package type for any chip… and seemingly nonexistant for flash ROMs. Here’s a zip with the datasheets: http://www.goliathindustries.com/vb/download/vbrom.zip . And yeah, they’re 5V devices.
DogP
Ah, I see. Well, if the package wasn’t an issue, would a 44pin SOP chip still work? I’m thinking a 3.3v chip might not work, depends how the data/address lines hold up. One can sneak by with 3.3v chips on SNES carts with a SA-1 co-processor, but the voltages involved are less than 5v in that case (normal SNES games are 5v all the way).
speedyink wrote:
I paid $100 for my Flashboy. At that price, it’s a steal. For simplicity sake lets say the loose carts average $20. There are definitely more than 5 great games out there you don’t own yet, and more keep popping up.
If your short on cash and want some quick entertainment, Vertical Force (JPN) is usually less than $10 shipped for the cart, and gives you a good ol top down aircraft shooter.
Jack Bros is just awesome, but you may as well buy a flashboy for the price it is.
Red Alarm is a stellar game that usually sells for pretty cheap.
The more I think about it, the more you guys are right. I think the best option really is a FlashBoy Plus (I’d still love to hear if bigmak/other repro makers have tried SOP flash chips). Even at 90 euros, it’s still cheaper than Jack Bros., 3D Tetris and the various repro releases combined. Better start saving up I suppose.
I still wouldn’t say no to real cartridges given the option though. I do notice Vertical Force is pretty cheap, but I don’t see many loose carts on eBay, I guess there’s better selection on eBay.com.
Benjamin Stevens wrote:
I also have to throw in my recommendation for Jack Bros. Not only that, but Space Squash must be highly recommended as well. Space Squash utilizes the stereoscopic effect of the Virtual Boy to a great degree and is a lot of fun. Both of these games receive very high ratings from the majority of Virtual Boy players who have tried them, but both games are pretty costly, so it would indeed make sense to purchase a FlashBoy Plus and be able to play both games on it.
Thanks, I will definitely try Jack Bros. (although I don’t particularly care for Megami Tensei). I heard Space Squash is really just tennis (Squash as in the sport), I trust it’s better than it sounds?
Chaz wrote:
I have an extra Red Alarm, wireframe but one of best uses of 3-D in the original VB launch. Arguably best 3-D of all the games. Also fun. Let me know mailing address and will send it on, hey it’s Christmastime.
Ah, that’s where you were confused. That Retrode mod is solely for easy dumping. It has nothing to do with the Genesis, aside from using the cartridge to build an adapter out of. They probably could have used any other cartridge with some effort, but Genesis is the easiest because it’s so straight-forward.
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.
