Planet Virtual Boy

HorvatM has just released version 1.1 of his "Multiple BMP to BGMap/charset converter". This version was used to develop Coding Competition entry "Deathchase".

• Now also supports 32-bit BMPs.
• You can convert BMPs to charsets "one to one" without generating BGMaps (useful for fonts).
• The number of new unique characters for each BGMap generated is reported, along with a total at the end of the conversion.
• If an exact color match isn't found, the closest one is used (thanks to RunnerPack).
• The BGMap buffer is now cleared before converting each BMP (reported by thunderstruck).
• The program now checks for the 2048-character limit before adding a new character.
• Updated the LoadEfficientCharset and LoadEfficientBGMap functions in the readme with those from Deathchase.

Get it here.

Japanese blog "Tokyo Nerd" has found, ripped and shared a Virtual Boy in-store promo VHS tape (バーチャルボーイイメージビデオ) that was sent to retailers in 1995 to promote the Virtual Boy.



The actual video contained on the tape is a bit over 2:40 minutes long and is repeated over and over for an hour to fill the whole tape. It is like an extended version of the already known Japanese Virtual Boy commercials and also includes edited footage from the Winter CES show that took place in Las Vegas in January 1995.

Here is the video in all its flashy glory for your enjoyment.

As promised, here are the final results of the community voting for the "Virtual Fall" Coding Competition. Congratulations and thanks a lot to all contestants for their great entries!

	Project	Points
1.	Game Boy Emulator by M.K.	107 (28%)
2.	Zpace Racers by DanB	71 (19%)
3.	Wireframe Library by Greg Stevens	58 (15%)
4.	Mario Combat by thunderstruck	50 (13%)
5.	Deathchase by HorvatM & RunnerPack	44 (12%)
6.	Flappy Cheep Cheep by DogP	33 (9%)
7.	3D Crosswords by VirtualChris	17 (4%)

The third Planet Virtual Boy Coding Competition, dubbed "Virtual Fall", has ended and we're going into the voting phase. This time, we again saw a total of 7 entries, which you can download all zipped up in one file here.

Please take your time to review all entries before casting your vote. In this secret voting, every user (registered before March 1st, 2014) can freely distribute a total of 10 points to the submitted projects. Contestors can not vote on their own project.

The voting will run for about 2 weeks until Monday 17th, then the results will be published.

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!

The "Virtual Fall" coding competition closed with three more last minute projects.

Mario Combat by thunderstruck is a first person shooting game demo that's reminiscent of Yoshi's Safari.



Deathchase by HorvatM & Runnerpack is a remake of the 1983 ZX Spectrum game of the same name by Mervyn J. Estcourt featuring higher resolution, stereoscopic graphics.



Last entry is a Game Boy Emulator made by M.K. that brings the entire Game Boy library to your Virtual Boy with multi-ROM support, full sound emulation, optional 3-D environments and pretty good compatability with few glitches!



Although the project had to be cancelled due to limitations of the Virtual Boy's affine mode, Guy Perfect's F-Zero Maximum Velocity remake deserves a honorable mention. You can check out the whole story of the project as well as the last ROM in our forum.



Have fun checking out all the cool submissions before the voting starts very soon!