Virtual Boy Old News

12/04/00 - In a slightly down note, I have suddenly found myself unemployed. So if anyone knows of a company looking to hire a C++/Java programmer in the Flagstaff, AZ area give me a jingle at david.tucker@goliathindustries.com. Of course this means no more virtual boy work until I find a new job.

11/17/00 - Well updates have been slow here. I have made numerous small changes to the web site Ill let you find them. Virtual-E has a new virtual boy C compiler, check it out at the Virtual-E web site. And I posted pics of my new 32pin eprom cartridge on my How to Build your own reprogramable cartridge page.

10/06/00 - I successfully made my second reprogramable cartridge this weekend (using 2 32-pin EPROM's and a TeleroBoxer cartridge) now I have a cartridge big enough to try all the games and that has SRAM. Once I finish the second half of my link cable I can finally test 2 VB's talking together. I'll try and post pictures of it on monday.

9/30/00 - Sorry updates have been so slow recently, school and work are really taking up all my free time. Ferry was good enough to send over a large scan of the Warioland demo cartrige. Being the skeptic that I am I needed to see the product number for myself.
I have been hard at work on my virtual boy to parallel port adapter. It seems that I have everything wired up right but I can not figure out how to sync to the serial stream. That is I'm getting the right bits from the VB but I cant figure out how to tell what bit is the start bit. I'm hard at work on my second virtual boy reprogramable cartrige so I can make 2 VB's talk, this way I just watch what they do to figure it out. In the picture below the virtual boy is sending out the string "NNNN\0" where \0 is the NULL character (zero), notice that the string is sent twice in this picture.

(click for a larger view)

9/07/00 - I added my modified IO-56vb program check out IO-56 for more info on the IO-56 or IO-48. You can use this program to dump the ROM's from a virtual boy and save/restore the saved ram. I finished wiring up a PC to VB Link Port cable last night. Hopefully by the end of this weekend I will have some software going to see if I can talk to the virtual boy using the link port.

8/30/00 - I added a How to Build your own reprogramable cartridge page this is just a start but it includes pic's of my current carts. I'm also reworking the sprites for my Arkanoid clone, maybe soon Ill get that project officially going.

8/15/00 - I added a brief document to my VB Demo that describes how the graphics get built up. This is just a start soon I hope to add a proper tutorial in as well. I'm hoping to update my demo code to support Albertos new assembler, this should help make it more readable.

8/08/00 - Alberto released a new and improved version of his V810 assembler, check it out at the Virtual-E web site. Finally we have an assembler with full symbol support, now it will be even easier to code for the virtual boy!

7/31/00 - Another good friend Pierre got married last weekend, a big congratulations to you both.
I added a few more foreign patents to the list, and found a patent that might be the image compression scheme used in games like Mario Tennis, you can find them on the programming page.

7/18/00 - Id like to send out a big congratulations to Dan and Dawn, good friends of ours that got hitched last weekend. I hope you two have a great life together.
Mirko Minaya writes "I saw your web site for Virtual Boy games. I thought you might find this interesting. I have a few games for sale. They are $5.00 each incase you, or anyone you know wants to purchase some. I only have two kinds : VTetris & Mario Tennis. Shipping is $3.20 for up to 4 games. Thanks!"

6/26/00 - I'm going to be taking some time off from virtual boy development. I'm looking into some new business ventures and I wont have any time for the VB for a while. I'm not giving up or leaving the scene, in fact I'll probably still update this web page, just don't expect anything from me for a couple of months.
As promised the new and improved VB Programming Document is now on line, many thanks to Amos Bieler for getting this together!

6/7/00 - Well I'm swamped with work right now, were in the middle of a product release. Things should blow over in a bit, meanwhile I'm not working very hard on the virtual boy at all (I haven't even turned on my PC in over a week, ugh). Amos Bieler has gone above and beyond the call of duty and totally reworked my programming doc, Ill have it posted here in a bit. I have managed to squeeze in some more work on the Assembler, I'm very close to assembling my first program. I'm not planing on releasing anything until it has full symbol support and some rudimentary symbol addition.

5/23/00 - Things are going slow around here. I'm off on another business trip (this is becoming to commonplace), so I wont be answering any e-mail for a while. Work continues on the v810 assembler, I basically have the parser and preprocessor in place, now I need to decode the instructions, and handle the symbol table expansion.

5/18/00 - Connectix wins another round against Sony, very good news for us. In case I have not mentioned this before Upstate Games is my all time favorite import shop. There now offering NeoGeo Pocket color reprogramable cartridges for you NeoGeo hackers. And finally there is another virtual boy Message Board up here.

5/16/00 - I've been busily trying to make a new VB Asm with full and proper symbol support, along with other missing features like automatic opcode expansion, and macros. So far I'm parsing source files...
Over at OC there is a humorous review of Mario Clash (notice that the screen shot is from the unreleased VIBE emu). And finally, I'm hoping to release my eprom cartrige How to doc soon to the public.

4/26/00 - Due to popular demand I have added a schematic for a 32 pin EPROM based reprogramable cartrige. I'm also working on a mini How to doc for making your own EPROM cartridge so everyone can develop new virtual boy games. I will be out of town, all next week, so there wont be any updates for a while. On an up note however school is out in 2 weeks, so my free time should go up soon.

4/12/00 - Well the wedding was wonderful, congratulations Aron. It was fun getting back together with guys I have not seen in years, makes me want to take a trip back to Africa... I have finally got my I-Opener PC going, I should have some more time to devote to the virtual boy now (If school does not get in the way, ugh).

4/06/00 - One of my closest friends from Africa, Aron Griffis is getting married this weekend, so I will be out of town until tuesday. I'd like to send out a big Congratulations to Aron, I owe a lot to him, he taught me everything I know about computers (thanks!).
My email seems to have recovered, for now.
Some rumors have been floating around that ViBE is an April Fools joke. This is not true for many reasons. First if you look at the screen shots, they are of games I don't even emulate yet. And they are to accurate to be faked. And if that was not enough, Richard Bannister and Gil Pedersen have many emu ports to there name. If you have ever used a mac emu of any sort, you have probably seen there work. I have no doubt that ViBE is currently the finest virtual boy emu out there (makes you wish you had a Mac =0)

4/04/00 - *** Important *** If you have tried to email me in the last 4 days PLEASE re-send your email's! My ISP is dead (very dead) and I have not received anything in a couple of days. You should use this email address only (david.tucker@goliathindustries.com), as my good.net account is hosed. Sadly this means that all documents linked from my page are temporarily unavailable as well.
** New ** - Teen Productions has started work on a Virtual Boy Dev Kit. Among other things this has a very nice front end for Reality Boy (whoa) and in the future will be a fully functional VB IDE.

4/03/00 - Richard Bannister and Gil Pedersen have posted screen shots of there new Vibe Virtual Boy emu for the Mac. This is an exiting announcement, and the first working virtual boy emu for the Mac. While they have referenced my own source code for there emu, they have gone a lot farther getting a number of new games to work. I hope they unroll an official release soon.
Not to be out done, I have decided to releaseV0.7 of Reality Boy. This is mostly a bug fix release, it only adds support for Panic Bomber (with the -fixpal command line switch). I've also decided to release the full source code to the emu as well, even though this is not nearly finished. I still retain all rights to this source code, you can use it however you want as long as you don't charge any money for the end product, and you give me some credit.

3/28/00 - I put my VB Demo up, it is not nearly done (will it ever be =0) but its good enough to show. For now I have been concentrating on developing the libraries, so the main program has not changed much. Feel free to use the source code to make your own demo, and let me know if you have any improvements.

3/20/00 - FrostGiant sent me a scan of some virtual boy trading cards from a special issue of Nintendo Power, very cool indeed. Also included was a summary of the release dates for all the games, as listed in Nintendo Power, I have added it to the Nintendo Power Summary. Not much has changed recently... I'm waiting on my I-Opener PC to come in the mail, I plan on putting Linux on it.

3/09/00 - I'm contemplating porting Arkanoid over to the virtual boy. I'm not sure if I will do a direct port (graphics and all) or make a 'clone'. Here is a screen shot of what it might look like on the VB. The original game is 16 pixels higher than the virtual boy display, but If I'm careful I can make it all work without compromising the game play. Does anyone have any Ideas for making this more 3D? I'm going to have a 'floating' background, but that does not add to the experience of the game.

virtual boy Version:

Original Version:

3/06/00 - I updated my VB programming document, now it has source code to init the column table, and read the controller. Also I updated the description of the flags. My demo is going quite well, I hope to post something here when I get a little farther. Amos Bieler was kind enough to revamp the main page for me, soon he might be doing the whole site.

3/03/00 - I spent some time optimizing my demo. Mostly I'm working on some Fn's so you can deal with OBJ's easier. I introduced a new bug however, somehow I am overwriting the OBJ table and not appending, so you can only see one obj at a time (ouch). I still have my print demo, and a proper OBJ/BGMap demo to add.

3/02/00 - I updated several of the cheats and codes, as always these are untested.

2/29/00 - Alberto Covarrubias over at the VirtualE Site e-mailed me an updated version of VPong using my new init code, and to my surprise and joy, it works on the real virtual boy! The game play was to fast, and there was a bit of trouble in the keypad reading code, but otherwise all went well. Hopefully we will see a new update to VPong that everyone can try. Now it really is official that VPong is the first home-brewed virtual boy game.
New - I got bored, so I was looking at the page statistics for February and came across this tidbit, a list of (snip). Its interesting how many people from around the world are into the virtual boy.

2/28/00 - Alberto Covarrubias over at the VirtualE Site has made an excellent document named A Game Link Port Interface Approach that describes in good detail how to cut a N64 A/V cable to fit in the link port. I was able to whip out 2 ends for a link cable in about a half hour from this document.
Work continues on the demo, I'm optimizing my routines to handle OBJ's so I can link several OBJ's together and move them around as a singe unit. After that I'm going to make a print demo that can output text to the screen. Maybe Ill make a 'chat' demo for the link port as well. I'm hoping to put up a demo of my code as it stands soon.

2/24/00 - Well I'm officially older, I got a lot of cool toys for my B-Day including a pocket watch with a music box in it (very cool). I took yesterday off and worked on the virtual boy all day (yes). I made some great progress, fixing a bug in the controller read operations, and decoding the majority of the pins on the link port. My demo is going a lot better now. Hopefully I will have something worth looking at soon.

Here is my proposed Link Cable pin out:

The idea is that both virtual boy's transmit a steady 'synch' pulse out on pin 6 with a 20 ms period, and they use these pulses to sync the transmit and receive data for a crude form of flow control. This is still untested since I only have one programmable cartridge going, soon I will make a second one and confirm this behavior. I also confirmed that the default clock on the link port runs with a 20 µs period, so a 8 byte transmit takes 160 µs total.

2/22/00 - Well I'm back form vacation, and I'm missing it already. It was great spending 10 days with my lovely wife, and not a computer in sight. Connectix won another appeal against Sony, this is good newz for sure. Adam Hunter has kindly helped me update the PDF version of my programming document, now it does not have an annoying water mark. There are also some small changes in the document, mostly grammatical. I did some more testing last night, and the code to read the controller is defiantly flaking, apparently I am getting false button presses. I'm guessing that somehow I'm reading the data off before the hardware has a chance to read the buttons fully. Oh tomorrow is my 25th birthday, so if you want to buy me a rare VB game for a present or something =0)

2/09/00 - I am going out of town on vacation for the next 10 days. It is my 3 year wedding anniversary and we are finally going on our honeymoon in the Caribbean's. Needless to say I wont be thinking about the Virtual Boy while I'm gone. To tide you over I have put up a teaser of my current code running on the virtual boy, the colors are wrong =0) but otherwise it is the same. While we are on the subject I am still looking for art to put in my demo code. I will give you full credit for your original submissions.

2/07/00 - I finally got conformation that my French teacher and her husband did die last sunday in the plain crash. This is definitely sad news for there family (and me).
I made some more progress this weekend towards getting code to run on the real virtual boy. I have come up with a series of test that should help me prove weather the controller code is working or not. I'm hoping to get something going soon. I have been using 2 different backgrounds for the last 2 weeks (this and the one on the main page), so tell me what you like? I'm having a vote is it black, white or original?

2/03/00 - I have not heard confirmation on my French Teacher, but she was not in the list of survivors things aren't looking good. The virtual boy Petition has stalled out at 78 people, if you have not signed up for it yet please do so now. I would like to see at least 200 people on the list by the end. And please only one signature per person.
I have spent the last several days reading up on Assemblers, I think I might try writing a new assembler from scratch (in C) that supports macros and pseudo opcodes, as well as forward referencing of labels. This would be a good start towards making a high level language for the virtual boy, possibly a C like language. I will probably collaborate with Alberto Covarrubias over at the VirtualE Site on this project.

