Cool, that was really needed for games without saves like certain Mario game demo that ended launching as a full game.
I definitely would love to update it to include saving or a scoreboard but one I haven't coded anything in over two decades, two not gonna learn VR coding cause the VB limitations annoy me and three Nintendo loves to sue.
A IPS patch that adds a scoreboard and saving would still be awesome, same for two player play even if it is turn based of the "Player 1 must lose all lives before player 2 can play" kind. Because unlike in the Nes for the Virtual boy it actually makes sense to have two player that way cause headset.
Beep.
Over the last few weeks I've been making save patches for Virtual Boy games. So far, I've got the following games saving:
- Golf
- Jack Bros.
- Mario Clash
- Red Alarm
- EDIT: Space Squash
- EDIT: V-Tetris
- Vertical Force
- Waterworld
I have a couple more in the pipeline, (
EDIT: just added) just working on figuring out an issue that's occurring on real hardware that doesn't affect Red Viper or other VB emulators like Mednafen.
For some of those games, you're basically looking at saving the high scores and any options screen settings, e.g. Red Alarm, Vertical Force and Waterworld are all like that, but Golf, Jack Bros., Mario Clash and one of the other pipeline games (Space Squash) are all saving/loading your actual in-game progress as well.
For something like Mario Clash, I absolutely think the save patch fundamentally changes the game into something that's better than it was at launch. Saving your Waterworld high scores isn't going to change how you feel about the game, but Mario Clash is a lot more enjoyable when you can progress through the stages at your leisure.
Jack Bros. is a bit of a middle ground--it had password saves in the original, so you're not really gaining anything you didn't have already, you just don't have to futz around looking for passwords to get back to where you were up to last time. It does have some quality of life changes though, like re-enabling the sound test and debug modes and allowing you to toggle between English and Japanese, since the ROM itself supports both but was originally locked to English.
Golf is a really unique case: the save hack there is barely my work; T&E Soft intended to include save support in the game but cheaped out by not ordering battery-backed cartridges for an admittedly dying system. I was able to restore the originally intended save support, which actually automatically removes the entire password system and replaces it with normal loading/saving of ongoing tournaments, player stats, etc. It's a huge change which will really benefit you if you ... enjoy playing Golf on Virtual Boy.