Category Archives: video games

VIrtual Boy Emulation on the 3DS

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So about two years or so ago, when Nintendo was running rampant shutting down all the 3DS services including the 3DS store, I started looking into rooting my 3DS. It wasn’t that I necessarily wanted to play a bunch of NES/SNES games that I own on the system (though that was part of it), it was that I heard about a Virtual Boy emulator.

For those of you not in the know, the Virtual Boy is the biggest failure that Nintendo has had, it was a 3D unit that was all in red/black, and you’d put your face into. It was all sorts of ridiculous that failed about 2 months after it launched.

I remember because it was on an Orchestra trip down to the cities that I picked one up for $25 and a couple games (WarioLand and Panic Bomber). It’s been fun on occasion taking it out of storage to play it, but about 6 years ago, the ribbon cable was no longer connected as well as it needed to be. The system became unplayable, sadly.

But then I heard about the 3DS port (and, you’ll be happy to know, I did get the emulator that will play the Virtual Boy in my HTC Vive Pro, which is totally sweet and awesome too), and so I rooted my 3DSXL, and found out shortly that it didn’t have the oomph necessary to run it. I needed the New 3DS XL, and luckily was able to get my brother’s system.

Well, today the Red VIper 3DS emulator came out in version 1.0, and it is swawesome (that’s sweet plus awesome). It utilizes the 3DS 3-D settings perfectly, and I had a bit of a memory lane jaunt on break today playing some Panic Bomber.

It’s fun. The system was largely trash, but the games were really fun. Warioland was a full on game, like 10-15 hours long if I remember correctly. So, it’s good times!

Love me some BattleTech

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We’ve had a lot of time from work recently due to circumstances which I’ll share at some point (not bad, pretty good actually), so there’s been more time to read and play video games. And you’ll notice from the ol’ “Read list” on the right side of the blog, I’ve been working through the 131 BattleTech books that I got last year from a Humble Bundle.

I love eBooks because they don’t take up more space on my shelves (after moving several times in the last decade, I’m only moving books that I love and want the physical copy of (sorry collected works of Mark Twain(I know the guy loved cats, but his books are available for free online))). I can read them on my Chuwi Minibook X 2 in 1, and I’m looking into serving them from the NAS server.

I, unfortunately, haven’t been playing as many video games because it’s tougher to do so. Rather, I’ve been playing the ever living bejeebus out of Terraforming Mars (which I got on Steam with ANOTHER Humble Bundle last year. So, when and if anyone plays Terraforming Mars with me, well I hope to put up a challenge at least.

That’s just to say this morning I tried loading up some BattleTech on the ol’ Minobook X. It’s an older game, but I enjoy it quite a lot and figured I’d give it a go and see if it works. I was not hopeful…this thing is using an N100 intel chip with the integrated graphics that it puts out. Sure it’s got 12 gb of RAM, and I replaced the SSD with a 1tb one…but it’s not made for games, let’s be honest.

I’ll also be honest: I was pleasantly surprised with the fact that the game worked. I turned all GFX settings down to the lowest, of course, but hey…it played smoothly, there was no delay in the action (I mean, it’s a turn based game, so there shouldn’t be), and it worked and played like it does on the desktop. I was just as pleasantly surprised when this laptop played Skyrim, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age games (except Veilguard, that one is too new…and too crappy to try to get it to work on this system).

Also, it made the laptop heat up significantly less than Terraforming Mars, which is really strange…considering one is a Turn Based action game with explosions, and one should be a pretty static board game. THAT I was really pleasantly surprised by.

Good times.

I can move in VR!

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I can’t tell you how excited I am. It’s not much, just a square and a sphere, but I can walk to them with the Virtuix Omni from 2016. This fills me with joy, as I can start programming actual games/activities now.

View of the unity project dashboard

One of the major reasons why I am trying to get this running is that I’d like an activity that I can do for exercise that tracks steps. The TRAVR Training Ops game that came with the system (really the only one I ever play besides Skyrim VR) has been a 4-5 times a week routine. I can run through the courses in about 25 minutes, and it gets my cardio and heartrate up.

Fit bit graph showing heart rate increasing while using the Virtuix Omni treadmill

THe PROBLEM is that it no longer works with the Omni Connect step tracker is running. It has to do with it trying to access Connect and then the server to track high scores. It is just crashing, and has been for a couple years. The response I got from Virtuix, and I can’t blame them at all, is that the game hasn’t been updated since 2017 and it’s not supported any longer.

I get it…but now I get to create my own course, and track steps. I’d like to hit 1,000,000 steps by the 10 year anniversary of getting the omni. That was in February 2016. I’m at roughly 283k right now. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Pleased with progress on the Omni test

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So, the reason I’m so pumped about the Omni test is that the SDK for my particular version of the omni hasn’t really been updated since maybe pre-covid times. I’ve been worried about getting it caught up to the most recent Unity Hub, and I’ve done this before with some Zenva VR training courses I got through humble bundle a long while ago.

That’s why I was worried, trying to tackle the errors that hop up is sometimes a challenge, but going through and getting some help through google searches seems to work well.

Is this thing still on?

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I’m embarking on a new project, and want to start writing more…and I want to get away from the social media empires enriching people and companies that I personally do not agree with. .

The last few months I’ve been hitting the exercise hard. I’ve done the entire run of the TRAVR Training Ops game on the Original Virtuix Omni Treadmill (not the Omni One) several days a week, and have also been using a rowing machine.

About a month ago, my wife and I got a home gym machine with the cables and everything, so I’ve been doing that as well.

All this to lead up to my new project: I’m going to be programming a game for the Omni. I spent this evening getting unity installed on my desktop machine and on my handy dandy Chuwi Minibook X. I’ll post more about that later, but it’s basically a 2-in-1 with a form factor of a notebook. I love it.

My goal is to have 1,000,000 steps by the 10 year anniversary of getting the beta version of the Omni. Wish me luck.