2/01/00 - There was a bad airplane crash sunday in Nigeria (not the same one on the news). My French teacher from Africa and her husband were on the plane, and it is not known if they made it. They have a daughter in America, I think all three of them could use some prayer...

1/31/00 - I finally got the init code from Mario Tennis into my demo program. It helped me solve the problems with OBJ's but not the fact that the virtual boy skips over the controller code. Now I will have to disassemble the display interrupt vector to see if that solves the troubles. ChrisFE16 posted a summary of the Nintendo Power magazines pertaining to the virtual boy on the VB-Message Board, many thanks for that. Multimedia 1.0 is selling a copy of Insmouse Mansion for $300, its a little expensive for my taste but if you have the funds...

1/27/00 - Adam Hunter has kindly taken pictures of the inside of his cartridges for us, many thanks to him on that. My network connection has been shaky for the past week, hopefully things are going better now.

1/21/00 - Amos Bieler submitted 2 new backgrounds (Big thanks), this is the one I liked the most. Send me an email and let me know how it stacks up to the others. I have almost finished fixing up all the pages so it is trivial to switch the backgrounds out.
I have been working on fixing up my virtual boy demo, maybe I can get it going this weekend on the real VB.

1/18/00 - Im back from my travels. The VB-Message Board moved here. If your looking for people to talk to about the virtual boy this is the place. And Matt Peck submitted a new background that tiles rather nicely (thanks), I will be testing it out for a while. Remember you can always submit new graphics for this site.

1/14/00 - Matt Peck was the first to submit a new background, so hats off to him. Hear is a example of it, It does not tile vertically very well, so Im going to play with the edges so they fit together seamlessly.
I spent some more good time disassembling programs last night, I got al the way to the display interrupt code, so hopefully Im not to far from the end.
Finally, Mario Tennis has a lot of code to handle the Link Port! But sadly it all appears to be debugging code, I think if you hooked your virtual boy up to a PC you could control the game using the link port.

1/12/00 - Ferry's page has some new pictures of Zero Racer. This game was very close to completion, its a shame they never shipped. I have been putting in 12+ hours a day at work, and Im slated to go away this weekend, so I don't expect to finish my disassembly until at leas next weekend.

1/10/00 - Its safe to say that no one really likes my new background (I wiped it up in 5 minutes, can you tell =0). So Im open for submissions for new backgrounds. And to encourage you to submit, im leaving the ugly one up until someone does...
Does anyone know what happened to the 'Red Area', the link has been down for a while, it would be a shame if it went away, they had a good bit of unique info.
In more exiting news, I have completely disassembled the init code in mario tennis. And begun to disassemble to code to decompress the graphics, and display them on the screen. Soon I think I will have the answer as to why my demo code did not run correctly on the virtual boy before. Maybe we will be playing pong on the real thing in a few weeks.

1/07/00 - I have about 600 lines of code to disassemble in Mario Tennis, before I finish the 'initialization' code and get on to the game running. Im hoping to get this finished up this weekend, so I can start testing out my findings. Im testing out a new background, tell me what you think (or if you have a better idea...)

1/06/00 - I uploaded a PDF version of my virtual boy Programmers document. For now the graphics are a bit rough, and there is an annoying watermark on the background. Im working on fixing both of these shortfalls.

1/03/00 - Well here we are in the new year, not much more exiting than the last one =0). Ferry has a new web page Ferry's VB Page, check out the pics of the unreleased games. Makes you wish we had access to these games =0). Also there is a new virtual boy petition going around, an attempt to get Nintendo to notice the VB community. If you want to sign up head over to http://vbpetition.cjb.net/. I have disassembled about 500 lines of code from mario tennis, Im up to the sound processor initialization. Hopefully within another 500 lines I will have figured out how the display is updated... I will post my disassembly hear when things get a little farther along.
(New) I uploaded a text document (VB to Gen adapter) I banged out on using a Genesis (or SNES) backup unit to program the virtual boy. Its a bit rough but you should be able to manage.

12/30/99 - Happy new year (a bit early), well I hope your new year is relaxing. I have 4 items today, first if you have not checked out Over Clocked you should. Next I am seriously in the market for a SNES/Genesis backup unit, I have a strong suspicion that I could use this unit to program the VB, and I want to try it. So if you know of a good source, or have one for sale, contact me. And finally, Im looking for a quality vector based drawing package (like Adobe Illustrator), the one caveat is that it has to be free or cheap. Im trying to convert the graphics in my programming doc to vector's so they scale better when printed. And finally I have successfully transformed my programming doc into the PDF format, I will post a demo of it soon.

12/29/99 - Merry Christmas (late =0), I got all the toys I wanted for Christmas (a No Jive 3 in 1 Mandala YoYo, a Henry's Coral Snake YoYo, and a BC Kendama). Well Im beginning to get a feel for how you should initialize the VB, hopefully we will have code running reliably on the real VB soon.

12/21/99 - Updated the programming documents, fixing a few typos. Im officially discontinuing the old Text based programming document, in favor of the M$ Word based document.
I got a ways into the disassembly of Mario Tennis, right now Im trying to decipher the purpose of a jump table. Its tedious at best. Ill post the disassembled source in a few days, when I have more comments in it.

12/20/99 - I finally put the final touches on my interactive disassembler! It works great, but it is a bit slow. Anyway I made a running disassembly of Mario Tennis, up to the focus screen. Im hoping to work together with Alberto Covarrubias over at the VirtualE Site to decipher this disassembly, so we can gain a better understanding of how to run a program on the real virtual boy.

12/15/99 - The Bleem trial is getting more interesting every day. Bleem filed a countersuit against Sony claming that they were bullying Bleem and all there distributors. Personally I think this is a perfectly valid claim, Id imagine that Sony was hoping to intimidate the Bleem guys to avoid a lengthy court case. If your concerned at all about the future of the Emu scene, keep your eyes on this case. A win for Bleem would virtually ensure that Nintendo and Sony would leave emu authors alone, while a loss would spark off a whole bunch of additional lawsuits (gulp).
Finals will be over in another day, hopefully I will have a bit more time to dedicate to the emu soon.

12/08/99 - Well I have been out sick for the past 4 days (sniffle). So I have accomplished absolutely nothing on the emu. I have my disassembling code about 90% done, I just need to feel good enough to test it out, and work out the kinks.

12/03/99 - My favorite virtual boy store United Game Source is running another sale:
A NINTENDO VIRTUAL BOY SYSTEM PACKAGE - ALL NEW for $59.99
Package includes new VB system, Nintendo headphones and these 7 games:
Mario Tennis(U.S., new, but no box), Panic Bomber (import), Red Alarm (import), T&E Virtual Golf (import), TeleroBoxer (import), Vertical Force (import) and V Tetris (import).
It is a good deal if your looking for a starter kit. I have noticed that virtual boy systems are slowly creeping up in price, Last year you could pick up a new system for under $30 and used for under $20, now the new systems are up to $45 and climbing each month. I suspect we are finally depleting the huge supply of virtual boy systems that flooded the market, when Nintendo dumped the console in 1997.

12/02/99 - Well work on the emu is slow as always, but things are definitely picking up. I put in some code last night to disassembles only the instructions that got executed by the emulator, so I can peruse them at my leisure, instead of stepping through them one at a time. Its making me think about building an 'intelligent' disassembler that decodes the opcodes, and follows the jumps, placing labels where appropriate.
The Wierd-S-Zone people tried out the HMD virtual boy from the patents, and had pore luck at best. Oh well, it was worth a shot. Maybe we can start a running contest to find the best way to mount/use a VB. I personally lay down on the couch, and rest the virtual boy on my face, it saves you from a lot of neck and back aches. Im also quite fond of the VB Lamp-O-Tron idea. Any other good suggestions?

11/30/99 - Poked around last night with the emu, its been a while since I touched the code. I finally put up the definitive patent list on my programming page. This should list all the virtual boy patents in the US from 1995 to November 1999. I have a feeling there are more patents on the way. I noticed that the World Patent Office had some patents not in the US patent office, I need to do a careful search there as well.
Hear is an interesting picture of the virtual boy as a head mounted unit, probably an early prototype. This is taken from patent US5864346. From the looks of this you could modify an existing VB stand to make this contraption (let me know if you try it).

11/29/99 - Im back from my vacation, it was great but Im sorry to see it go. I did some more digging into the patents, and have a lot of new Ideas to test out. Among other things I discovered why various games seemed to have a wide range of brightness, and how to handle the column interrupt. Ill be testing this all out, and writing it into my document some time this week.

11/24/99 - Well its almost Turkey Day, and I will be out of town for the weekend. So if you e-mailed me and did not get a response... be patient. Have a happy thanksgiving.

11/22/99 - NEW!!! I decided to post the beta of my new virtual boy programming document, to view it you will need Word 97 or the Word 97 viewer available from Microsoft. This is about 80% of the way done, most of the info is in place, it just needs to be polished a bit. If you see any errors, please email me and I will correct them. On top of the missing sections noted in '()'s Im also hoping to add a section on coding for the real virtual boy, once I figure out the details. The pages are formatted a little weird, I'm trying to set it up so you can print it as a booklet.
Found some more patents, and there are even more on the way. Im planing on doing an exhaustive patent search based on the names of the Inventors listed in the existing virtual boy patents. It looks like Nintendo has cranked out about 25 different patents in the US alone, for the virtual boy.
Work continues on the programming document, I have most of the CPU section done. Al that is missing, is the bit string summary, Interrupts & Exceptions and a detailed description of each instruction. Im working hard to finish this up, so I can release it soon. On this subject does any one know of an easy way to convert a Microsoft Word document to a PDF format?

11/17/99 - I found another patent out on the IBM Patent Server (patent # 5973656), it adds about 5 new images and the claims look different. Maybe there is some new info on the Display Refresh Interrupts. Also on my programming page, I added several foreign patent numbers. I would love for some one to do a search on the foreign patent servers, especially from Japan, for me. I bet there are a lot of interesting things to be found.
My programming document is going along quite nicely. Im thinking of putting up a 'beta' of it, for public review, but I have not decided yet. I now have all the opcodes in a nice table, I still need to finish out the CPU summary, and put in a detailed description of how each instruction works. Plus there are a few tidbits missing on how to read the controller/link port.

11/12/99 - Sorry the updates have been so slow! I have been working on reorganizing myself.
I began working on a document that I hope will be the definitive Virtual Boy programmers doc. So far i have transferred in all the info from my web site, including my original programmers documentation. In the process I also cleared out several bugs, and added in some of the missing info. I still need to finish out the details on Direct Screen Draws, Software reads of the Controller, Link Port I/O, Timer, Interrupts, Sound and System Initialization. After that I think this document will truly represent all that I know about the virtual boy at this time. Later Im hoping to add in a complete description of the V810 processor and all its opcodes, since documentation on the V810 is so scarce.
I began looking into sound on the virtual boy last night, I must take the time to thank Alberto Covarrubias for his excellent work on the finer details of sound. I think I understand how sound on the virtual boy is working, but Im only planing on documenting it at this time. My emu is not multi threading, and sound processing would really gum up the smooth flow of the code at this time.
I still have had no luck in getting real code to run on the virtual boy, I suspect that Im incorrectly writing to video memory during a display interrupt, I will begin disassembling some of the simpler programs in an attempt to figure out how they handle this.
Finally Scorch has put up a new virtual boy page hear. And Ferry Groenendijk suggested (and I believe him) that Faceball is the pre release name of Space Squash, and Devil Busters turned into Jack Bros. Ill be noting this on my page.

10/15/99 - If you wrote me in the last 2 week's, and are wondering why I never wrote back... I've been to busy to check my email (school). Ill try and respond this weekend to everyone, so be patient. Of course this means that I have not had time to do any work on the virtual boy, hopefully things will settle down soon (maybe my teacher will grow a conscience, you never know).
I have been working on a 'programing how to' document, that outlines in detail the working's of the virtual boy and includes source code to demonstrate. Hopefully Ill have something out soon, if I can find the time. Also I just ordered a 'demo' version of Code Warrior Professional for the V810, this should prove useful, if they actually send it to me. So far they only wrote back and told me I was better suited for there 'windows' clone, we will see.

