VB Dragon Hopper... proof it exists?

[chadtower]

Dragon Hopper is listed in the rumor mill in the VB list... but look at this:

http://half.ebay.com/cat/buy/prod.cg...1794&meta_id=4

[Arcade Antics]

Like many rumor mill games, cover art and such was posted at half.com and other internet stores despite the fact that they never actually had the games in stock.

[christianscott27]

come on, who wants to help me build a virtual boy multicart? most of the plans for it are readily available online, as are many of the ROMs. with the right group of people working on the project it could easily be built. just as fun thing for vboy fans, not a commercial thing. i've often said the vboy is the vectrex of the 90s, now it needs it own multicart to get the scene going.

[chadtower]

What do you need help with?

[slapdash]

I remember seeing that "ad sheet" (and/or for Bound High) at a Wal-Mart back home, with a little "coming soon" banner. The games never came though, and the ads disappeared soon after. I should have asked for/about them...

[norkusa]

I know there is at least one Dragon Hopper prototype out there. There is a detailed description of it on www.virtual-boy.net There is also some promotional videos of Hopper (and Bound High) on www.vr32.de

I've already looked into getting a VB multi-cart made and it can't be done. Well, it can but you could only have 3 or 4 games on it tops. Has something to do with not being able to get a chip big enough to hold all the games in. It would be great though to have all the Jap and US VB titles on one cartridge though. If somone found out how to do it and needed the ROMS, I'd gladly donate my VB collection to be dumped (got everything Jap and US besides Virtual Bowling).

[christianscott27]

ok its like this,

theres a how to page on how to make your own flash or eprom vboy carts, theres a method for dumping the roms- most are already dumped in fact. whats missing is a way to A) fit all the games on 1 cart and B) create an onscreen menu or failing that some sort of dipswitch set up. of course theres C) many other issues not obvious is this vastly simplified post.

it would require a lot of careful soldering and some know how on the computer end, but nothing i've seen so far makes me think it cant be done. one guy has already written and produced a cart containing his primative game, albeit on a one off test basis.

[ddockery]

Well, if we can't fit them all onto one chip, how about something that would be even BETTER for the homebrew scene... a flashable cart? Something like the Vecram or Intellicart? This would allow everyone to play the rare jap releases and homebrew stuff. I'd be willing to buy one for sure, but don't have the expertise to really contribute much of anything, unfortunately.

[chadtower]

Who says it has to be a traditional VB cart? All it has to do is interface with the vb cartridge slot. Hell you could wire a cart to a serial port and play roms right off your pc if you wanted to write a little app to interface the serial port and feed the roms through... more likely would be a cart that just happened to be bigger than your average VB cart (maybe longer, or with a 'tumor').

[christianscott27]

yeah that idea crossed my mind too, and i the only thing i could find on that was that it had been attempted and then dead ended, it had something to do with making data go from the PC to the VBoy at the right speed to read by the vboy...again this is probably not imposible to fix. if anybodys really into this idea get in touch with me and i'll share with you what i've found so far. bottom line is i need the help of someone who really knows how to handle a soldering iron

[chadtower]

I'd help but I'm not good with a soldering iron. Basically, I'd look into making a cart that was big enough to hold a chip that actually could contain all of the games. That's probably the way to go.

[Galpus]

What's the total size of all the available ROM's

+ where can I download them ?




Thanks.....

[DogP]

Heheheheheh... I just found this topic... yes, I know that Dragon Hopper exists... I know for sure of one, and I've been told recently that another was sold (FOR $6500!!!).

Anyway, about a multicart, that wouldn't be that tough to do, and I've considered doing it, the biggest problem is making a PCB to get the chips on... because the VB needs 5V chips, that limits many of the larger (capacity) flash chips out there, and most of them are VERY small (TSOP48), and there's no way you could solder those to individual wires, especially since the pins are smaller than the wires. The VB easily has enough addressable space, not for EVERY game that was made, but for lots of them (128mbit), then you could use some sort of mmc after that... the problem with this is that these can't be made easily by a hobbyist, since there isn't very much room inside the cart. If you're interested in making a cart, my site does have everything you need to know about making it, and if you want to chat, me and a few other people are always in #virtualboy on EFNet.

DogP