RetroOnyx: Looking back at 2024

This year was slower for RetroOnyx than past years, but not for lack of projects. I made a conscientious decision this year to slow down a bit and not burn the candle at both ends. Previous years I put everything I had into RetroOnyx projects and it was slowly killing me. This year has been better health wise, but looking back at 2024, there was still a lot of things accomplished and lots of new projects/products introduced. I'll give a summary of some of them below.

BWRY Panel Testing and HyperBoy+

I started 2024 out by having custom 4-color black, white, red, and yellow (BWRY) 2.7" eInk panels made for testing for HF32. My initial test images are shown below.

What I would learn was that these new BWRY panels don't support partial updates, which is required for the on-screen menu of HF32. That work would eventually lead to the HyperBoy+ concept.

HyperBoy+ is a HyperBoy with an added eInk screen. Or put another way, HB+ is a HF32 with SD card, cap touch buttons, and haptics removed, while upgrading the screen to BWRY. I designed a new PCB that took the original HyperBoy design and added eInk panel support. This work would ebb and flow throughout 2024 to come to a final product for HB+ in December of 2024. HB+ would also lead to a long development of a custom full aluminum shell, instead of the HB and HF32 aluminum panel + 3D printed carbon fiber frames. The first prototype of the HB+ with aluminum shell is shown below.

Work is progressing on the software needed for HB+ by Thunderstruck. Some really nice label conversions for the BWRY panels on HB+ are shown below. I'm hoping we'll have software updates completed in December of 2024.

The final versions of HB+ are being assembled as I write this and will be anodized black. Those black anodized shells are shown below prior to assembly. In addition to looking good, these shells are structurally stronger than my aluminum panel + frame design that was used in HB and HF32 units. With the entire shell being aluminum, there's more support for the eInk panel while also giving it that very premium look.

If you're interested in HyperBoy+ units, there's still a number of them available for preorder on the product page.

As with all things RetroOnyx, that's not where my aluminum shell ideas started. The original aluminum shells, that I'm aware of, are from a VB community member named Tony. People in the VB community will recognize his name and know that he built custom aluminum shells for people. However, Tony stopped building those and I could also never convince him to build them in volume for me. After he shutdown, I thought about whether I could do them. It was about that time that I realized my HF32 PCB vendor was also quite handy with aluminum. That led to building some OEM sized aluminum cartridge shells that I'll discuss next.

Virtual WarZone Aluminum and Clear Shells

Shown below is my original aluminum shell work that tested the idea for HB+. These shells are standard OEM size and more simplistic than the HB+ shells, and that was a great place to start. I used my Virtual WarZone game as the test game, but any OEM VB game could be used in these shells.

I would first do laser etched graphics on front and back but later switch to milled graphics on the front. The red shells came out really well with a deep anodized red aluminum look. As I usually do, I also had some black ones made, as shown below.

If you look closely you'll see design aspects from previous projects. The screws are the same ones from HB and HF32. The Virtual Boy text is using the PlanetVB Virtual Boy font. The milled fronts I tried on HF32, as well as the laser etched versions. I still have these aluminum shells in the milled versions available for custom cart builds.

I would even play with clear plastic cases for Virtual WarZone. These were using some limited clear shells from Vintex64. It was fun and unique looking but the clear shells were limited and went out of stock pretty quick. These clear shell units would still use my 32Mbit PCB. There are only about 7 of these clear shell Virtual WarZone carts in existence.

Although currently out of stock, you can normally find Virtual WarZone carts and CIBs here. I'll have more in stock in early 2025.

Virtual Boy USB-C Power Adapters

I built some Virtual Boy USB-C power delivery (PD) power adapters as well. This was an idea by a PlanetVB Discord member, as well as a play on the power packs that several others were building for Virtual Boy. It uses a USB-C PD circuit board from Amazon. My contribution was mainly the clean shell and contacts that were derived from my previous VB power adapter design, as well as VB rumble. I decided to do it because some of the competing vendors don't provide clean shells. I even had some of the housings printed in HP multijet Nylon carbon fiber, as shown below.

I still carry and offer these USB-C PD units as a very cheap way to power a VB given the original power packs are selling for well over $100 on eBay.

New 128Mbit Carts for VB and Formula V

I developed a new large capacity VB cartridge PCB this year. Sitting at 128Mbit, it can hold the largest of VB games, and was originally designed to hold the release version of Formula V from the VUEngine team. These are actually still sitting on my desk waiting for development. Hardware is built but more development and debug is needed before they'll be ready for launch. I'll finish this design out early in 2025.