10/5/99 - United Game Source is having a sale on Virtual Boy games, there selling 6 brand new import games for $20! From there web site:
"VIRTUAL BOY IMPORT GAME 6 PACK All New-- $19.99
Virtual Boy Import titles included in this package are: Panic Bomber, Red
Alarm, T & E Virtual Golf, TeleroBoxer, Vertical Force and V Tetris."
This is a good deal no mater how you look at it, so hurry up and grab it, before someone else does.
Ben Kucenski wrote to say his Head Mounted VB page has moved. Go take a look at the new layout, and stuff. And if you are really Daring, you can try to make the Head Mounted VB =0)

9/28/99 - Did you ever have one of those teachers that thought the whole world revolved around there one class? Some days I swear that teachers are the leftovers that could not make it in the real world (for all you teachers that are good, my humble apologies).
Programing the virtual boy is slow (especially with the above mentioned teacher), Im hoping that Ill get a breakthrough any day now =0) I have not had the time to really code much on the emu specifically in several months, Im seriously considering releasing the source code to the emu, and letting other people work on defining the rest of the VB. This is not to say that Im considering dropping the emu in any way, just if my time is limited, there is no point in not letting any one else peruse the code.
Also I was a little slow in updating the virtual boy Programming Document so if you tried to download the update, and it looked the same as the old one, give it another shot.

9/16/99 - I filled in some more of the memory map in my VB Programming Document, and added place holders for the missing sections. Hopefully in a few weeks Ill have filled in most of the holes in this document.

9/14/99 - Im officially reversing my opinion on Space Squash, its still not as fun as I was hoping for, but once you play through a few levels it gets really tough! And the opponents are quite varied. Its to bad its so slow on the emu, it might be a fun game to play.
I got my NextGen magazine today, they really trashed Bleem, for releasing such an unpolished program. I have to say I always thought it was weird that they were shipping so early, they really needed to wait another 6 months and sell something that could compete with the Virtual Station (which got very high marks from the same magazine). Of course maybe Im jealous, because there making money off of emus, and I know I could never make any money off of my own =0)
In the same issue they mentioned Microsoft's new X-concole, what a pile of %^@$#&*! How do they expect to compete, there trying to make a PC that is dumb'ed down enough to be competitive in the console wars. Any real PC gamier will stick with his much more powerful PC, and the console crowd has not been won over by PC games in the past, so why should they now. I have seen at least 3 references to the ill fated CDi and 3DO machines in relation to this new console. I own both consoles and let me tell you, they were doomed from the beginning. People don't want to pay premium prices for a 'toy'. This is not a TV there selling its a game for there kids, parents are cheap, so the consoles have to be cheap as well.

9/13/99 - I spent the weekend visiting my Grandmother so I had no time to test out new code on the virtual boy, but I did find time to work up a rough schematic of a 40 pin eprom cartrige, similar to the one I built, as well as a 44 pin cartrige. The 44 pin cartrige is a lot more flexible, so if your EPROM programmer can handle 44 pin devices go ahead and make that one, also the 44 pin schematic can handle 42 pin devices as well, without modifying the wiring.
I picked up a AC adapter for my VB the other day, and this cleared up the troubles with running Space Squash on the virtual boy, it seems that the current draw of the EPROM was just to great for the system to handle. If you do make your own EPROM based cartridge, try and find a 80ns EPROM and look for a 3 volt version instead of the standard 5 volt model, this should help save the batteries. I'll post more when I get the controller code to work on the real VB.

9/07/99 - Well over the weekend I spent some time trying out my source code on the VB. So far I have had very mixed success, I was able to display BGMap type graphics with out a hitch. But I was unable to display OBJ based graphics, the images were garbled and not displayed on the correct part of the screen. Also I had some troubles with the keypad and delay routines, currently the program fails to execute these routines... I also experienced weird behavior when playing Space Squash, occasionally the game would lock up or reboot, Im thinking that the eprom I ordered is to slow and is the source of the problems. I will continue to hack at this until I have something stable going, at that time I will offer plans for making your own cartridge.

9/03/99 - Eureka, it works! Last night I finally finished wiring my 256KBx16bit eprom up to a hacked version of Mario Tennis, and after programming the rom with an image of Space Squash, to my surprise, I was able to play the game on my VB (Yes)! First, I have to say this is not a very exiting game (sniff), the game plays a lot like Mario Tennis, only tennis is more fun. The 3D effects are good, but this game could have used another month of code, to add a lot more variety. Anyway, now Im all set to code up real games on the VB, so this weekend I hope to wear out my eprom programmer, and hopefully I can discover some new quirks of the virtual boy. I will post plans for the reprogramable cartridge soon, Also I would like to work up a circuit board that could handle a 1024kBx16bit eprom/flash rom.

8/23/99 - School starts in a week (Yuck!). I think I have figured out the horizontal offset on the Affine mode. Now the water moves in virtual fishing. But Im still missing some thing important. I have my eprom on order, Im hoping to get it today or tomorrow. Maybe this will be the key to programing the real virtual boy.
I have a side project I keep thinking about, using a PIC controller and an LCD display to make a pocket Braille trainer. I'm learning Braille and I want something I can practice on, that is portable enough to put in my pocket. If anyone knows of a good single chip computer that is cheap, and more expandable than the PIC micro controller, let me know. Id really like a system with an 8k boot rom, and at least a 32k flash rom, along with ~8k of ram. Also I want to expand it some day to include a real Braille display not just lights. Im thinking I could make a fully functional Braille computer for under $100 retail! This could be a really big money maker, considering most Braille displays (minus the computer) run about $2,000-$9,000 (ouch).

8/18/99 - I finally made good copies of both Virtual Fishing, and Jack Brothers (USA). Jack Brothers still does not run on the emu, but I think I can get it to go now.
I have come to the realization that the debugging tools on my emu need a good overhaul. So I'm going to rewrite the debugger. Im hoping to add in real breakpoint support, memory watches, and jump expansion's. Someday, I'll support debugging from the original source files as well. Also I'm hopping to improve the interface to the point that you can step through the code while in 'graphics' mode.
This week Im going to break down and buy a '27F400' EPROM and give up (for now) on my flash rom cartridge. EPROM's aren't as sexy, and there a lot more expensive, but my programmer can handle them. And Im saving my penny's for a new programmer from BP MICRO, so If you want to donate any $$$... =0)

8/12/99 - Finally go myself a copy of Jack Brothers! Its a pretty good game, but Im a little disappointed... I thought it was an adventure game, but really its just a puzzle, basically you wander through a timed maze, and you collect keys to get to the next, without getting shot. Im trying to verify the dump of Jack Bro.'s Ill let you all know if it is correct or not. Maybe Ill try and finish support for it in the emu.

8/09/99 - I added a link to the Game and Watch Gallery there is a lot of nice info (and links) on the game and watch series of handheld video games designed by Gunpei Yokoi, Very Nice. I spent some time this weekend working on my virtual boy demo, I was making progress, until I ran into some strange bugs. I think I might be having some alignment problems with the assembler? Anyway Ill have something new for you soon (I hope).

8/02/99 - I added a new link to VB Resources they have transcripts of most of the virtual boy manuals, lets help them finish this project. I took my wife to see 'Runaway Bride' this weekend (Its a really good movie), anyway there is a scene in the movie where the hotel clerk has a Virtual Boy strapped to his head, and he is playing 'Mario Tennis'! The virtual boy has some strange stickers on the front, and an elastic head band instead of a stand, but otherwise its a stock Virtual Boy.
In other newz, work continues on my Virtual Boy demo, Im half way finished with a controller tester, and I have some new ideas for ways to show off pallet manipulations, etc...

7/28/99 - Programming on my VB Demo is coming along nicely, right now I'm working on the tedious task of developing new graphics and animation's for the demo. If anyone with more talent than me would like to contribute any 4 color graphics or animation's (little people walking, monkeys throwing stuff, etc....) just let me know. If I like the graphics Ill give you full credit.
I found a link http://www.goodnet.com/~tinara/weblink/ that has a utility (with source) to play around with the Web.Link cable for the Game.Com. Maybe some of you will find this useful.

7/26/99 - I've finished out my asm library (for now) I think I have all the pieces to run a program on a real virtual boy (Im initializing all the right hardware, and building the column tables, etc.). I went ahead and began using this library to build a demo program. For now all it does is put up the focus screen, but soon it will step through all the various screen modes. To show off the tricks that the virtual boy can do.
In other newz I got my IO-56 back together. Still no luck programming the flash rom, but I have hope =0) I spent most of Sunday Afternoon trying to figure out why Virtual Fishing would not dump correctly. I suspect that Im not properly shutting off the saved ram, and it is interfering with the whole operation.
If anyone has tried hacking the Game.Com Web.Link kit, please get in touch with me. Id really like to figure out the communication protocol, so I can download source code to the Game.Com

7/20/99 - Over the weekend I began work on some asm functions for programming the virtual boy. Hopefully with this is will be easier to write test code to run on the real virtual boy. Work continues on the BGMAP Scaling (Affin) but so far nothing I have tried has paned out. Alberto has been a big help, and just sent me some new Mode 7 info, maybe this will be the solution to the problem! Hopefully soon I'll have my own demo to release on the virtual boy, probably nothing as cool as Virtual Pong, but something none the less.

7/13/99 - Worked some more on scaling, but I still cant figure it out! I have received conformation that 'Shin Nihon Pro Wrestling' was released in Japan, Im still waiting on the official product number, but for all you collectors there is a new game to go hunting after (thanks to Danny for the info). Also I have officially confirmed that the demo release of Red Alarm has the product ID of 'DIS-VUE-VREE-USA'. On a final note, the VirtualE team has released a new version of there VIDE Development tool. Be sure and give it a try, and let us know if you make any home brewed demos.

7/12/99 - I spent the weekend working on the bit map scaling in the VB. I found a lot of things that did not work, but so far, have failed to find anything that does work (sniff). Anyway It looks like Im finally getting back into real coding, so hopefully there will be more productive updates soon. I have some leads on some of the thought to be unreleased games. Maybe soon we will be playing some of them.

6/28/99 - I toped my last one by blowing out one of the 24 port buffers in my IO-56 card. Now my flash rom project is shelved until I can order some new parts. This is quite a drag, I really want to have the ability to program the real virtual boy! Im not sure at what time I blew out the chip. but hopefully this is why I could never read out the chip ID (maybe wiring +12V to the chip was not such a good Idea, when it was all hooked up to the IO-56 =0)
Anyway maybe Im going to go back to programming for a while, seeing as my hardware abilities aren't what they should be!

6/24/99 - So far I have blown 2 fuses out on my IO-56 card (sorry Imid), and have successfully read the manufacturers ID out of the flash rom, but I could not read the product ID (it always returned the manufactures ID), so Im supposing I have a faulty wire somewhere. I guess its back to the soldering station for me.
The Virtual-E boys have done it again! They just released the first home brewed game for the Virtual Boy, along with a great document on special effects for the virtual boy. With this last document they have provided all the tools needed to write real virtual boy games, so get with it!!! You can get there new game (pong) from there documents page, follow the link to 'Special Effects part 1'. Maybe in a few weeks Ill be playing pong on the real virtual boy, wish me luck. Oh, I've added a mirror of pong on my web site, because Netscape navigator always downloads the rom in ASCII mode, corupting it, so I've wraped it up in a zip file.

6/18/99 - I updated the 'Specs' page with some more info on unreleased games, most of the info was gleaned from the Virtual Boy Rare Games Page and from http://www.execpc.com/~krieg/VidGames.htm. Some day I will do this up right and put images of all the unreleased games.

6/17/99 - Well its 6 days till my software ships, in case your counting. For those who are interested it is a Unicode enhanced version of our 'Nova Disk' backup product, with a Java front end built by me (Java lets us do Unicode, and be portable to Linux, Mac, and Novel, what a great Idea). It seems that this program will be shipping with every new Intel Boxed motherboard, so maybe you will get to see it some day.
Anyway my time is still tied up in work, but there are new ideas floating around in my head. In other news VirtualE has released a new version of there virtual boy emu, run don't walk to http://members.xoom.com/virtuale98/ to get a copy (note. last time I checked the web site was not updated, but you can always download it from the Red Area). This has preliminary sound and is coming along with game support as well. It looked good when I tried it out.

6/11/99 - Well Im back from vacation, and all. Things are just getting crazy at work, were shipping our product in a week and a half, so Im not doing much work at all on the emu right now. I have decided to shift directions for a while. Im reviewing the patents thouraly trying to find any new pieces of info that might tell me how the interrupts should be laid out. And how the Scale/Rotate functions work. Hopefully when things settle down at work Ill have more energy to use on the emu.
I get a lot of people asking where they can get a virtual boy and games, the following is a list of sites I made while searching for the rest of the games for my own collection. The first two are by far the most reliable and best sites, I would not look anywhere else unless they did not have the game you wanted.

