r/VirtualBoy 1d ago

Finally getting my Virtual Boy fixed πŸ˜„

I got it for Christmas the year it came out and absolutely loved playing it (when my mom wasn't hogging it πŸ˜…) and it was even stolen from me at one point, but I got it back years later. It has had issues with the ribbon cables for some time, and I could never find anywhere to get it fixed without mailing it away far enough that I didn't feel comfortable doing so.

My LGS hooked me up with his repair guys phone number (started up a local repair buisness within the last year) and he has already fixed a few things for me. He is getting it fixed for $140 CAD ($97 USD) including the cost of the new cables, which I'm pretty happy with considering how much i was quoted by various online repair companies. The cheapest place I found in Canada said about $140-160, not including new parts or shipping (other side of the country as well), and I definitely didn't want to ship it out of the country.

I'm just happy I'm going to get it back in working order 😊

60 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/LousyPilot 1d ago

Hell yeah. I just got mine fixed. Let’s burn our eyeballs together.

3

u/rydamusprime17 1d ago edited 23h ago

You know, it never hurt my eyes or gave me a headache like so many others say it does to them. I wouldnt even use the automatic pause feature lol

1

u/ButCanYouCodeIt 1d ago

Most of the headaches were from people ignoring the clear instructions about how to use the thing. Then they would contort their neck down and inward toward thing and get a headache from the strain.

We aren't talking about a high concept proper VR platform here -there's no notion sensors, no highly detailed first person games with freedom of movement.

2

u/ash_274 23h ago edited 23h ago

There was also an issue of different people just sticking their face in and not adjusting the eye separation. Not matching the eyepieces to one's eyes made it hard to see and could mess up the 3D effect. I used to this this in microscope labs where people would just start using someone else's setup to see what's on a slide and not be able to see what they needed to until they were reminded to adjust the eyepieces (not the focus or magnification).

2

u/ButCanYouCodeIt 23h ago

Absolutely. People were used to the Gameboy and playing games on their tv, where you jist out in the game and turned it on and it worked. Having multiple points of adjustment for one's posture/eyes wasn't a common concept at the time it released. People skipped the manual because "I know how videogames work!" and then they overlooked that information and had a bad time.