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Virtual Boy

Overview

The Virtual Boy application is an emulator for the Virtual Boy game console.

Fishbone by thunderstruck (and others)

Controls

The emulator supports one controller. The keyboard and gamepad mappings are listed in the tables below.

Keyboard

Keyboard controls are listed below.

Name
Keys
 Comments
Left D-pad
A or
B or
Left Shoulder
Right Shoulder
Start
Select The Right Shift Key.
Show Pause Screen

Gamepad

Gamepad mappings are listed below.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Left D-pad  or 
Right D-pad Analog to digital mapping.
A  or 
B  or 
Left Shoulder
Right Shoulder
Start Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the Menu (Start) Button.
Start
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Select Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the View (Back) Button.
Select
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the Menu (Start) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 2)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the X Button and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 3)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 4)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.

Battery-backed SRAM

Some Virtual Boy cartridges include battery-backed SRAM as a means of preserving state between sessions. The Virtual Boy application supports persisting this SRAM state into the browser's local storage or optionally to cloud-based storage. The SRAM contents will be persisted to storage whenever the pause screen is displayed (or the game is exited). Therefore, the menu should be displayed periodically for games that support battery-backed SRAM to ensure the state is properly persisted.

Feed

This section details how Virtual Boy application instances can be added to feeds.

Type

The type name for the Virtual Boy application is mednafen-vb.

Note

The alias vb also currently maps to this application. In the future, the vb alias may be mapped to another Virtual Boy application (different emulator implementation) if it is determined to be a more appropriate default.

Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the Virtual Boy application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property Type Required Details
rom URL Yes URL to a Virtual Boy ROM file or a zip file containing a ROM file.
zoomLevel Numeric No A numeric value indicating how much the display image should be zoomed in (0-40).

This property is typically used to hide the black borders that are present on some games.

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single Virtual Boy application instance (type value of vb). The rom property value is a URL that points to a Dropbox location that contains the excellent homebrew game Fishbone by thunderstruck (and others).

{
  "title": "Virtual Boy Feed",
  "longTitle": "Virtual Boy Example Feed",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "Virtual Boy Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "Fishbone",
          "type": "vb",
          "props": {
            "rom": "https://www.dropbox.com/s/gxgbpcgi83h2b0u/fishbone.vb?dl=0"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This example can be tested by adding a feed with the following URL within the webЯcade player:

https://tinyurl.com/sample-vb-feed

References

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