Good Deal's:
Video Game Depot - http://www.videogamedepot.com
United Game - http://www.unitedgame.com

The Rest:
http://www.usedvideogame.com/nintendo/virtualboy/vb.htm
http://www.videogameconnection.com/virtual.htm
http://www.netlinkworld.com/gamelord/virtualboy.html
(Game Express) http://www.gexpress.com/
(Telegames USA) http://www.telegames.com
(Telegames UK) http://www.telegames.co.uk/
** Bad! (VGLiq) http://www.vglq.com
** Bad! (Game Masters) http://www.game-masters.com/vboy.html
** Bad! (Game Source) http://www.gamesourceonline.com/virtualboy.htm

Links:
(VBForSale) http://www2.gol.com/users/geopal/vb025.htm
(VB Resource) http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/%7Esrsouth/vb/index.html

** My own experiences of these sites has been pore, your experience may vary. This is nothing more than my own personal opinion.

Also if you ever come across the following games, please drop me a line, I am very interested in obtaining a copy of them.

=========================================================================
Developer Stock Number Name
=========================================================================
Atlus VUE-VJBE-USA Jack Bros.
Atlus VUE-VJBJ-JPN Jack Bros.
Kemco VUE-VVPJ-JPN Virtual Professional Baseball '95
Coconuts VUE-VSSJ-JPN Space Squash
I'Max VUE-VIMJ-JPN Insmouse's Mansion

Jwing VUE-VJVJ-JPN Virtual Lab
Taito VUE-VSPJ-JPN Space Invaders: Virtual Collection
BanDai VUE-VSDJ-JPN SD Gundam Dimension War
Athena VUE-VVBJ-JPN Virtual Bowling
=========================================================================

5/25/99 - Hear is a cool new 3D display by Philips, maybe some day Nintendo will re-release the virtual boy in a game boy format with this display =0) If they could get the horizontal resolution up, this would make an incredible 3D experience! Actually I hope they bypass the VB and just re-release the N64 in a 3D HandHeld form, that would be impressive!

5/24/99 Bet you all thought I had totally skipped out on you =0) Well I have spend the last week or so trying to get the emu back to where it was before, Im 99% of the way there, but now Im stuck, I cant get Tennis and Space Squash to work at the same time, and once I fix that then I still need to figure out how to get Jack Brothers and Water World to work with the rest of the games! I did manage to keep Panic Bomber working without messing everything else up (this is really good news). Jack Brothers is incredibly sensitive, Im not putting a lot of hope in getting it to work with the rest (maybe there will be a jack bro.'s command line switch), but I think I can get Water World to peacefully coexist with everyone, especially with Telero Boxer, currently these 2 gams are totally incompatible!
Anyway It is my wife's birthday next weekend (she is turning 24), and were going to Vegas to celebrate! So I wont have that weekend to program, maybe I can make good progress this week, if not it might be a while before something exiting happens.

5/11/99 Who was it that said Two steps forward and One step back? Well I got Panic Bomber going, its quite nice, I could not ever figure out how to turn on the screen so I kluged it, it works, but its a bit weird. I also messed around some more and got Water World to the point that it is truly playable, basically the timer was firing to often, so Water World never had enough time to update the screen, But in doing that I broke all the other games that depend on the timer (Telero Boxer, Space Squash, Insmouse House), hopefully the fix will be easy enough. Vertical force ran into some technical snags, maybe I can fix it up without to much trouble. My time is limited for the next two days, so I probably wont have a chance to code until friday. Finally, as promised, hear are some more screen shots.

5/10/99 - Lots O Progress! I got Water World 99% playable last night. Mostly the 2 problems are that it is still way to slow (very few screen updates) and the direct screen draws don't seem to be working quite right! Never the less you can get a good feel for the game. In other newz I fixed a bug in my CPU core, that was causing the last 5 games to hang at boot time (Panic Bomber, Vertical Force, 3D Tetris, Red Alarm, Virtual Golf) and now Panic Bomber and Vertical force are fully playable. There is a catch, however, neither game ever actually turns on the screen, and I don't know why. Ill post new screen shots of these two games as soon as I fix the bugs.

Hear are some more screen shots that I was meaning to put up, but never got around to:

5/04/99 - Not much progress last nigh, I think the problem with Water World is in the timer interrupt, Im getting about 60 interrupts per frame refresh, Im thinking that this is far to many. My guess is that Water World updates the screen once per display interrupt, and then It relies on the timer interrupt to handle the keyboard access. Im guessing that with so many timer interrupts, there just is not enough time for the screen to update in one display interrupt, so it takes several display interrupts per screen refresh. This would sound right, because the real game is very fast (relatively) it does not take any time at all to see the screen move when you move the controls.
In other news I did finally get the enemies to show up in Water World, I had to fill in the world mem with 0xFFFF, because Water World was assuming that the default world type was an obj (what a stooge). Im beginning to think that something like this is what is holding back Mario Clash, it never appears to query any of the VIP registers for screen status, but it hangs on the spotlight screen. Either this or its waiting on some info from the sound processor.
I have guest coming this weekend, and finals tomorrow, so don't expect to much to happen with the emu in the next few days.
Oh, I uploaded a new and improved VBProgrammign doc to the programming page, and I updated the Pic's page to reflect the 2 new games (I still need to upload screen shots of Mario Tennis).

5/03/99 - As promised hear are the screen shots from Water World.


As you can see the enemies never show up in the game. I did manage to fix the pallets up, and I know how to fix the horizon (notice that its cut off), but the enemies are all mapped into obj's and for some reason these obj's are never enabled in the world plane. I need to look into this some more. Also the game is still to slow to be playable.
Hear is a summary of the emu as it stands right now:
---------------------------
Reality Boy 0.70beta
---------------------------
Working - 6
Space Squash, VTetris, Glactic Pinball, Telero Boxer, Insmouse Mansion, Virtual Fishing
---------------------------
Almost Working - 4
Mario Tennis - (No BGMap Scaling), Mario Clash - (Screen won't advance, hangs), Water World - (To slow, opponents don't show up), Jack Brothers - (Graphics are all screwy)
---------------------------
Not Quite Working - 3 // All Below hang on a bad Interrupt
Virtual BaseBall, Virtual Bowling, WarioLand
---------------------------
Totally Whacked - 5 //All below try to return form an uncalled interrupt (Why???)
Panic Bomber, Vertical Force, 3D Tetris, Red Alarm, Virtual Golf
---------------------------

5/02/99 - I finally got Water World going!!! (sort of), now that I've successfully emulated the 2 worst games for the virtual boy I can call it quits =0). The bad guys don't show up, and the whole thing is just Dog Slow (see Insmouse Mansion below), but it is playable. I need to spend some time figuring out why the enemy's don't appear, and there is a pallet problem, apparently Water World is doing something wrong, but I have not figured it out. Im really disappointed! not only does it not draw straight to the display, they do a tone load of work getting there 3D scaling graphics stuffed into OBJ's! I think they could have speed things up significantly by creating an off screen buffer to render the display on, and performing a page flip on the display interrupt. Looking at water World for a while now, I have noticed that there are a LOT of 3D bugs, the big ones are the Water World logo is clipped on one corner, totally screwing up the 3D effect. And the Trolers some times pass in front of each other, when they are really behind. Also using a bit of black in the sprites would make them a lot clearer!
I will post screen shots form Water World soon. In other news I conclusively proved that the rom used in Virtual Fishing is wiggy (cheap), and my rom dumper is unable to dump it correctly, I can fix this but it will take some time, until then you will need to suffer with the bad rom. Or if you are ambitious you can always go dump it yourself. I still suspect that Jack Brothers has the same problem, but its hard to say.

4/28/99 - I finally finished off the Direct Display Write code, Its looking pretty good, but it could use a bit more work. All is well in 2D mode but in 3D mode the screens are out of sync! Also everything is off by 8 pixels and I cant figure out why?
I looked more into VFishing, The game goes well until after you catch a fish, than you get corrupted graphics and occasionally things hang. So Im suspecting that the rom is still not dumped right, Ill go back and look it over again. Also playing this game on the emu does not even compare to playing it on the real virtual boy, the 3D effects on the virtual boy are stunning, and there totally lost on a flat PC display. This is a good game to get just for the effects.
Finally I suspect that Jack Brothers is also dumped incorrectly, but I can not conform this at this time. I looked into the bogus FPU instructions, and I think that an early (or late) release of the compiler was unintentionally coding up bogus instructions, at least 3 of the games that work issue a lot of bogus FPU instructions, and It is not hurting the games at all.
School is out in another week, Im hoping that summer will give me a lot more time to code on the emu, maybe Ill have some more games going in a month or so.

4/26/99 - Great Newz, Jack Brothers finally started to boot! It turned out that I was miss handling the Interrupts and now there closer to being correct. The graphics are pretty goofed, but that is OK, you can play the game anyway its just hard to tell what is going on.
In other news I discovered that the Virtual Fishing rom had some bad bit's in it, Im going to release a patch to fix it. With the updated rom, VFishing is now 100% playable!
I added in preliminary support for direct screen draws, it works great in Telero Boxer, but VFishing really goofs it up, so for now Im not going to add it back in. I need to be clearing the screen memory each time I grab it, this is sure to be a big slow down, and caching it will not be so easy...

Hear is a brief summary of the games:
Working: (6)
VTetris, VFishing, GPinball, Space Squash, Insmouse Mansion, Telero Boxer
Mostly Working: (3)
Mario Tennis, Mario Clash, Jack Brothers.
Barley showing anything: (4)
Wario Land, Baseball, Nesters Bowling, Water World
And the rest crash shortly after starting: (5)
Golf, Panic Bomber, 3D Tetris, Vertical Force, Red Alarm

4/23/99 - I finally fixed TelroBoxer, I was failing to fire an interrupt on the timer, due to a bad check of the IntEnable registers. It is surprising that Telero Boxer got as far as it did without the timer Interrupt. I also (finally) added in a wrapper around my debug fprintf's so I can turn the debug messages on and off on the fly (without needing to recompile), Im adding in a debug level as well so I can cut down on the glut of info being printed out. This should prove to be quite handy when trying to debug some of the broken games (like Wario Land), before it was very tough to get a game going with so many debug messages being logged. Also the Optimized CPU Core is finished, its not nearly as fast as I was hoping for (but noticeably faster, none the less). Im going to look into it a bit more, maybe there is some more fat I can trim. I think to se a real improvement hear I will need to break down ad write a ASM core, but portability is still my top priority (even if its not quite portable yet). Work on the BGMap scaling has slowed to a crawl, so far I have not been able to find that single thread of commonality between each of the games (they are all quite different!), so Im guessing my initial assumptions about the scaling were misguided (sniff), I have not heard back from Jason, maybe his progress has been better.
I was looking over my virtual boy Programming Doc's the other day, they are getting noticeably outdated! Some day soon I will revamp them, hopefully I can make them more legible, along with filling in more of the holes. Im still waiting for some bright soul to come along and write a demo for the virtual boy, outside of VirtualE no one is actively working on any VB games! Maybe Ill host a programming contest, to encourage some one to start coding for the virtual boy.

4/21/99 - The good people at Direct Pad Pro have released v5 of there software now with full support for the virtual boy controller. Run don't walk to get your copy. Work on the CPU core is almost complete, I have 99% of the instructions converted over, I just need to optimize the memory accesses. I still need to fix Telero Boxer, im hoping to get a chance some time this weekend to look into that. I think I've figured out the sprite scaling, but Im getting random garbage when I read data from my memory arrays, I think its a boundary problem. If I have it right we should have global scaling going, but the line by line mode is still eluding me (not to mention the rotate!). Im going to squeeze in direct display memory writes into the next release as well.

4/19/99 - I did some more twiddling with the Optimized CPU Core, but not much. I managed to break Telero Boxer! Ill try and get it going again soon. Work has begun on the Sprite Scaling, I have some theories on how it works, I need to go home and test them out though. Also Jason is hard at work on this problem to, hopefully between us we will have it figured out (I really want to play Mario Tennis!).
The Virtual-E team has released a new version of there emu, its starting to really shape up. There hard at work on the sound, hopefully they will share the info if they figure it out. As you can see they have troubles with transparency's, color saturation, screen wraps and the signed/unsigned floating point bug, but these are small bugs and easy to fix. Over all this is turning into a great emu (Just don't mess around with the thread priorities, yikes!).

4/16/99 - Work on the CPU core is progressing, I only have the mode 6 instructions and the extended opcodes left (FPU and Bit String). Plus I need to optimize the memory accesses. I probably wont have a chance to finish this up until after this weekend, I have guests coming.
Jason found a bug in my code that has eluded me for far to long (considering how simple it was), I had a series of if/else statements in my memory access Fn's and I was missing the else (so it was if(i<x) if(i<y) if(i<j), instead of if(i<x else if(i<y) else if(i<j)) so memory accesses were writing to multiple segments of memory at a time (bad news). Anyway I fixed ti up and now Mario Tennis is looking a lot better, the player selection screen is working great, and mario no longer flashes when playing (but you still can not see the court or the other players). Also with my enhanced CPU Core Insmouse mansion Is quite playable (I managed to get to level 3 on my P100 before I got frustrated with the slow speed), and the graphics are not flashing quite as bad (they still flash a lot just not as bad). So maybe in a week or two Ill have an interim release with a lot of speed ups and a few graphics tweaks. Then its off to the new code from Jason Nelson!