The VUEngine team is fantastic and many of you know a couple of them as Jorge and KR155E on the VB discord forums. Please support them, if you can. You can find their Patreon page here. They do more in the background than most people know.

Virtual Boy eInk Battery Packs

I finally built a second eInk product and it was the VB eInk Battery pack. There's about 25 of these units out in the wild. I mainly built them because I wanted one. It's a very premium product and is quite a bit more expensive than other options out there. But it was fun and again carried forward my design skills quite a bit. It also used lots of the housing design from the VB AC/DC power adapter, as well as carried forward the multiple graphic options via laser etch: RetroOnyx, Formula V, Fishbone, Warzone, and plain Black.

I enjoyed the VB battery pack project quite a bit. It's my second official eInk product and uses a small 1.27" eInk panel from EInk Corp. I have parts to make more but interest was low so I stopped at 25 units. I may pick them up again in the future. For now its a high end novelty for a small select group of VB community members.

VB Wireless Controller PCB and Receiver

I ended up taking an FPGA class during 2024 as well and my final project in that class was a prototype wireless VB controller design. That class prototype is shown below.

Functionally the prototype setup above isn't any different than what I would create for RetroOnyx. It made most sense to replace the PCB inside the controller to eliminate the external hardware needed. That controller PCB is shown on the left below, followed by the receiver design in the middle (in assembly now), and the first assembled controller on the far right.

I pushed myself to learn KiCad in order to closely mimic the original VB controller PCB shape and it turned out fantastic. The new controller PCB fits like a glove and I even went on to design the trigger PCBs to match.

This project made me a beliver in KiCad. Doing something like this in EagleCad would have been significantly more difficult. Everything from the shape and the copying of the buttons was so much easier in KiCad. Learning KiCad alone made this project well worth the effort. I've started doing new projects in KiCad and will probably continue that moving forward into 2025.

As of mid December 2024, the controller firmware still needs to be written, the receiver is in assembly now, and the trigger PCBs are about to enter fabrication. A complete wireless controller receiver set with trigger PCBs will likely start shipping in early 2025. You can still preorder VB wireless controllers PCBs and receivers.

Other Misc. Tinkering

I continued as always this year tinkering with eInk panels. Some I've shown before and others I haven't. The latest one is a new ~3" full color eInk that just so happens to be the perfect size for a N64 cart.

I haven't done anything else with it other than put up some demo images of Wario Land. We'll see what the future brings on that one. I've also continued to play with a 2.8" color eInk panel that may show up in a future VB flash cart design. A reminder on that 2.8" panel below.

Patreon Supporters

As always, a huge thank you to all my Patreon Supporters! Nearly all of them are long time RetroOnyx customers and some even supported me well before I started RetroOnyx. All of the money that comes in through my Patreon page goes to VB projects. I appreciate you all and hope to bring more free give-a-ways to my Patreon in 2025. For those of you who aren't supporting via Patreon and want to, you can find my Patreon page here.

Special Thanks to Thunderstruck

A VB community member that many will recognize is Thunderstruck. He's the guy behind homebrew releases like Game Hero, Faceball Remastered, Fishbone, as well as lots of VB software tools. He's also the behind the scenes master of cleaning up HF32 firmware, HB firmware, and developing the graphics user interfaces for those products. A whole lot of things would not get done in the VB world without Thunderstruck. Please support his Patreon, if you can.

Looking forward to 2025

When I started writing this, I thought I wouldn't have that much to put in for this year. That definitely wasn't the case! Although I took it slower this year, there was still lots of new gear developed. That's all in addition to shipping VB link cables, extension cables, VB USB adapters, Wonderswan battery packs, VB rumble packs, and many other items. It really was a busy year.

There will be some gear to finish in early 2025 before any new projects start. I need to get all the HB+ units out, as well as the new VB wireless controllers and receivers. Then I'll work on getting the 128Mbit cart up and running so Formula V can hopefully release in 2025. I'll also order some more Wonderswan battery pack PCBs along with more 32Mbit reprogrammable cart PCBs. That will all start off 2025.

There's a theme above of bringing forward my designs into new projects and that will also continue this year. I intend on continuing the aluminum shell work into future flash cart projects, as well as color eInk. I've pretty much done all I can think of for VB with exception of one very big one... I won't say what it is but I'm guessing you already know. Given I've mentioned it so much in the past and never gotten to it, I'm not going to name it this year. In hopes of not jinxing it for 2025.

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays to everyone!