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Remember the Virtual Boy?

Started by August 08, 2013 12:48 AM
7 comments, last by Sik_the_hedgehog 11 years, 1 month ago

I'm actually surprised that Nintendo hasn't rereleased it in some form given the OCR is pretty much its great-great-great-great-great-grandchild.

And actually, I wouldn't mind owning. The hardware must cost what..... $50?

Beginner in Game Development?  Read here. And read here.

 

I think I still have one somewhere, they were pretty damn awesome imo.
Check out https://www.facebook.com/LiquidGames for some great games made by me on the Playstation Mobile market.
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Haha Mario Tennis and that red line game... Memories.

Virtual boys can go for over $200 for working ones ...

Here is a review of the game system for those that never seen one

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I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm more surprised they haven't tried rereleasing the Virtual Boy games on the 3DS (though in black & white instead of black & red, please). The biggest issue with the Virtual Boy is that trying to use it was horribly cumbersome and potentially painful (literally), the games were fine mostly, though. I could see the Virtual Boy Wario game actually doing quite fine on the 3DS, especially since for almost everybody it'd be essentially like a whole new Wario game (as almost nobody played it).

Don't pay much attention to "the hedgehog" in my nick, it's just because "Sik" was already taken =/ By the way, Sik is pronounced like seek, not like sick.

I'm more surprised they haven't tried rereleasing the Virtual Boy games on the 3DS (though in black & white instead of black & red, please). The biggest issue with the Virtual Boy is that trying to use it was horribly cumbersome and potentially painful (literally), the games were fine mostly, though. I could see the Virtual Boy Wario game actually doing quite fine on the 3DS, especially since for almost everybody it'd be essentially like a whole new Wario game (as almost nobody played it).


if its the same game im thinking of for wario, that game was quite amazing considering when it came out, I sank a fair number of hours into it. actually thinking about the time period, and what it was capable of, im quite impressed as the device itself isn't very large.

also, I think making it black+white would look a bit crummy, the black+red was well mixed together for many games imo. I see no reason why they'd have to swap the color pallette personally,
Check out https://www.facebook.com/LiquidGames for some great games made by me on the Playstation Mobile market.
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I actually wonder how hard it is to get a working one nowadays. The displays were a unique mechanical-optical device, not a normal planar graphic LCD -- instead of an X-Y panel display, there was a single column of 192 tiny, red LEDs, and a mirror/prism thing which would osculate back and forth, and the column would update 256 times over the travel, giving a 256x192 resolution, with whatever greyscale resolution the LEDs could manage. Red was chosen simply because at the time red LEDs were really the most cost-effective option.

A neat, if impractical, display technology -- but bulky, expensive, and susceptible to mechanical failure. Still, not entirely bone-headed, one can imagine a version with RGB LEDs would actually function pretty well, other downsides aside.

Here's to futures past.

throw table_exception("(? ???)? ? ???");

Watch there be a Technicolor Virtual Boy in 2014, lol.

Beginner in Game Development?  Read here. And read here.

 


if its the same game im thinking of for wario, that game was quite amazing considering when it came out, I sank a fair number of hours into it. actually thinking about the time period, and what it was capable of, im quite impressed as the device itself isn't very large.

This game. If you see any graphic go garbage, that's when 3D kicks in for sprites (tilemaps seem to not have that issue). Surprised the parallax and scaling didn't make it to the Game Boy Color, given the Virtual Boy was released earlier. Then again, in theory the Game Boy Color was just a stopgap to shut up developers as Nintendo was already too busy making the Game Boy Advance (can't remember the source right now).


also, I think making it black+white would look a bit crummy, the black+red was well mixed together for many games imo. I see no reason why they'd have to swap the color pallette personally,

Because it has some horrible contrast >_< At least provide black and white as an option!


Red was chosen simply because at the time red LEDs were really the most cost-effective option.

If I recall correctly, the issue was that other colors had too much latency to make it usable.


Watch there be a Technicolor Virtual Boy in 2014, lol.

3DS? =P

Don't pay much attention to "the hedgehog" in my nick, it's just because "Sik" was already taken =/ By the way, Sik is pronounced like seek, not like sick.

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