4/14/99 - I have put in some hours making the CPU Core run faster, so far it is helping but not dramatically. Im hoping to clean up my virtual boy Memory accesses, this ought to speed things up a touch. If I get a good speed improvement, I think Ill make a second release, there are big code changes in the works and it will be quite a while before the next release (I think). Speaking of I got the latest Windows Build from Jason Nelson, It now supports Direct Draw Full screen mode along with a windowed mode. And it is Allegro Free! There is still a lot of fine tuning left to do, but Jason is doing a phenomenal job on the Windows Port, I cant thank him enough.
In other news, Direct Pad Pro (the Windows video game controller driver) has added in support for the VB controller, now you can play your favorite PC games using your favorite controller =0). It is unclear to me whether they have updated the version that supports the 2 extra buttons on the virtual boy controller, or if this is coming soon.

4/11/99 - Today is the day. I posted the new version of the emu, it has officially been renamed to Reality Boy. You can get it from the downloads page. I updated the Linux version as well, there are a lot of changes to the interface so see the readme for details (mostly its easier to get things going now)
In other newz I figured out how to speed up InsMouse Mansion, now it is basically playable. It is still really slow, and the enemies flash a lot, but it will defiantly give you a good feel for what the game is like (Its not exactly a very impressive game, sorry to say)
Finally I received this rather nice drawing on how to hook a virtual boy controller up to the Parallel port form Gravis Zero. I hope you find it useful.

4/09/99 - Well really good newz today, Insmouse Mansion is finally playable (sort of). I don't know when It started working (It has been a while since I messed with it), but now if you wait a while after selecting start from the monster screen, the game actually begins to play. The words Dog Slow, don't even begin to describe it, I need to spend some time figuring out why it is so slow, Im guessing I just need to start updating a status flag a little more often than I am. Especially since the demo runs so smoothly now. Also you can get to the password screen, and bubbles float buy in front of the monster (But the monster does not spin about yet).
Plans for a weekend release of the emulator are looking good, If I can get time to try out all the games (make certain nothing is seriously hosed) you can expect a release sometime before monday (the Linux build will be released sometime on monday, I don't have Linux at home).
Finally Is anyone interested in seeing the graphics stored in Water World? I could modify my rom viewer, so you can look at the uncompressed images in water world (and 3D Tetris etc.), but Im not going to waist my time, If no one is interested.

4/08/99 - I figured out most of the Direct Screen Draw stuff last night (I can decode the screen at least). I don't think Im going to have a chance to work this into the next release of the emulator though. I did conclusively prove that Water world writes straight to the display (I always wondered why water world was so huge, apparently they just have a tone load of images in rom that are uncompressed, they are using a scheme similar to Wing Commander to get the 3D effects). And I suspect that Red Alarm, 3D Tetris and Virtual Golf all write to the display directly.
There are a lot of new and Improved changes coming down the pipe from Jason Nelson, he has reworked my command line interface, added in INI support and is in the process of completely tearing apart the Graphics Engine (Mostly cutting out Allegro). I think Im going to freeze my source code and offer a release really soon, and not try to work in his new changes. Anyway the next release of the emulator (after this one) promises to be a real winner, especially If I can figure out how to get the games that write straight to the display to work!

4/06/99 - As promised hear is the Updated info on Hooking a VB controller to the PC.
And in other newz, I finally figured out what was going wrong in Telero Boxer with the flashing robot intro. It turns out that the BGCOL flag is not the transparent color, but the color to initialize the Background to (Duh). Now we have a nice flashing robot, as we should. I need to verify that I did this right, and that I did not screw up the 3D Modes. I also discovered that Telero Boxer writes straight to the display memory, so now I need to start adding that in to the equation when computing the display. This is used to make the screen crack when the boxer hits it, at the end of the below animation. I suspect that games like Red Alarm write straight to the Display all the time. The text in the intro scrolls onto the screen in a strange way, I don't think it would be easy to do this with just tiles.

Oh, work has finally begun on my virtual boy Program (Just a demo for now) Im hoping to make a demo that can show off all the graphical tricks of the virtual boy (and be a compatibility test between my emulator and the real VB at the same time). Hear is the focus Screen:

Finally I have decided on the Winning name from the Red Area VB_98 renaming contest. It will officially change over to Reality Boy with the next release of the emulator.

4/05/99 - Time is flying buy again! Happy Easter (or passover if you prefer). With the good help of Amos Bieler I finally got my virtual boy controller hooked up to the PC. I will be posting the full details soon. This has gotten me thinking about adding in better support for controllers/keyboard configurations in the emu (I really need to start parsing a INI file, so I can have even more complicated setups). Anyway Ill post the Info on getting the VB controller working with SNESKey, and maybe Ill add in direct support for it into the emulator. I think I have most of the bugs Ironed out (Finally) Ill do a bit of testing and hopefully Ill have a release in the next day or two.

3/29/99 - I tried making a SNESKey to Virtual Boy Controller adapter, but It did not work. I have not had the time to put the scope on it to see what the problem is. Im guessing, either I got the Clock and Data lines switched or the virtual boy controller requires a lot more power than the SNES controller (This is a big possibility the virtual boy has a battery monitor built into the controller, so this might be drawing to much power, an easy fix however, since the battery pack is already attached to the controller)
In other newz, I go the command line going (finally), it is not perfect! several of the command line switches are to long and hard to remember, but it is a start. I also added a -debug switch so you can get to the CPU Tracer from the release version of the emu, this eliminates the need to release 2 versions of the emulator, for smaller downloads.
Im going to try and fix a graphics glitch in Telero Boxer, and possibly figure out why it takes such a long time for the next fighter to come up after you win a match (it takes about a half an hour on my PC). Anyway after this it is time for a public release (Im finally at a state where I can feel like progress has been made). Oh, I also added in a red pallet, and support for red/green and red/bluegreen glasses, and I added in a 1024x768 display mode (for kicks).
(NEW) Quick question for you Linux buffs, how can I statically link in the XwinAllegro libraries without statically linking in the X11 libraries, I figure Im bloating my program by 50% just by passing in the -static switch on the command line (I tried recompiling the XwinAllegro libraries to be static, but this did not work) Any suggestions would be appreciated.

3/23/99 - I figured out the remaining lines on the VB COntroller go to the Diagrams page for the pin out, and a reproduction of my Oscilloscope trace. If anyone has any experience wiring up a SNES pad to the parallel port, would you contact me. This defiantly looks like a SNES controller, and It would be really nice to wire up the virtual boy controller to the PC for use with the emulator.
While I was at it, I figured out 3 of the lines on the Link Port (Ground, +5v, and the Clock) this is a start on figuring out the Link port. If anyone has experience writing a generic TCP/IP or serial port driver, let me know. I would like to modify the emu to push data out the link port just to see if there is something going on hear. There is not much point going any further with Figuring out the link port if no games really support it.
Some notes, Reset goes High then the first controller bit is pushed out (before the first tick of the clock), everything is latched on the rising edge. Also the bits are inverted a High value means no button was pushed. Bit1 should always be low (a logical 1) and Bit0 is the battery status bit, it should be ignored. I think the controller is powered from pin2 even though pin6 is the power from the batteries, and I don't think it is necessary to switch the controller on to get it to work?


Finally I did some research on making a 'Red' pallet for the emulator, I think I can make it look OK if I do some trickery with the contrast (I need to brighten up all the pallet entries to make it look ok). So maybe the next release will have an optional support for a red pallet.






as you can see the red pallet is much darker, but what can you do =0)

3/22/99 - I noticed that the Graphics were all screwed up on this site over the weekend (sorry), I think its all fixed now. I managed to fix the Major GPF with Virtual Fishing, when you are using the normal (non 3D) display mode, but the minute you jump into a 3D display mode it crashes, so back to the debugger for me. I finally broke down and dragged my Virtual Boy to the Electrical Engineering lab on campus, and I managed to pin down 2 more lines on the Controller (clock and data) I ran short of time, so I did not get a chance to figure out the last 2 lines, and I did not get time to look into the Link Port (I verified that Panic Bomber is driving the Link Port clock ). Hopefully I will get time to go back this weekend, Im going to try and capture an image of the link and controller ports in action (maybe someone can make a virtual boy Controller to parallel port adapter for me, Im almost positive that the VB controller is virtually identical to the SNES controller, so it should be easy to retrofit into an already existing adapter, like the one from SnesKey etc.)

3/19/99 - Worked on cleaning up the web pages a bit, I organized the images by category, and pruned out some of the ugly ones. I now have the main web pages back under one megabyte. Coming soon a lot of interesting pictures of the various unreleased games. Im still hard at work squashing bug's (there are a lot of new GPF type bugs with the new graphics code), and working on eliminating Allegro from the low level graphics routines. Im beginning to think I ought to push out another interm Beta release however, since progress is slow. Maybe Ill make a new release after killing off a few of the GPF's (mostly I think im overwriting the edge of my graphics objects, but I have not had time to track all the bugs yet...)

3/11/99 - Im still hear! I've been working (a bit) on cutting out the Allegro code, Jason Nelson has been doing most of this for me (Thanks!). I began adding in the Bit String subopcodes, so far this has not helped any with game compatibility, but im not done yet. I've been collecting images from the net of Unreleased/Rare virtual boy stuff. If you have any Images or come across any, please send them along, and Ill post them (soon).
Id like to take this moment to rant about a PetPeave I've had with the designers of the VB. WHY are there only 4 colors!!!! There is a nice system of pallets, and the displays are capable of 32(maby 64?) discreet shades of red. It would have been easier to put in a dozen more pallets, and allow each pallet (of 4 colors) to select from a global pallet of 32 colors. This would only take a few more bits per BGMap/OBJ and would allow for a lot better images (32 colors on the virtual boy would be just about perfect). This is so annoying! The images from Panic Bomber would look so cool, if only....

3/03/99 - I finally fixed the FPU problems! I was casting an unsigned long to a float, instead of casting it to a signed long, than to a float, so all integer numbers were coming out as positive even if they were negative! Now Galactic Pinball and Space squash are fully playable, combining this with VTetris and Telero Boxer, there are now 4 fully playable games. I started making the emulator dynamically configurable, Im going to support flags on the command line, and have a setup screen, and possibly Ill add in some sort of INI support, but maybe not right away. Im trying to make the configuration routines plugable, so the Win32 and Mac ports can offer some sort of graphical configuration. Also Im going to try to support Frames as well as full screen graphics, this will help under Linux as well. And finally I added back in support for the new Allegro free Char routine, but I don't have support for transparencies, and the higher end Funcs still are using Allegro, so their is a lot to do hear.

I added 2 images of the never released Bound High game. If you know where I could get the images of the remaining unreleased games (Dragon Hopper in particular), I would appreciate it. Also I found an Image of a Virtual Boy carrying case on the eBay auction site ($35 for the setup below, nice!), does anyone know anything about this carrying case? is is a Nintendo item? or did some creative 3rd Party come up with it?
Hear is a site with Images of all the rare Japanese Virtual Boy games (Including Virtual Bowling, which is NOT the same as Nesters Funky Bowling!). And hear is a nice rundown of all the available games (with descriptions)

3/01/99 - I did some testing over the weekend, I discovered that Telero Boxer is running at full speed with a frame skip of 3 on a P200, and VTetris runs full speed with a frame skip of 0 on a P200. Also Insmousehouse is getting farther along. The demo now works correctly, you can watch the maze move if you do nothing. Also when on the P200 machine the game started to boot, but when I tried it out on my own P100 the game no longer booted, and I can not figure out what is different! I have added in so much debugging code and It completely escapes me why things are locking up! (Ill post some nice screen shots soon, see below in fact). On a similar note, it is now possible to play past the first robot in Telero boxer (even if its really difficult using the keyboard), the trick is that the new emu (not released yet) saves the game, so when it locks up at the end of the match, you just exit the emulator and restart, now your able to play the next character by loading up your saved game. Just in case your worried, his head is suppose to be in his tommy (don't ask =0).
I conclusively proved that one of the FPU instructions is whacked, but which one I don't know!!! I really need the V810 manual, if anyone has a copy (NEC refuses to send it to me!). I think Im truncating a signed float to an unsigned float, but who can tell? This is the only major hang-up in Galactic Pinball, other wise the games all appear quite playable...
The next ver. of the emulator will have command line support, and hopefully you will be able to hit F3 for setup, so you can change from a 2D display to 3D etc, without needing to exit the emulator and force another command line switch. This should make things nicer in the Win32 port as well.
Hear is a site with a Rom Editor (Tile Layer) util that can hack the images in virtual boy games. Note that not all games are compatible with this, in particular MarioTennis compresses its images.
Finally I added a Link to the Red Area, I've been wanting to do this for a while, but until recently they hosted ROM's, and (for legal reasons) I can not link to such a site.

