Planet Virtual Boy

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Sean Bean: 'One does not simply flash 2 vb roms onto a single cart!' :)

LOL; no, I do not know a method by which this would be done I was speaking from a vb layman's pov. The unasked question that I was suggesting was that since (whomever it was, the super smart guy) figured out how to mess with the original rom in order to create the "remastered" version it stood as a possibility that they could somehow be merged in a single rom wrapper before being flashed? I know absolutely zero about the vb from a tech pov that would apply to how this would be done, so I'm assuming now that it simply can't unless there's a new cart developed that functions more like a GBA flash card (mult rom files), but I know the vb scene has leaned away from anything like that to date. Was just thinking out loud.

Regardless, I'll stay tuned. Very interested in this.

This being Faceball which was a based off Midi Maze suggests that the game was seen by someone at BPS and then licensed to/by Nintendo/BPS for sale on GB then VB.

The educated thought would be that the team was only maybe two/three people and they handled not just the dev but also the business side. This is partially backed up by the info on the Wiki for MIDI Maze:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI_Maze

The team are not Japanese going from the names. This would lead me to believe that the game was sub-licensed to another dev for console release. This is speculative as the wiki goes on to mention that the original devs (Xanth Software F/X) had a vision of coverting the Faceball formula to Game Boy early on.

Clarity needs to be established here. BPS published only. Quickly skipping through the wiki entries for BPS/Henk Rogers gives no indication that they had internal devs so I can only presume the development was either by a staffer at Xanth or it had been outsourced to someone for dev or to a larger company. Can anyone with an understanding clarify this information? Did BPS have internal devs on their payroll?

Again the source code of the game would be a derivative version from perhaps another source. The question is: What computer/console most fits the VB spec in terms of similar performance and chipset and also had a version of FB developed for it? This might give you clues as to the individual who developed it. (As a sidenote to this... Would it be sensible to assume that if there is a machine with a VB-esque spec, could that mean an easier process to make/dev for VB??)

The Wiki says that one person would handle a specific conversion... So the question is who handled the VB proto? Internal BPS/Outsourced/Xanth staff?

I would postulate two concepts:
The first is that BPS hired someone to cut the code from another version and the spruce it up 3D-style for VB. This would save money and give something saleable quickly as Faceball was doing good business on the various formats and it being simplistic 3D would give it an edge on VB I am sure.

The second is that one of the coders of the other versions simply ported over and rounded off/cleaned up a version they did for another console/computer... This, in fairness, is just speculation and really we cannot determine anything from the current info.

The gentleman/whomever released the pics and got permission for release of the proto must have some 'love' for collecting or gaming generally or why have something like that just laying around? Further if he had to 'ask permission' then this means that he is obviously 'below' the person involved in some way. The only logical solution is that he is a staffer and the person who has the rights is obviously 'the boss' or 'high up' type individual. Who knows? Personally its too 'detective' for me. I am just very pleased that FB is going to be released.

I apologise if this speculative post has missed some points. I just find the history of this quite interesting...

Fun fact: The rom header in the Faceball proto still says "V-Tetris" and has the same game id (VTRJ) as that game, which might suggest it was developed by the same team, or even built on the same pc/using V-Tetris as a framework

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This might help. (-:

Whilst Bulletproof Software only published the Game Boy and SNES games, they did also develop games themselves (including V-Tetris), so I wouldn't necessarily rule them out as the developers of the VB game.

However for the Game Gear colourised version of Faceball 2000 (the GB one) and the PC Engine Faceball, they were "licensed to Riverhill Soft", so perhaps they were the developers for the VB entry.

Other thoughts:

- This is not a "spruced up" version of one of the other games. It does not resemble any of the others.
- It's worth noting that all the games are different from each other, even though two of them (GB/SNES)were called "Faceball 2000". The exception (as mentioned above) is that a colour version of the GB game was released for the Game Gear.
- The VB game is titled Nico-Chan Battle (ニコちゃんバトル) which is interesting as the previous games released in Japan used the English title on-screen. Packaging included Japanese but was again "Faceball" (フェイスボール).

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OK forget Riverhill. Looks to me like BPS developed this one themselves.

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Thanks for this info, Dave.

All of the Faceball excitement has caused me to want to get all of the different versions of Faceball for their original systems. I don't own a Game Gear, however, and wasn't aware that Faceball for it was simply the Game Boy version in color. Since that is the case, and all the levels and enemies are the same as the Game Boy version (which I already have and love) but everything is in color, I guess this will save me from buying both the Game Gear and Faceball for it.

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Both ROM's together should be under 2MBytes. So, couldn't you put in an option screen that lets you decide which version to run (when you first boot the cart) ?

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I thought about that as well. I'm not sure if this would break the absolute addressing though... I guess someone smarter then may would have to do this.

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I saw that as well. There is also some other stuff from V-Tetris like the credits left in the ROM. You can't see it in the game but it is still there. I guess they reused the code base to have a faster start.