I went with Vinny for my repros. Nice labels, works great, and I also got Waterworld and Virtual Fishing alongside. Pricey, but I’ve always been happy with the quality, shipping, etc.

Zero Racers is… OK? I didn’t like it at first, but it’s growing on me. Once I got used to breaking around corners.

Dragon Hopper is great. Gives me mild Zelda vibes.

BIG QUESTION:
In Dragon Hopper, are there enough tokens to buy all the magic by the end game? I know there’s a cheat to unlock all magic and access any level, but I want to know if you can do it naturally? Or do you HAVE to gamble to get enough?

I’m up to level 4-1 now, and have… 5 spells unlocked? And the levels only go up to 6-8. So it looks like you can’t is my guess. I might replay it with all unlocked.

I also hate how what you buy is random. Very annoying. Very bad design all round.

I think I like Bound High a little more, since it’s more bite size, but DH is still top 5 games for me. Top 3 even?

I don’t think anything would have saved the VB back in the day. I think it was released to fulfil contracts and offload inventory, with the full knowledge it wasn’t going to success. Basically better to put it out there, make some sales, rather than just destroy all the inventory.

It is a fundamentally flawed and badly designed system. I have constant back ache and headache, no matter the position, because the controller cable is too short to let it sit in my hands. I’m like 190cm tall. WHY is the cable so short? Why is the power unit on the controller and not the headset? I keep getting the wires caught up. And the weight makes it painful to hold for long periods. But I can’t rest my hands in my lap, because sitting upright the controller doesn’t have enough length – unless I lower the headset, in which case my arms are fine now, but my whole back is crooked try to crane my head.

This thing feels like it was designed for short people. Literally. Or maybe just children. It is not comfortable for a full size adult man.

And I refuse to believe anyone plays this resting on their head while lying down – it’s several kilos of weight pushing directly on your nose then! Nobody does that for long periods! The photos you see are staged! I tried it once and it felt like my face was being crushed beneath a small CRT.

I love it, but I also accept that nothing could have saved this thing.

[Sketcz]

13 years late to the party, but what the heck.

I got repro carts of Zero Racers and Dragon Hopper, and so have been bingeing on VB. With my order I also got Waterworld (not a bad score attack game) and the English translation of Virtual Fishing. Which meant my flashcart was now free again! So I decided to try this, having enjoyed the proto ROM.

I don’t like this one AT ALL.

I tried the first four levels you can select and died really quickly. Invisible enemies? What the heck?? Were these in the demo? Because I don’t recall them. Awful enemies. Also the timer goes down way too quickly! And enemies seem to damage me too much. And they’re bullet sponges refusing to die. And I haven’t been able to beat any of the four starting levels.

Meaning now I’m stuck here, forced to bash my head against a wall, trying to get through these just to get more levels.

Or… I could just wipe this from my cart and go back to the original. Which was so much easier.

I like the strafing that was implemented. Good work there. But even without strafing the demo was not remotely as difficulty, and was actually fun.

This is not fun.

This is like those annoying Kaizo Mario hacks where the difficulty is jacked up be 10’000 because the author thinks HARD = FUN.

I just don’t feel like playing a difficult version of Faceball when the other version was easier and enjoyable.

Hard pass on this unless someone tells me some cheat codes or something to make bearable.

Also why are the enemies such INSANE bullet sponges? Some of them I’ve had to shoot like 10+ times. That’s nuts. I don’t recall the other versions of Faceball needing that. Normally 1 shot, or maybe 2 or 3 takes down an enemy. But standing there firing 10 shots? Ugh.

I dislike this whole experience so much. 🙁

EDIT:
Went back to the original, and was knocking down the levels with ease. Now THIS is fun! Sorry, but I just can’t enjoy this Kaizo remix.

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by Sketcz.

[Sketcz]

Necro bump, but I found a bug in v1.0 so thought I’d post.

Playing patched v1.0 and really enjoying it. Several of the tournies are quite difficult, so I did two of them, the easier ones at the north of the map, and then did the one furthest south (skipping two others), since the signal to reel in was easy to recognise (second small bend in the rod). It was catfish.

So I reel in a huge amount. Like double what the next highest fisher-person got.

And then they say congrats in English.

And then a new dialogue screen opened up. I would say 4 lines of text, all gibberish since the font was replaced. Any idea what this was? I can find no longplays in English on YouTube, only JP longplays. Which is weird. because they’re emulating, and this patch has been out for 4 years at least, and the emulated longplays are like from last year?

So I feel like people don’t really know this is available in English now.

But anyway. Four lines of dialogue were left untranslated, after beating the catfish tournament early, before the others, and I presume it relates to unlocking the next course? Which I was then able to access.

I did not get any photos of this. Playing on FlashBoy+. Nervous about reflashing it in case my save is deleted. But I think it should be fine as long as it’s the same game.

Obviously I can’t re-access this dialogue without resetting and playing over from the start.

If you need any more info please let me know. 🙂

Is it possible I’m playing a badly patched ROM? The title screen is in English. Does anyone have a longplay video of the English version?

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by Sketcz.

We have similar tastes I see. I’m playing a retail copy of Mario Clash, and I think if it allowed saving of level progress, or allowed one to access levels above 40, it would rank higher. I’ve been playing so far by only moving on to the next level after completing the old one. I’m up to level 25. I suspect that once I hit level 40, I’ll lose interest having to restart every time. Did the VB community ever discover a code for Mario Clash to access later levels? I’ve seen some online but they don’t work? Maybe using a debugger one can find a cheat code hidden with the game code? The code to erase scores in Galactic Pinball was discovered quite late.

Space Squash: this low ranking caught my attention. What about it didn’t appeal? At first I didn’t like it either, until I realised you had to manually charge up your special move. I was playing and relying on collecting power ups. Bosses were impossible since you need to select homing shot, and then basically charge it up every time. Once I started doing that it clicked.

I’m currently really enjoying fishing. The stage in the woods made me think: the VB would have been well suited to a survival horror where you’re running through the woods, trying to hide from a maniac. In that fishing level I sometimes take a moment to look at the diorama style cut-out trees (I love how it resembles a theatrical stage set), and imagine such a game. No combat, just moving from tree to tree in first person, hiding from an enemy moving just beyond in the darkness. Innsmouth is a survival horror and works well with the red screen.

Another game which would have worked well would have been a submarine game. Gundam almost gives that feeling – like you’re a ship commander viewing the field of combat. But I’m thinking more along the lines of Polar Rescue on Vectrex. It would even be wireframe like Polar Rescue / Red Alarm.

Alas, the 22 (24) retails games are all we have, in addition to the few homebrew games coming out.

Anyone have that Battle Zone clone? Where can you buy the carts? It looks nice, but how close is it to vanilla Battle Zone?

Hello Chris! Yes, it’s me. 🙂

I checked when we last emailed – it’s only taken me four years to sign up. In fairness, I only got my first Virtual Boy last week. I can finally play Red Alarm the way it was intended.

Thanks for the topic fix.

Yeah, these on the cart weren’t even that close – none of them were 1 billion.

I wiped the cart (bye bye forever), and managed to get 4.5 million on Colony. I suspect I won’t be posting mine any time soon.

The tables feel a little empty to me – lots of empty space in the middle, with the interactive stuff near the very top of the tables. Not sure I can envision staying on one table until hitting a billion. My favourite pinball game is Battle Pinball on SFC – my short attention span needs gimmicks.