2/23/99 - Well Im officially 24 today, I've spent a bit of time cleaning up the site, now it is 99% compatible with LYNX and older browsers. In fact I have it 'BOBBY' approved! I need to replace the tables in the cheats section to get everything looking perfect under lynx. Let me know if you have any troubles viewing this site, and Ill try to clean it up for you.
I added the Mario Tennis manual to the Downloads page, and I added a link to the VirtualE project VirtualE will be a nice virtual boy emulator some day, meanwhile they have a great v810 asembler/dissasembler (Much nicer than mine)

2/17/99 - I said before that Virtual Tetris was working 100%, well I finally broke down and bought a copy of it, and its not quite there yet!
- The Lions Head and the other intro screens that scroll onto the screen from the side should really be 'zooming' in from the back (The unimplemented zoom/rotate functions).
- Words should be scrolling in front of the stars on the setup screen (Fixed, but it looks much better the other way!!!)
- The words 'Press Start Now' should blink and the tetris pieces should scroll up on the start screen, also this screen hangs up if you don't press start soon enough (Same problem as the hanging pieces???)
- The game hangs up sometimes when playing it (Pressing a button at the wrong time causes this)
Well I guess having only 3 known bugs is not so bad =0) I think I have a good lead on the Scaling, I'll try to Implement it (We will see). Also I still need to tackle the Multiple BGMaps bug (Its all in place but it did not work, Must be a bug somewhere!). And maybe the FPU flags...

I have a project for someone, I would like to set up a page (Or link to a page, Im not picky) about the history of the virtual boy. I'd like it to be detailed, with lots of fact's. Some of the Ideas would be:
- The original inspiration for the virtual boy.
- The team that designed it.
- Why it was not so popular.
- What happened to the designers.
- And Nintendo's current stand on the VB.
(Is there going to be a revival of the VB, with a color display?)
I think this would make a great research project for school, or whatever. I feel like no one actually paid proper tribute to the rise and fall of the virtual boy and I'd like to see a page on it. I'd recommend starting right hear.

Hear are some more Space Squash images, you can get to the next level in space Squash just by siting still (At least I could), If you are interested in how the game progresses.

<Snip>

2/15/99 - Well today is my 2 year wedding anniversary =0). Id like to thank my Wife for her willingness to put up with me for the past two years. And I hope the next 50 or so years will be this good! Needless to say, I have not done a lick of programing this weekend (With Valentines and my anniversary, Happy Valentines day). In fact my PC has been in pieces for the past several days, so If you have written me in the past week or two, and your wondering why I never wrote back. I should be catching up on email's buy wensday, so hold off on those flame letters.
I uploaded 2 very significant PDF's on the V810 and V821 to the downloads page. The v810 PDF is incomplete so you still need the V821 and V830 PDF's but it is significant in that it lets you know exactly what pieces of the 21 and 30 manuals to look at, and what has been added. The v821 manual gives a really nice overview of the BitString and FPU subopcodes. In fact Im going to begin working on the BitString opcodes and maybe I'll be fixing the flags (If I can figure them out, this would be easier with the real V810 manual).
In other news, I almost finished the Multi BGMap code and I've pretty much concluded that the bogus FPU flags are to blame for the Squirly graphics in Galactic Pinball (And other games?).

2/10/99 - Im back from my trip... Time has been scarce so work on the emulator has slowed to a crawl (Im lucky if I can spend a half hour debugging each night). But in spite of that I am making steady progress. I have been concentrating on cleaning out the graphic bugs in the code, and will offer a new release in the coming weeks. I have many things I'd like to put in, but time will tell: I've added in save ram support (Untested) and fixed some BGMap scrolling troubles, along with correctly flipping the screen refresh bit (which has the unfortionent effect of slowing down several games!!!). I need to fix the 'Multiple BGMaps' prob (Partially complete), and fix the FPU flags, along with adding in Scaling (If I can). Also I need to reintegrate the rest of Jason Nelson's code (The Allegro Free sprite routines is the main concern, the extra caching might make it back in this round as well, Zip support and the other fixes are already in place).
If I can get the Display and CPU portions of the emulator to a Stable state (Squash 99% of the bugs) I will consider a public release of the source, at this stage however the code changes to often, and there is still a considerable amount of debug code that needs to be ripped out. As always If you have a legitimate need for the source, just ask and Ill probably let you have it...

2/03/99 - I have spent a lot of time thinking about all this Emu/Rom stuff (obviously =0) Hear are a few things I dug up. First (If I understand it right) emulators fall under Patents (Witch are good for 15 years after issue in the USA or 20 years from submission in Japan). And ROM's and other games fall under CopyRights (With are good for 75 years after the death of the author). So if your writing emu's brush up on your Patent laws and if your foolish enough to redistribute pirated ROM's, better read allot on CopyRight laws (try hear). On a side note hear is an exerp from a site on the legalities of linking to web sites. The original context was something along the lines of linking to the heart of a site that has restricted access (Linking those nasty pic's from playboy.com, bypassing the pass worded logon screen). I think the quote below applies the other way however (Linking to illegal rom sites)...

On linking to rom sites:
"Now the more interesting question -- what about people who make links? How can they be guilty of anything? They just tell people where stuff is. I see two problems. The first is the doctrine of "contributory copyright infringement." If you make something whose sole purpose is to facilitate others in violating a copyright, and/or you encourage people to do it, and you know you are doing this, you can be liable for contributory infringement even though you didn't do any copying. " (from). Question: Does this include console copiers? what is the verdict are they illegal or not?

A final thought on copyright laws, the statue of limitations is only 3 years, so if you were hosting a massive rom site 3 years ago and you have since stooped, you are out of the woods (If I understand this correctly). But this does not mean that if you have been hosting illegal ROM's for the past 3 years you are now above the law!

Patent FAQ has a lot of good info on Patents and your rights.

More on this important topic later...

Finally a few questions? Is it necessary to put 'Virtual Boy is trademarked by Nintendo', etc... at the bottom of a page/doc? and why? And is putting up Pic's of games running on an emulator a copyrite infringement, as well as box cover scans, and exerts from the players manuals???

2/02/99 - In case you have not been hear yet http://www.cris.com/~Twist/atari800win/legal.shtml Please take a look, it is a well informed look at the legality of Emulators. I would like to make two points concerning this site, First If I have not emphasized this enough: Do not bundle my emulator with ROM's and redistribute. I do not condone the illegal redistribution of ROM's (I own all the VB. games that I have dumped, with so few to collect, so should you). And secondly, my emu was (And still is) being developed through reverse engineering means, its a lot of tiring work, but its the legal way to do it...
In other newz, I found new bugs in the program that need to be squashed. So don't expect anything to exiting (Except, I might have a solution to the VTetris and VFishing Bugs). And Ill be out of town for the next few days (Starting Thursday) so don't expect much of anything at all till next week...

1/31/99 - Adam Hunter sent along a nice image of the link port, with dimensions, if you want to make your own link connector this will be a big help! Many thanks to Adam... Work on the emulator is progressing slowly but steadily. The changes so far make very little impact on the playability of the games, there mostly cleaning out bugs and making things more portable. on an Up note Jason Nelson the official author of the Windows port, has added in Zip support to the emulator, along with squashing many bugs and making the whole thing all around better. I have been getting more good help than I deserve, recently... More good newz on the Win port soon.

1/29/99 - I hope you all realize the Very Large Significance of the Sony -VS- Connectix Lawsuit. If Connectix wins, this will help strengthen the Emu Scene Allot. And if they lose, then It will be the death of the scene (Or it will go back to being an underground scene, like it started). I think Sony's case looks week at best, especially with the Cyrex -VS- Intel lawsuit a while back. If its OK to emulate a system in hardware (As long as you do a clean room reverse engineering), then surly it is just fin to emulate a system in software. Sony is just blowing smoke hoping to scare off Connectix.
Please note however that this lawsuit is not about copying CD's or ROM's, It just brings into question weather we have a Fundamental right to emulate a system. Redistributing ROM's, or Pirated games is still illegal, and It is very bad for the Video game industry as a whole (Especially copying Playstation or N64 games). I'd like to point out now, that I feel good programmers deserve to be paid, so buy the original games (Especially for the new systems).

1/27/99 - I started cleaning up the memory access routines, and pulling the debug code out of the main program... Also I added in a display 'swap' for the 3D screen modes (Now you can reverse the orientation of the 3D modes). The Win port is going along great, hopefully the next release will be Allegro Free, this should also be a big boon to the Mac port as well... I looked into VTetris a bit, occasionally the game gets a bad vector and jumps into unmapped Rom space, I think I fixed it, but... Oh, several individuals are working on writing test code for the Virtual Boy. Hopefully we will get some examples on how to program the VB soon...

1/22/99 - nothing new, but I spent some time debugging last night, I fixed a bug in the Timer Interrupt and now the rest of the games no longer crash, no new games are working though... Golf and Virtual Baseball are getting a lot farther however... Also WarioLand is spending a lot of time listening to the Link Cable, Im wondering if it supports the link cable in some way? I need to hook the Display Status back up to the screen refresh, this will make Telero Boxer behave better (the screens wont just disappear like they do now), but it will also slow it down even more! This also might be why Mario Clash is so screwy (a lot of games use the display refresh bit to time fast sequences, Galactic pinball and Telero Boxer are the worst at this....)

1/21/99 - Did some debugging on the source last night, I fixed a bug in the interrupts and a memory write bug. Now Wario Land is very close to booting (Its hanging on a display status flag) and several of the other games no longer go off in the weeds (They don't boot though, bummber). Also the intro to Telero Boxer is getting better, now the shadow shows up behind the boxer on the boot (Nice effect), the screens still fly by to fast however. A friend is diligently working on a Win32 port of VBemu98, It is coming along nicely. Once again I need to do some serious work making the code more portable (Not fun!). Expect a full win32 release some time soon...

1/20/99 - I uploaded some new box covers from Deezer, very nice! Now the collection is almost complete. Also I uploaded some info I have gathered on the link cable (Its just my musings on how the link probably works) and the full manual to WarioLand, both are available on the Download page.

1/19/99 - I discovered a bug in the BGMap scrolling code, this might be why VTetris hangs? Ill clean it up and release a fix in a day or so. I also fixed the BGMap scrolling problems with Space Squash and Glactic Pinball... Next Im tackling Mario Tennis, hopefully Ill have it playable (If not pretty!) and I still really need to fix the brightness functions, some games still overrun the britness (See the lightning flashes in Insmousehouse for a good example)...
New - I verified that Vtetris is hanging and It has nothing to do with the above bugs, Ill figure it out and let you know why (I think it has something to do with hitting a key to soon when the game gets going). I also noticed a nice oddity of the emulator, if you hold down '9' while playing a game (Under Linux at least) the game speed's up significantly, this is a nice way to skip past boring sequences to get to the real game. Hears why it works: I have a variable called 'frame skip' and as long as this variable is not == to zero I don't update the display (The emu runs but the display never recalculates), by holding down the '9' games that read the keyboard continually overwrite the 'frame skip' variable and it never reached zero, so the emu never refreshes the screen and all runs faster. Give it a try and let me know if it works for you. Its not a bug its a "feature"!

1/18/99 - OK, I uploaded a new Linux Zip, all should be good once more....
Also I added in 3 new BoxPics thanks to Deezer. I would love to finish out the box cover collection if you have any you would like to scan in!
Oh on a side note, the emulator still does not properly support the CyberScope, Im hoping to add in support, but let me know if anyone actually owns a CyberScope, is this even a feature anyone wants...
And on a scale of one to ten, how many of you even care to see the VB Games in 3D??? (I personally never play in 3D, but that's mostly because my Red/Blue glasses don't stay on all buy themselves, I have to hold them on with one hand)...

1/16/99 - I decided to go ahead and release the emulator (V0.6) even though I have more to do, I cant make you wait forever! Expect a new release in a few weeks...

