July Together Retro: Nintendo Virtual Boy Exclusives

[laurenhiya21]

Finally got around to playing something! Better late than never I guess Unfortunately I'm not sure that I really liked what I played.

Jack Bros was the first game I played, and while I enjoyed it at first, I found the bosses to be way too difficult. I started with Jack Lantern, and while I did manage to get past the first boss with him (with only 2 seconds remaining!), I tried several times to get past the second boss and could not figure it out. I tried restarting with Jack Frost and I couldn't get past the first boss with him. I tried restarting again with Jack Ripper and I didn't play too long with him because I didn't think I could get to far with no ranged attack. I do like the non-boss stages, but it's kind of frustrating not being able to get past the second boss

Virtual Boy Wario Land
I just didn't particularly like this one I think. It looks good, but Wario feels a bit too slow for me. Plus I always seem to get a power-up and immediately lose it to an enemy I don't think it's necessarily the game's fault, as I am particularly bad with platformers, but at the same time there really isn't anything here that's keeping me interested in the game either.

I haven't played anything other than those two games yet, but I think I'll play a few more before the month is up. Virtual Boy games seem to be pretty short, so I mind as well try a few more out

[dunpeal2064]

I had a similar issue with Jack Bros when I first played it. Jack Frost is almost unplayable, as even when I had fully routed out the entire first area, I still had to use the Special Attack/Bomb to take down the boss.

If you end up giving it another go, play around with Ripper a little more. The lack of range seems bad, but he is actually a killing machine. As a tip, you can just hold the fire button (or a direction on the right d-pad) and keep the knife out and primed at all times. He also kills bosses really fast, his weapon does around 5x the damage of Frosts.

This is the one game I'm hoping to get back to and polish off before the month is out, but either way, I've had a blast this month. Had not touched a VB game in my life up until now, and using the Rift to play the games made the experience about as good as can be (Probably better than using actual hardware tbh).

Good stuff Dsh!

[Exhuminator]

play around with Ripper a little more / he is actually a killing machine / you can just hold the fire button (or a direction on the right d-pad) and keep the knife out / He also kills bosses really fast

This is exactly how I beat Jack Bros. The character you guys are referring to as "Jack Ripper" is named "Jack Skelton" in the USA version btw.

[laurenhiya21]

Ok, I'll give it another shot then if you guys say that Jack Ripper/Skeleton is easier. I didn't think that he would have that much more attack power haha.

[laurenhiya21]

As promised, I gave Jack Bros another go! You guys are right, Jack Skeleton is a lot easier haha. I got to the last level before I had to call it quits (stupid laser cannon things and fast spiky things grr), but it's certainly farther than I ever got with Jack Frost or Jack Lantern. I'll probably give it a few more goes to try and beat that last level, but it definitely won't be before July ends.

Anyway, while I didn't participate too much this month, it was fun trying out a few Virtual Boy games (even if I really only played two and only liked Jack Bros). Thanks for hosting, dsh!

[BoneSnapDeez]

I dunno if this will be seen, but does anyone know how to get the VB screen image to appear "flat" and red/black in Mednafen? In other words, like this?

I have the blurry "3D" setting by default and my dumb ass can't figure out how to change it.

This is what my display currently is:

[nullPointer]

I dunno if this will be seen, but does anyone know how to get the VB screen image to appear "flat" and red/black in Mednafen?

Are you running 'vanilla' CLI Mednafen, or are you running it through RetroArch/some other graphical frontend? If you're using straight Mednafen, you'll need to change settings in a config file which I believe is called vb.cfg. If you're using a graphical frontend it should be considerably easier, but will depend on what you're using. (RetroArch is awesome FWIW).

Edit:
The appropriate settings might also be in the core mednafen.cfg settings file. Sorry I'm away from my gaming machine to verify! At any rate, I think this thread provides the info you're looking for other than the name of that config file (assuming you're running regular ol' Mednafen right out of the box)

[BoneSnapDeez]

My man! That worked!