1/14/99 - Hears a brief rundown on the status of the emu:

Galactic Pinball: Rotating words Cut off (CPU Bug?), BackGround scrolls off the screen (Fixed!)
This game is playable, if the puck does not disappear on you (Bummer)
MarioClash: The world Buffer is not updating properly, so the platforms and tubes never show up! (Problems in the VIP registers)
This game is also playable, but it looks weird!
MarioTennis: No Sprite Scaling, CPU Bug causes many garbage characters! Other BGMap Problems as well...
This is almost playable, Mario appears on the court, and the ball comes at you, but your opponent is not visible, neither is the net!
Space Squash: Ball disappears sometimes! Uses 2x BGMaps (Need to add this back in), BackGround scrolls off the screen (fixed!), Obj problems (Fixed!)
This game is almost playable, you can bat around the ball, but it disappears on you, making the games really short =0)
Telero Boxer: Hands don't scale! VIP register problems (Intro Screens flash buy without waiting)
This is quite playable (If you don't mind the really large hands), but it is slow to get going (Takes about 6 minutes on my system)
VTetris: no known bugs.
This is Fully Playable.
VFishing: Sprites don't scale! reboots when you snag a fish (Why?)
Almost playable, games are short when It reboots =0)
InsMouseHouse: Monster does not rotate! VIP register problems (Hangs after a while...)
Fun to step through, but you never get to the real game (Hangs before the game)
All the rest either do nothing or only show the first screen and then hang!

Im hoping to solve the BGMap Scrolling problems (Negative Values in World), and the chaining of multiple BG Maps together in Space Squash... Also There is still a bug or two in the OBJ engin. It would be nice to implement Sprite Scaling as well (But probably not). And tennis still has BGMap problems that I could work through (But also probably not).
I'll work on the above 3 problems, and finish up my testing, and hopefully Ill have a release this weekend... I will leave the command line support and other items for later...

1/13/99 - I finally fixed some of the display bugs, now the emulator is moving forward on ability, not just faster speed or 3D displays. This of course mean's I need to spend some time making sure I did not break any games (At first glance Mario Tennis is starting to be playable, Pinball is looking better even though the puck still disappears, while there are definent display problems with other games, that I need to iron out...) So Im officially pushing back the release by a week, so I can nail down the display, Id feel much better about a release if I had actually fixed some bugs in the emulator... Expect something this weekend or early next week...

1/11/99 - Classes started today (Yuck!) so my time is going to be limited for a while. Im still cleaning out the cobwebs in my code so I don't have a public beta yet, but I promise some time this week... Im still trying to get the Background Scrolling going again, and I have no clue as to why Pinball only renders the right hand side of the OBJ's (The puck disappears when it is on the left side of the screen, and the initial rotating words like 'colony' only show on the right hand side), also I think Im incorrectly displaying the OBJ list (Im displaying it out of order?), and of course I really need to get the Zooming effects going...

1/08/99 - Well the cache and other optimizations are starting to really pay off, I finally got Telero Boxer up to an acceptable speed with a frame skip of 6 on my P100. Im thinking the speed increases are enough to warrant a public beta release, even though there is a lot more left to do. So I'll clean it all up this week end and release it, with or without a proper command line interface... The 3D effects are great to, I think you'll like them... On my last profile, sprite generation was down to #4 on the list of slow Functions (With the CPU core being back to #1), so Im going to hold off on caching the sprite table, Im afraid the over head is not worth it...

1/06/99 - I got the BGMap cache going last night. At its best it goes quite fast, VTetris was playing at about 1/4 speed with zero frame skip on my P100. Not all games take advantage of the BGMap cache, in particular games that play tricks with the BGMaps and with the Sprite table don't gain a thing from the cache. There is a serious bug in the cache, some BGMaps are never invalidated especially under Virtual Fishing, I need to explore this more... Im thinking of adding in a Sprite Table cache as well... But Im afraid that the overhead will be to great, if this actually worked it would be fare more efficient than the BGMap cache especially since the BGMaps change often (As the screen is animated) and the Character Tables almost never change (Only between major scene changes). Ill do some metrics on it tonight...

1/05/99 - Well I began adding in a BGMap cache last night (This will allow 3D display modes to go as fast as only rendering the first screen (Almost)) It works good for now, but Im going to attempt to extend the cache idea, Right now Im only cache during the current screen draw, Id like to cache between screen refreshes, I did some experimenting with this earlier and It went really fast when I never invalidated the cache (It also looked all wrong =0), the only down side is on slower computers you will run the risk of having dramatic speed ups and slow downs in the display as the cache takes hits... (It already does this to an extent as the CPU takes hits, I have no proper timer on the display to keep things consistent). Expect a new release that runs full steam on a P200 and acceptably on a p100 (I only have a P100 at home and Its a real drag developing this on it, seeing as its WAY to SLOW!!!, so if you have an old P200 motherboard, hint, hint...). A friend tested out the i-glasses support for me, he said they work great, minus some small brightness flaws... So Im assuming shutter glasses will also work great. Ill add in some nice screen shots soon... Oh, I also got some leads on solving the pallet problems under Telero Boxer, Mario Clash and Galactic Pinball... So those will be looking better (If not playing any better) soon...

1/01/99 - Ahh the end is near. (Happy New Year). Well hear is a sneak peek of the new 3D functions, it looks pretty nice! I still need to localize the Allegro code, and add in Command line support, also I need to do some serious profiling on the Display routines, computing the display twice is Dog Slow!!! Expect a real release in the next few weeks (Depending on how much coding I get done this weekend).

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

12/30/98 - Well Its almost the new year (One more year till 2000, Hide your children and save yourselves, ahh...). I added two new Items, a program to read the rom info (On the Downloads page) and a VB98 Front end (On the Links Page). Both Look nice, let me know what you think...
I have the next 4 days off of work, so expect some better news soon...

12/23/98 - Christmas is coming! I have updated the 3D page a bit more, coding time is scares this week, so I have not had any chance to fix up the graphics engines, I should have more free time after the holidays, hopefully by the new year Ill release the 3D enabled version. Also work has begun on the assembler cpu core, so soon we will have a faster build (Ill be supporting both cores, for the sake of portability, unless the assembler core is worlds ahead of my C core)

12/17/98 - added a few cheats on the cheats page, thanks to David Dayton . I almost finished my 3D Apparatus page, have a look see...

12/14/98 - Began a page describing 3D apparatus for PC's here.

12/11/98 - I began work on the new graphic engine, it is going to be nice... Here is an interesting tidbit on making 3D glasses for your computer, Im going to give it a try soon... Im going to make a page with all the choices for 3D viewing, and plans for the home built ones...

<SNIP Moved to 3D-Pic's Page >

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
diagram (5k): http://members.xoom.com/baronvr/periglasses.gif

After visiting the official VBEmu page (Virtual Boy), I was reminded of a
pair of 3D glasses I once invented (it was new to me but odds are that it's
been thought of before). On the page the author shows the various 3D methods
the emulator may eventually use and one showed the left eye/right eye images one
on top of the other [(c) in the attached GIF]. The problem with that is that
while eyes can be crossed or relaxed, they can't move up and down
independently. These glasses sort of enable that. There is nothing over one
eye and there is a small adjustable periscope over the other eye (just
cardboard and two small mirrors... cheap stuff). The bottom mirror is adjusted
on a hinge (tape) until the top and bottom images align (a) or the mirrors
can be fixed and the whole periscope can be rotated up or down.

Why bother? Because it can provide a perfectly clear 3d image... no murky
red/blue, no crossing of eyes, no blinking shutters. It would be as clear as a
View master. The parts are cheap and easy. The labor is less than half an hour
(Im working on plans that can be traced and cut out). If you rotate the
periscope on its side then you can use it to easily look at magic eye or 3d
pictures that expect you to cross/relax your eyes.

With a burgeoning 3D scene on the horizon, I just want to get people thinking.
The anaglyph (red/blue) method will always be most popular (it's probably the
best way for my Vectrex emu), but when the Virtual Boy emu adds this Method, I
think it'll blow away everything else. I wouldn't mind seeing BrSMS give it a try too.

Just thinking out loud...

baronvr
Spike's Big Vectrex Emulation Page
http://members.xoom.com/baronvr/
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12/08/98 - Nothing new, but on a side note I got my Game.Com link cable today (for Free!!!). Id recommend grabbing one (If your interested in hacking a Game.Com) they wont be around for long, and neither will the Game.Com for that matter... More on that later.
Does anyone have info on the PC-FX, I'm contemplating starting a new emulator, but there is little or now info on the PC-FX. Also If you have a PC-FX that you would like to donate to the cause =0)
Oh, for those who are confused, Cyber-Scope is an attachment for your monitor so you can see in 3D, and 'Half-n-Half' and 'Interlaced' are ways to send 3D images to Head Mounted Displays (i-Glasses) and shutter glasses. Does anyone have a pair of the 3D Frensel viewers from the WaiteGroups Virtual Reality book? Id like to support them, and include plans for making a pair. And finaly, a friend is looking into porting VB98 to the MAC, right now it looks like I need to rewrite the display code to get this working...

12/07/98 - Well, here are some more screen shots of Mario Clash. To get the game going right, wait till the game starts, then hit 'Start'(B) followed by 'Select'(V) and then hit start twice to get back, this will refresh the screen so you can see the whole thing, Im not flipping a bit properly and the screen never refreshes... Also here Is a picture outlining the new screen display options (For 3D effects) if you know of another format I should support, let me know...

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

<SNIP Moved to 3D-Pic's Page >

12/03/98 - I have not had any time to code, but I did discover that Galactic Pinball is playable, when you get to the table selection screen, press left on the left control pad (S) once to select the space station, I think this is the only table that is working (Why???). The colors are still screwy, so don't expect it to look like the screen shots below... Has anyone successfully gotten the Linux build to work? Let me know...

11/30/98 - Nothing new, I had a good Thanksgiving, did you? My parents are in town for a week (from Cameroon, W. Africa) so work will be put on hold for a while. I have some new Ideas on generating true 3D displays, Ill be working on that next (Its more fun than fixing bugs...). Ill probably implement Red/Blue glasses and hopefully support LCD glasses or something (I don't know how well that will go, I don't have any to test with). More newz in a week... Oh, I don't need to say this, But - Don't Ask Me For Rom's!!! I don't know where to get them and If I did I would not tell you! (Thanks)

11/25/98 - Today is the Big Day! Im uploading the First Public Beta of the VB Emu Just in time for Turkey Day! Pleas note this is a beta (Beta 0.5) It is very Slow, and only one game works fully (several games are almost going). Don't expect to much, and don't complain. I decided to Upload a preliminary Linux Build, it is unsupported, so if it works for you , Great and if not... Read the Readme. and Look at the VirtualBoy Instruction List, if you need to know how to play a game...

11/23/98 - I Got Galactic Pinball really booting this weekend, but in a stroke of genius I screwed it up, and I cant get it back! I also have Mario Clash working (Sort of) and Telero Boxer. All are relying on some sort of a Screen Refresh bit, that Im not implementing right (Telero Boxer especially, but they all use it for effects, like the see through panel behind the pause sign in Galactic Pinball). I also Began to write a VirtualBoy Instruction List, listing out all the pertinent instructions on playing the games. Very Preliminary... I only have about 6 manuals for the US games (Most of my games were used), so if you have better info to add, send it along!

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

11/20/98 - Added in a screen wrap, and started to fix some of the memory overrun's. Not all of them though.... I've uploaded my 'read.me' from the emu, it might be interesting to read... At least it will give you a taste of the emu.

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

11/18/98 - Did more testing, Space Squash is almost playable. At least you can move your character around, needs more work though. I added some Jap Box Covers from various games here Id like to add in the US box covers as well (Some Day), Its time to look for a scanner... Started cleaning up the Screen Functions (Forcing wraparound if a value goes off the edge of a screen buffer) this should clean up a lot of memory leaks... Apparently the hardware takes care of this for you, a lot of games are writing impossible values in the screen structures...

11/17/98 - I got the FPU opcodes in place, I don't have the flags going 100% I think this is keeping Mario Tennis from functioning correctly (The sprites are different, but still garbled). In fact visibly the only 2 games that improved at all, was vTetris (The Zooming Starfield works now, very nice) and Galactic Pinball (See Screen Shot). Galactic pinball has other graphics problems and Is not playable however. I still need to Check for Memory Leak's and Fix up the graphics a bit. (And possibly fix the flags for the FPU functions, any suggestions???). Oh, I also began looking over the V850 support in GCC, and its assembler GAS, I think it would not be to hard to modify for V810 compatibility (There is a subtle shift in the opcode ordering, that would be a headache) Maybe we will be programming the VB in C, instead of my crummy assembler!

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

11/16/98 - Work on the emu is slowing down a bit (Im running short on time) but Im still cranking on it. I refuse to release until I run a good Bounds Checker on it (To many memory overruns!). And Id like to add in the new FPU opcodes and finish off the BG Obj types (The Zoom and Rotation in particular, so Mario Tennis will start to look right). Hopefully in the next week or so, I can do most of this. Oh on a side note, I have Pallets going now (Britness as well) and Im beginning to understand the BG Map modes (I need to Figure out the Offset to the Parameter tables for the BG maps though, its hard to decode without this!). Im still lacking good info on the BitString and FPU opcodes, I do have a description of them though, so Im going to make some educated guesses and see what happens. (Mario Tennis will not be fully playable without the FPU Opcodes)

11/11/98 - Added some new Jack Brothers Codes. They look pretty cool... I updated the VBProg.txt file, now it has some info on the Various Video tables. Note this is a WorkInProgress, so far I'm just copying Ben's web page, Im hoping to use this as a notepad to store my new findings on the VB internals.

11/10/98 - nothing new, but here are 2 new screen shots. I did some testing on a P200 last night, vTetris plays at almost full speed with a frame skip of 3, people with p400's should have all games cranking at full speed. Also I added a Pic's Page, Im going to move all these pics there eventually... (No need to clog up the newz page any more...)

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

11/09/98 - Fixed up the OBJ maps some, VTetris is now playable. Things are coming together well, I might consider a public Beta release by the end of the month.

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

11/06/98 - Fixed the Controller and speed things up a touch. I have a leak in memory that causes spratic crashes (I think im incorrectly freeing bitmaps in allegro...). VFishing is quite playable, but you don't show up on the screen (Bummber) but you can cast and catch fishes (Wee)

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

11/05/98 - I fixed the New Images below (And added a new InMousHouse image.) NEW! Screen shots from the real emu, both are from InMouseHouse: There rather Gruesome No? The emu still needs a lot of work before a public beta, but its getting there...

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

11/04/98 - OK I added in the Timer and KeyPad Interrupts, now a lot of games begin to boot (Nothing to dramatic). I need to decode the Int Enabled and Int Status Registers in the VIP area, to get the Interrupts going right... (And I might need to look into Priorities?). I also need to Implement Transparency (Pallets) and Brightness, and handle the oddball BG_MAP (Scaling and rotation etc...). I wont make an official beta until I get the rest of the display together and speed it up!

11/02/98 - I Finally got Virtual Fishing to Boot!!! The controller is Implemented 80% and I have the Display Interrupts going, Now I need to Implement the Timer and Controller Interrupts, and the rest of the games will be off and running! Also I need to Figure out the FPU and BITSTR opcodes (Almost every game Is hanging up on these... Mario Tennis is playable, but the graphics are all garbled up (So its a waste of time anyway). Also I need to Implement the pallet and Britness Func (This is a big problem with Mario Tennis... My emu is coming along strong, maybe a public beta will be ready by Christmas...
Screen shots coming soon....
10/20/98 - OK Here are some more screen shots, from the Infamous Japanese games: InMouseHouse, Space Squash, and Virtual Fishing... (Note there a little waked at the moment, better images coming soon.... I have figured out the Controller %80 of the way, and have the display Interrupt going, soon Ill be booting baseball and VTetris (Screen Shots coming soon...)

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page

10/14/98 - I Updated the VB Programming DOC (Now V0.2), mostly I filled in some known holes in the memory map. Im hoping to Define the VIP Registers this week, and Maybe the HReg registers.

10/12/98 - I Updated some Info on the VB Games (Under Specs) Now I should more accurately represent the Jap and Eng. games... (I took this info from www.execpc.com/~krieg/VidGames.htm ).

9/24/98 - OK I finally got around to putting up most of the Programming info, hopefully someone can use this. Sorry there was such a delay... I did not get the dissasembler up (Sorry), Im working on fixing it up a little bit (Don't expect to much, I just want to work out the known bugs...).

New! I uploaded a new ver of the V810 Assembler, fixing a bug with mode 6b instructions (store, out...). Also I uploaded my enhanced dissasembler (Finally).

9/15/98 - I've been sitting on this update for a while now =) I figured it was time to Upload!... Sorry I don't have the new tools up yet, just the stubs for where they go (Soon....). Im still having Flash Ram headaches, but I might be able to buy my own IO/48, and this would let me hack at my leisure =0) Also I redid all the pictures (There a touch smaller now, the whole set of pages (Minus zips) is only 181k!

8/24/98 - Guess you all thought Id abandoned you =). Im still busy working on the Emu. Things are going slow, but I've made soon Interesting developments. I have a working Assembler now (Limited though). And a friend (Imid) has let me borrow His IO-56 to get my reprogramable cartridge off of the ground. I almost have It programming (I keep underestimating how complicating programming a Flash chip is, I was thinking its more like programing a ram chip, not...) Once this is up and running Its time to go exploring!!!
Im hoping to have some more of the Graphics banged out soon, and a better Memory map (What a pain in the Butt!). If anyone has any experience in writing an assembler (Especially in Java =0) and you want to help out, let me know. I've never written an assembler before, and Im not grasping how to Implement all the finer details... I finished off the Pinouts to the rom cartridge (The missing pins on the sram) and added a Link to Cypress Memory, describing how the ram works. I still need to confirm the Pin connection to the Edge connector and figure out how to read and write the ram...

7/10/98 - Im still busy working on the VB Emu, work is slow, but were making progress. I Updated the cheats and codes page, almost all of the cheats and codes were updated and I added several new ones (Wario Land!) As always their untested... Expect a public preview of the VB emu within a month (When It actually boots instead of traces =)

6/30/98 - I decided to add a screen dumper to my emu, now the pic's are no longer cut off (Of course there now 512x512 so there huge!) here they are (I didn't include the OBJ image, it seemed like a waist, it was so small)

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

6/28/98 - Wow I need to update a lot more often =) A small grope of people (Myself included) have gotten together to revers engineer the VB, so far we have dumped most of the games, made a disassembler (Nice, thanks Bob). and started work on a CPU_Tracer in the not to distant future this tracer will turn into a Virtual Boy Emu! for now we can boot a fair amount of games and display the first screen (Warning read documentation bla bla bla...) If things get going a little better I might post a copy of it, for now it would be of no interest to anyone unless you were well versed in V810 Assembly... Im posting screen shots from VTetris, this game is getting the farthest along basically these are the first several boot screens... The first 3 are BG_MAP images (Backgrounds 0, 8, and 9 hence the numbers). the 4th one is the CHR table (Sprites) and the last one is the only working OBJ so far (OBJ's are the moving parts of the image, like Mario etc., as opposed to the static pictures in the Background)

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

These images would look a lot better... but I could only do a screen capture in 320x200 mode and most of them are 512x512 bytes in size (This is obvious in the CHR ram dump, the alphabet only goes up to G it should go to Z...) also notice that the screen adjustment image (Virtual Boy...) has a second image for the right eye with the VB logo in the upper right and lower left corners instead of the Upper left and Lower right as in this one (Even though you cant quite see the lower right VB logo...) Im going to add the ability to save snapshots of the screen to disk, this way I can grab the whole image... in fact Ill make it grab snapshots of the virtual screen so It doesn't mater what graphics mode your in...

Oh before I forget, please visit Ben's great site:
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/b/c/bch132/VirtualBoyInfo.html
without his help the emu would be doomed!

I hope to release some new technical info soon, but most of my time is being spent coding, so don't expect me to be to prompt with it.

4/27/98 - I updated the VB_View utility, now it compiles under DJGPP and ALLEGRO this is so more people can compile the source if they want, also it is a nice speed improvement over visual C++ 1.52. Also no one has commented on the pictures at all! Drop me a line if you think there cool, or you think Im stupid for even trying to extract them!

4/16/98 - I noticed that I screwed up all the links to the new pic's... there fixed now, if you find any other bad links let me know! I started to dig into how the displays operate this weekend, its simple but timing is going to be critical, it might be easiest to just make a reprogramable cartridge, so you can reuse all the VB hardware without making some very custom control circuitry (also duel port ram would be another option, if we can figure out witch chip is the video ram, In fact it might already be duel port ram, like I said timing is critical on the displays, its strictly up to the processor to get it right....)

4/13/98 - Boy these updates are getting to frequent! I updated the rom viewer utility. I added several new keys including l (little L) to add and remove the ugly red lines... makes the pictures look better, also I added an option to resize the display... I added some new images from the rom's: note that the last 3 images are actually 3D (Just cross your eyes and don't mind the headache)

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

4/05/98 - Moved all the zip files to another server (I only have 2 megs on this one =) anyway the zips should all be working now....

4/04/98 - Time for another update... I started hacking into the VB rom's and have found some interesting info:
07FDE0 - 7FDF3 Rom Title (20 Chars Zero Terminated) appears to be in jap for some games...
07FDF9 - 7FDFE number (in asci?) followed by the rom ID string If you look at the cover of every game it
has a little string to Identify the rom, like VMTJ (that would be Mario Tennis, Japanese there are several other
Letters Like d for demo? etc.)
07FE00 - 07FE4F Table, Is this the jump table?
^
|_ Change 7F to FF or whatever based on the size of the file
(I really should be offsetting from the end of the file not the beginning)

Also the last 15 or so bytes seem to be really Important (Checksum or
something?) Several of the bytes repeat in the various rom's...

I also made a small utility to view the Images in the games... It works great for BaseBall and Tetris but It Isn't as nice on the other rom's... (most rom's pack the images, that is they remove unnecessary blocks of pixels i.e.. all black pixels etc...) Im posting some pictures that I have recreated here:

<SNIP Moved to Pic's Page >

and also Im uploading my utility to the DownLoad page. on a side note, If you go to NEC Jap's web page and search around enough you will find PDF files describing all the V830 and v820 processors, and since the v820 is basically a v810 with extra I/O stuff.....

Oh before I forget here is the format of the pictures in the rom (there 8x8x2bit, that's 4 colors) Someone once suggested to me that the pictures might have a Z value (Intensity) but If they do Im guessing that's handled automatically when the VB sets up the 3d planes and its not being stored in the file....

the format was really simple its a 8x8x2bit tile like so:

Byte0 00 00 00 00, 00 00 00 00 Byte1
: :
Byte14 00 00 00 00, 00 00 00 00 Byte15
^
|_ every 2 bits combine to make one pixel

2/23/98 - Well today is my birthday (im 23 years old today =) so I guess its a good day for an update... today I added more descriptions from the cartridges some were kindly provided by Mark Sanders (thanks Allot!) and some were hacked out of my new game acquisitions. Also a fend is working on making a link cable for the VB and we will soon see if marios tennis really supports linked games I'll keep you informed. I also updated my CDi page so hop on over there... (Daves CDi 98 Project)

11/25/97 - What a busy day! Anyway I checked it out and the VB defiantly uses a Toshiba TC538200AFT or TC316200AFT rom cartage. I found the first one in the Telero Boxer game =) I now know all the pins to the rom chip, and have a good understanding of the ram, and sram controller. Hopefully I will be making an adapter so that I can dump my VB games on my Eprom programmer. and If anyone else wants to get ambitious they should be able to make a cartridge dumper with little work.

11/25/97 - Wow its ben a while, Other projects have taken me away from my VB but im still looking for info. Today I defined all but 3 of the pins on the VB rom in the cartrige. I hope to be able to define the last pins some time soon. The rom looks a lot like a Toshiba TC5316200cf 16mbit masked rom. I haven't confirmed this yet but it sure does match! Im trying to get pin outs for the ram in the VB itself, Im hoping to be able to get a full map of the cartridge connector soon. And maybe if time allows me I'll start to work on a Cartridge dumper... So check out the VB Cart1 and 2 schematics for the updates...

7/11/97 - Finally a new Update, I bet you all thought I was dead =) Anyway sorry about the delay, a new job and some great new projects have kept me away... I've added some new cheats, mainly one for Read Alarm (Untested since I don't own it yet.) I've also started to reformat the pages, and do some much needed house cleaning. More to come real soon, I've still got a stack of links to sort through, im just to lazy.

5/22/97 - Added some minor Updates and rearranged the Newz and Wanted pages. Coming soon Lots of VB links and info from the US patent office. Also a more complete schematic of the various boards in the VB.

5/8/97 - Added VBCart Schematics...

5/7/97 - Added release dates for the games, and more processor info. Added a rudimentary cartrige pin out (more coming soon). Fixed the rom/ram sizes (I was confusing Mbyte and Kbyte =).

5/5/97 - Added a Cheats and Codes page, added names of Jap games. Finally putt myself on the search engines =) I'm on Jeff's Page (Big Wow! =)

4/30/97 - Updated Cartridge Info, I have the cartridge schematics but not in the right file format (Arg!) I think I have the controller figured out (I need to test it..) Also have most of the cartridge connector mapped out (gota dig out an eeprom programmer to test it =). Also added some new links, If you have any links I've missed please email me.

4/21/97 - added schematics and updated errors. I almost have the cartridge all mapped out, sometime soon I'll be making a cartridge reader (maybe there will be an emulator someday =)

4/15/97 - Page was Created =) I still need to finish all the diagrams and put them on the web site please be patient!